I'm designing a web site where I would expect the intended audience to have limited computer skills.
An important part of my site's functionality will require the end user to copy an URL that my site generates and use it in emails, or social network postings, or on their own web site.
I could write the URL to the clipboard when a button is pushed (like tinyurl.com does). However I'm wondering whether the average user even understands what that means and how to use it.
Any guidence will be appreciated.
There are several paths of though possible, you can make many of the scenarios possible at once.
Make the URL copied at once.
Make the URL copied when pushing the button.
Make the URL selected at once so the user can copy it directly
Of course since the URL is copied at once the two other actions does not need to do anything with the clipboard unless the user has modified the clipboard after the URL was presented.
When the URL is copied, at least in the first two steps you could show a message for the user that is has been copied, that makes it useful for those that understand it.
For those that might be focused on copying the URL themselves step 3 helps them on their way.
Whatever path the user tries should go as smooth as possible without forcing them to understand the benefits offered. In the long run it might help them, but if only used a few times the work of understanding what is going on outweighs the benefit.
Related
In my app, I've got a share button for facebook and twitter etc. I want that people can tweet and post the link of my app, but the app is not yet available in the app store, so i can't have a link to the app.
In some apps there is a link to the app if you are composing a tweet, how do they do that?
As H2CO3 pointed out, having that AppStore URL delivered from a server you control would likely be something you would prefer. Naturally, the first question to pop to mind would be something of the form 'Why do I have to use a server at all? Can't I just code it into my app directly?'
In short form, you are not required to use a server, but you may find that the benefits and flexibility it offers you in at the cost of a little more networking code and complexity in your app helpful. Let's expand on this a bit, by imagining we lived in the perfect world where we knew with 100% accuracy what that AppStore URL would be and that it would never ever change. We could get away with just coding that URL directly into our app and we would never again have to think about that part of our app -- it would always tweet the correct URL, users would be happy, and you as the developer can turn your attention to more important matters.
Unfortunately, things often don't work perfectly and as software developers we have to consider the ugly edges of reality and write code to handle them gracefully. Here are just a few of the potential problems with hard-coding a URL:
We don't actually know the full AppStore URL.
Apple may decide to change AppStore URL formats and render old URLs invalid.
Despite our best efforts to carefully type the URL into our code, we made a mistake and now we have to issue an update and wait for our app to be reviewed to get a simple typo fixed - Eep!
H2CO3's suggestion to use a server builds likely stems from experience in writing software coupled with developer's inherent risk management driven thought processes -- if there is something I can do to make my software handle these ugly edges more gracefully and make my software more reliable, it may make sense to take the extra time to implement my feature differently to protect it from the shadowy unknowns the future may have in store for my app.
For the sake of a balanced argument against putting the URL on a server:
If your users are in a place that has spotty cell or wifi coverage, they may not be able to connect with your server to get the AppStore URL from your server
Your server might not be working properly so it can't deliver information to your app when requested.
Adding a network request like this can be very easy to do, but also introduces its own set of risks to have to consider (isn't writing software great?)
As indicated above, you do not need to make your app snag the URL from a server you control, but you may want it to do so. Only you, as the app's developer, can determine what degree of risk you are willing to accept and which of the available options you've researched, invented, or otherwise acquired seem to fit your specific needs the best.
Since I don't know your background, I'm going to stay relatively high level and give you another couple of nudges in some directions you can go and do some additional research:
On the 'setup a server' idea -- you can purchase a hosting account from a number of hosting providers around the Internet or if this is a school or work project you may be able to speak with your IT people to request space for a website. After you have that setup, you can put a file on that space with a placeholder URL and write some code in your app to connect to your server and read your file (that has your fake URL in it!) the put it into your Tweet. Once your app is approved, you can change the fake URL on your server with the real one, and your App will work like you want. For the App part of things, you might look into some of the simple +stringWithContentsOfURL: methods on NSString (though do remember to consider things like what happens if the Internet is down, or if you don't get anything back from your server, etc.!)
On the 'just hard code the URL into the app' idea -- Apple makes some marketing resources available to developers even before they release an app. Checkout (https://developer.apple.com/appstore/resources/marketing/index.html) with an emphasis on the Shortlinks section, and also checkout Technical Q&A 1633 (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1633/_index.html). Both of these links give you information about how to build a link directly to an application or vendor on the AppStore given just their name(s). Like before, do remember to consider what happens if you ever decide to rename your app, or if linking elsewhere (or maybe nowhere!) would make more sense.
Hopefully this will help you think a little more about what you are actually trying to achieve, and give you a sense about what other developers think about when faced with decisions like the one you've posed here.
While i agree with Bryan i always avoided using servers for basic things. With ios 5+ you can send tweets from inside the app ( and you can add default tweet (i.e. a link to the app)
Your problem can be solved easily this way : make a short link with the link to the app store ( the link to the app store is formatted like this : https://itunes.apple.com/app/id <app id> , and the app id the the one in itunnesconnect under Apple ID )
For example you can make a default tweet like this : " Check out this awesome app!! goo.gl/buya " and then the user can edit it as he wishes.
Also..it's extremely unlikely that Apple will change the format of theyr links...too many users depend on this format to do..a lot of things
I'm just getting started with ImageResizer and I'm stuck on what seem like totally basic questions:
I have an uploader that I use to put images into a directory that's not directly accessible over HTTP. (If I just put a image at, say, /images/myimage.jpg, then anyone could access it by just asking for it, whereas I want to limit access via thumbnails, watermarks, etc.). So I want to put it at /offlimits/myimage.jpg, but be able to serve it up at /public/images/myimage.jpg.
I don't really want to dump all the images in the same offlimits folder, because putting lots of files in one folder makes Windows unhappy. But I don't want to expose the details of that subdirectory structure either, so where do I put the mapping between the public facing url and the actual image location?
Most generally, I don't necessarily want an image extension at all, so I'd like to say /public/image_id?width=100... and have this map to /offlimits/sub1/sub2/sub3/image_id.jpg.
Can anyone advise about how to set this up?
Three part questions are generally frowned upon here at SO, but I'll bite anyhow :)
If you're allowing access to images based on authentication, then you need to use ASP.NET's URL Authorization feature. ImageResizer supports URL Authorization rules. If you just don't want the source files available, and want to force them resized or watermarked, read the docs on how to implement arbitrary rules like this.
You can rewrite image paths to your heart's content with Config.Current.Rewrite, which works just like the PostRewrite event mentioned earlier. Just remember you'll have to keep it all straight in your head later.
Image extensions are good things. Don't fight them. They let the server figure out the right mime-type to send and help errant browsers recover from related bugs. They prevent issues on several platforms and make the Save As dialog work. They significantly improve server efficiency as well, since handling logic doesn't have wait as long. This is particularly relevant because of the design of the IIS/ASP.NET modules system.
We should be able to access some of it so that we can edit the placement of each GUI object inside of CoreGui. So, other than security reasons, why are we not allowed to edit placement of GUI objects?
Also, why can't trusted users use CoreScripts? What if they need to access HttpGet so they can provide a nice display showing where their best friend is at the current time and place? SocialService won't always do the trick.
Can a developer (or any other experienced Roblox player, particularly one that knows the UI in and out) please answer these questions to the best of his/her ability?
I asked this in the OBC cast, specifically about editing the UI inside CoreGui. I'm not sure what security reasons could be preventing this, however. They did reply - the answer was, "Well, we definitely don't want you moving the little help icon, or the exit button."
I got the feeling the general reason is because users would become confused if everything was misplaced. For example, if you went into a website where you could play several games all made by that company (like ROBLOX), would you expect the exit or help buttons to me placed differently in every game?
They did say we will be able to change the colours.
Hope this clears things up.
Some GUI objects like the report abuse button we don't want users to have the ability to be able to remove. Another sensitive area is the chat window. If it was completely scriptable, you could write a script to make it look like another user was saying something that he wasn't. This is not really desirable.
HttpGet is currently a privileged function for two main reasons:
It would allow users to get dynamic content into levels, which would make moderation a more difficult task.
Poorly or maliciously written scripts could HttpGet roblox.com in an infinite loop, sapping our server resources.
There was no obvious benefit, but some obvious downsides. We prefer to solve only the problems that need to be solved in order to ship features, so we err on the side of caution for things like this. If we later decide to open up new functionality, like making the ROBLOX social graph available through an API, we can do that with a dedicated interface that limits the number of requests you can make to the website in a given period, and only return the info that we are sure we want you to be able to get.
It's interesting to note that for a very long time Adobe Flash player didn't support TCP sockets for the same reason.
We have members-only paid content that is frequently copied and republished without our permission.
We are trying to ‘watermark’ our content by including each customer’s user id in a fake css class, for example <p class='userid_1234'> (except not so obivous, of course :), that would help us track the source of the copying, and then we place that class somewhere in the article body.
The problem is, by including user-specific information into an article, it makes it so that the article content is ineligible for caching because it is now unique to each user.
This bumps the page load time from ~.8ms to ~2.5sec for each article page view.
Does anyone know of any watermarking strategies that can still be used with caching?
Alternatively, what can be done to speed up database access? ( ha, ha, that there’s just a tiny topic i’m sure.. )
We're using the CMS Expression Engine, but I'd like to hear about any strategies. They don't have to be EE-specific.
If you're talking about images then you could use PHP to add a watermark to the images.
How can I add an image onto an image in PHP like a watermark
its a tool to help track down the lazy copiers who just copy the source code as-is. this is not preventative, nor is it a deterrent. – Ian 12 hours ago
Going by your above comment you are happy with users copying your content, just not without the formatting etc. So what you could do is provide the users an embed type of source code for that particular content just like YouTube does with videos. Into that embed source code you could add your own links back to your site, utilize your own CSS etc.
That way you can still allow the members to use the content but it will always come out the way you intended it with links back to your site.
Thanks
You could always cache a version that uses a special string, like #!username!#, and then later fill it in with PHP based on which user is viewing it.
Another way I believe is to switch from caching on the server to instead let the browser cache it locally for a little. That way it is only cached per user, and it reduces the calls to your database. Because an article is pretty static, you could just let the local computer cache it, and pull in comments via javascript.
This last one is probably not one you are really looking for, but I'm gonna come out and say it anyway. You could not treat your users like thieves, and instead treat the thieves as thieves. Go to the person hosting the servers your content is on and send them an email telling them copyrighted premium content is being hosted on their servers without your permission. You can even automate that process.
How to find out what sites are posting your content? Put a link in the body content to your site, and do a Google Search/Blog Search for articles linking to that site. To automate it, use Google Blog Search because it offers RSS feeds. Any one that has a link back to your site could go into a database with a link to the page, someone could look at it, and if it is the entire article, go do a Whois and send them an email.
What makes you think adding css to something is going to stop people from copying it without that CSS? It's more likely that they are just coping the source of the content you are showing them and ignoring all the styling around it. For example, I use tamper data to look at all HTTP requests made by Firefox, if I can see it on the page, I can see it in the logs. Even with all the "protection" some sites try to put in place, they generally will never work. I can grab what I want, without using any screen capture/recording.
If you were serving flv's, for example, I would easily be able to grab the source of that even if you overlayed it with some CSS. I think the best approach would be to get the sites publishing your premium content and ask them to remove it. It's either that or watermark the actual content on the fly while sending it to the browser.
I'm working on the quite popular website, which looks good if user has turned on "Load images" option in his browser's settings.
When you try to open the website with "turned off images" option, it becomes not usable, many components won't work, because user won't see "important" buttons(we don't use standard OS buttons).
So, we can't understand and measure negative business impact of this mistake(absent alt/title attributes).
We can't set priority for this task - because we don't know how much such users comes to our website.
Please give me some advice how this problem can be solved?
Look in the logs for how many hits you get on a page without the subsequent requests from the browser for the other images.
Of course the browser might have images cached, so look for the first time you get a hit.
You can even use IP address for this, since it's OK if you throw out good data (that is, hits that are new that you disregard). The question is just: Of the hits you know are first-time, how many don't get images?
If this is a public page (i.e. not a web application that you've logged in to), also disregard search engine bots to the greatest extent possible; they usually won't retrieve images.