How does Snapchat show text over image - ios

I am working on an iOS app where the users can add description/text when uploading images like Snapchat.
Do they render images and add the text to image so that it becomes part of the image itself or is it shown as a UILabel over the image?
For the 2nd option the text would have to be sent separately to server.
P.S. Just having an argument with Server side programmer and I'm suggesting the 2nd option.

If we check /ph/upload in Snapchat API (last updated 23-12-2013) we can see that you can upload either a photo or a video.
Of course, this is not the latest version (although this is the last documentation I could find) but I am assumming nothing has changed in that regard.
That means the text is inserted to the photo in the mobile client app, not on the server.
In my opinion, you shouldn't base any decisions about your API architecture on Snapchat because it's unlikely you have the same use cases. In general:
Sending data separately is more flexible and makes client implementation simpler.
Rendering data on the client is better for user experience (everything is faster and the user can see the final result) and also it saves a lot of server resources (the more users you have the more this will be visible).

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PDF4NET pdf's not showing the bound content when viewed on iOS default pdf reader

I am using Version 4.4.1.0 of O2S.Components.PDF4NET
I am using this in an MVC project to run through a series of 6 views and fill an object with the data required for the PDF.
When the PDF is bound and emailed in the last step it works great. all except for when it is viewed by default PDF reader on iOS devices.
My company purchased this product on the cheaper plan so the 90 support is over and I cannot access any sort of forums from there site.
I read a similar issue regarding a button not being displayed on iOS but there was no resolution other then to email the company.
I hope that there is a viable solution as I would prefer not to have to cut my losses and change to a different product over something as short sighted as not supporting/testing against one of the more common platforms people use to consume media.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'bound content' but I assume you are talking about form fields.
Forms fields and annotations are not displayed by the CGPDF API in iOS, only the main page content is displayed. It is not a limitation of PDF4NET, it is a limitation of the iOS PDF display engine. The workaround is to flatten the form fields thus making them part of the page content.
If this is not your situation, please send a mail to support and they will help you.
Disclaimer: I work for the company that develops PDF4NET.

Offline Blog Reading (Images) capability (cache)?

I am creating a UITableView where I will load and show data from my blog's feed. This data will be updated daily, on launch or dynamically.
What I want to do is provide some offline capability to this screen, as such if user isnt connected to internet, he can still see the view and its contents (mainly post list with its images).
For such I will need some hints or solutions on how to do this, probably cache ?
Basically if user is connected to net, the view will update the contents and fetch he blog post feeds from my API and update it with new content, but if user isnt connected to net, he should see the last fetched/updated content (with images) till he connects to net and updates the view.
For this probably I need to save/cache 3 things which I will need and use in the View, all of which are fetched and provided by my API:- The Post Title, Date and its cover image.
Would best way would be to add them to some dictionary, use NSCache (aint it temporary ?) or download images locally and then save them as UIImage along with NSString (title/date) in a dic/array ?
I would like to know as many different approaches possible.
After testing a bit, I found caching images can solve my offline image problem, but is cache temporary or how long can it last ? How can I store that cached image with my text data in some dictionary to load it if network isnt connected ?
You can use a ready to use, opensource caching library like SDWebImage. It provides asynchronous image downloading as well as caching, so any image that is cached will appear in place when your app is offline.

Is it possible to load interactive elements into an iOS app?

Does anyone have any ideas how I could package an external interactive slide that could be dynamically loaded by an iOS app? Is it at all possible?
e.g. Imagine having a presentation app on an iPad. There is a set of interactive slides held on the web somewhere, let's say they contain draggable elements.
Can I load one of these slide objects into the app and interact with it? If so, what format would the slide object be?
Thanks,
Mark
Technically it's possible to dynamically load bundles (NSBundle) components in an app. These bundles could even contain executable code, though AppStore guidelines prohibit use of dynamically loaded NSBundles in this way for security reasons.
Additionally you could just use a UIWebView to display some 'slides' on a webpage, though it will be very hard to make the app behave as if it's the same as the native slides - perhaps even impossible (due to how rendering of webpages work compared to native controls, for example).
Ok so lets say you have these "external interactive slides" on a web server somehow. Since you are not saying they are of a certain type (like powerpoint or such) I will just assume that these slides are of some rare format that is probably not supported by any existing apps or the Safari browser.
Then the answer to your question would be: Write your own iOS-app that can read, present and edit these slides. What format are they? Well it doesn't matter. Write an app that can download the slide data from the data and parse it, and present it on the phone.
Then let the user interact with it, and perhaps make the app upload the changes to the server.
You can do anything you like in your app, there are no limits. You just have to write the code for it. If there was some kind of standardised format, lets say you wanted your app to show powerpoint presentations, then you would have 3 choices. Use someone else´s app, or write your own app with a parser for the powerpoint files or make your own app that use some code that someone else wrote to do it (a third part library that you include in your app)
In your specific case, I can not tell if there are any third part librarys to interact with your slides, but my guess is that you will need to do most of it on your own. You could start with looking at how the web services that interact with the slides online works, and if you can interact with them from an iOS-app that you make yourself.
There is nothing stopping you from creating an app, read the slide data into the app, present it in any way you like, let the user change it, save it in your app, or upload the changes to a server. It's all up to you =)
Good luck!

Browse for an image on an iPad/iPhone from HTML5

I have an HTML5 application that allows users to drag-n-drop an image to a canvas, or alternatively, browse for it on their local disk. Once I got the image, I display it in the canvas using context.drawImage(). Got all the kinks out and it works great.
BUT. Now my customer want to use it on an iPad. Drag-n-drop is out of the question (the browser is a full window on iDevices). But the browse functionality, which is basically an input of type file, doesn't work either.
To clarify, the behavior I need is selecting an image from the gallery and displaying it in a canvas.
Any ideas on how I can achieve this?
Thanks for your time.
Unfortunately, there are no satisfying answers for this.
http://learnbythedrop.com/forum/iphoneipad-safari-image-upload-resrictions
Basically, mobile safari is pretty severely sandboxed – file uploads don't work, can't grab files from photos, etc.
With iOS 5 there may be a solution for this using iCloud. Content is stored and pushed to mobile devices. Perhaps you'll be able to access the image from your photo stream?
Alternately, you could use a service like photo bucket or flickr to store your images, then use the API to access them from your page.

Issues with Filemaker IWP working with hyperlinks on images

I have a filemaker database that I need to be able to link records and all associated data (including container field data) to various points placed on a large PDF image, and then make that data appear via instant web publishing when someone clicks on the marker for that area on the PDF. For example the PDF may be an image of a car, and then I would have various close up images of issues with the car and descriptions of those images as records in the database. I would then want to drop points on the base PDF image and when you clicked on those points be able to see the close up images and other data related to those images.
I'm being told this is too much for IWP because:
I need to place the markers outside filemaker via PDF annotation
Filemaker IWP can't handle the number of markers that may be necessary (it could be up to 1,000 on an E sized image.
Does anyone have a work around or explanation why this is a problem?
If I understand correctly, you would like to setup a PDF with links that will open a browser and show data related to what was clicked. Assuming that is the case, the reason this wont work is because IWP does not provide a unique URL for a unique page. For example, here on StackOverflow you can directly link to any question based on its URL:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3207775/ -- this question
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4973921/ -- some other question
IWP uses Javascript and session variables to manipulate the output to the screen, so there is no way to link to a specific section of your IWP site, since the URL is always something like:
http://yoursite.com/fmi/iwp/cgi?-db=YOUR_DB-loadframes -- Product A
http://yoursite.com/fmi/iwp/cgi?-db=YOUR_DB-loadframes -- Product B
http://yoursite.com/fmi/iwp/cgi?-db=YOUR_DB-loadframes -- Product C
Because of the limited nature of IWP, you will not be able to workaround this issue. You'll need to build your own web-interface using the Custom Web Publishing Engine, either using the built-in PHP extensions or some other technology where you invoke the XML publishing API.
I agree with Nate
IWP is the wrong solution to this problem. You'd be better off simply hosting those images on a webserver.
Now here comes the plug, you can use SuperContainer to really simplify the management of the images from FileMaker.

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