A part of my app makes a POST request to a web service. I have it working but now I am in the "lets see how we can break it" phase. I have discovered that if the user does not have a network connection (cell/wifi) then the POST didFailWithError and essentially just sits there with no indication of passing or failing. I know how I can handle the error (as in where to put the code) but I am wondering what would be the best thing to do? Should I set an alert such as "Please check your internet connection". Also should I make it a full popup or should I just have a label that I set text to?
This is my first time making an App that will actually be used so any other advice as far as alerting the user and best practices with that I'd love to hear.
This is mostly up to you, as either method would be fine. If the action is something the user actively interacts with (e.g., presses a button prior to it occurring), an alert would probably be best. Otherwise, if the action happens in the background or with little user interaction, I would recommend using a label or some other visual cue. Often, in apps that have a feed you'll see a UIView appear above/below the feed saying "network unavailable" or similar.
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[Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this kind of question is accepted here as it is about a piece of software deployed already. Rest assured I didn't drop any confidential information. Also do tell me if I violated any rules in SO by posting this so I can take it down immediately]
I have a working Learning Management System web application and I recently received a bug report about a button not showing. After investigating, I have proved that the user was not using the web app as intended. When taking an exam, he was opening multiple tabs to exploit the feature that informs him whether the answer was correct or not. He then will use this information to eliminate the wrong answers and submit all the right answers in another tab/window.
I'm using Rails 4.2. Is there a way to prevent multi-tab browsing? I'm thinking like if a user is signed in and he attempted to open a new tab of the webapp, he should see something like "Please use one tab" and all the features/hyperlinks/buttons are disabled.
Here's a screenshot of how I proved he was using multiple tabs. Notice that there are multiple logs of the same attempt # because the current implementation allows saving a study session and resuming later (this is the part that's exploited). The opening of multiple tabs searches for the most recent attempt session and continues from there. This is also the reason why most of the sessions don't have a duration value -- the user only finishes a study session for one tab (by clicking a button that ends the study session). The system cannot compute for the duration because the other sessions don't have an end timestamp.
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This is what a single-tab user looks like:
This is more of an application misuse issue more than a bug.
You should add protection not only from multi tab, but for multi browsers aw well, so it can't be purely FrontEnd check.
One of the solutions could be using ActionCable to check if a user has an active connection already and then act accordingly.
Another, for example, generate a GUID in JS and pass it with every answer. If its different from previous answer, it means user opened a new window.
But of course the solution would depend on your current architecture, without knowing how do you currently organise client-server communication it's hard to give exact and optimal solution.
I found an answer here. I just placed this js in the application view to prevent any extra instance of the website.
Thanks for everyone who pitched in.
Problem
I'm trying to provide my users with an alternative to purchasing my iAP by allowing them to share that they're playing the game via facebook.
However, when the composer view controller loads the content is editable by the user. Which, for profitability sake is a bad thing. They could remove the entire message and still receive the perk that they receive for sharing. Thus, ruling out that way of marketing.
I'm curious as to two solutions.
Solution One
Force Read-Only ?
Solution Two
Cancel the sharing and display an error message if the sent message is not equal to the initial text/images.
Also, if it is not possible for them to remove the image and/or url then I don't really have a problem with them adding their own text. However, if they can remove the image/url then there is an issue.
Thank you for reading.
Restricting/enforcing what to share by the user, in any way, is not allowed in the Facebook Platform Policy. See also point 2 of: https://developers.facebook.com/policy#control. You can't make the share dialog read-only and you should not check if they shared the content you have provided.
With the second solution; you might also be hitting a policy restriction. You should not incentivize people to share in order for these kind of promotions. See rule number 5: https://developers.facebook.com/policy#properuse. This might be an more difficult issue though, policy wise.
You can let people share an open graph object; either generated from your app or directly one that you (or FB) is hosting, with an open graph url. For that, see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/opengraph and https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/best-practices.
I am an Android user, and just learning ios so I am not too familiar with some of the UX details.
If an app has a form that needs a success message, or a message about a validation error, what is the conventional way of accomplishing this in ios?
Thank you!
The conventional way of presenting success is to present nothing. You might refresh data or navigate with an animation, but mostly you should just get out of the way.
The conventional way of presenting errors easily is to use a UIAlertView, offering a clear, concise message on what went wrong and how to fix it if possible.
Don't constrain yourself to stock controls that make it easy, though. There are many other, gentler ways to indicate failure than a modal popover (which is what the alert view is). Take a look at Tweetbot. They use a non-modal banner view to indicate both success and failure, such as when the network can't be reached. This is an especially good idea if the error is transient, since it doesn't require user interaction to dismiss.
Validation errors are often done with a UIAlertView.
Success confirmations could be done with a "toaster" notification (as seen in Tweetbot's iPhone app, here: http://shawnblanc.net/images/tweetbot-notifications.jpg), though this would require custom code.
UIAlertViews could also be used for a success message, but since it's highly interrupting, it's probably not ideal.
I used UIAlertView class. Here is the link to Apple's doc on this class.
So after two days of googling incessantly and apparently asking the wrong questions, I think I have figured out a way to word it so I get the response I'm looking for.
I have a Project Management application, written in MVC3. Sometimes, the users have to attach large files and upload them to the applications. (100-200 mb) is typical. The problem of course is that this is currently handled synchronously, and varying network speeds mean that the application can be completely blocked for 10 minutes to an hour if someone's on a slow connection. FTP is NOT an option here (my hands are tied by our network guys on that one).
So I am looking for a way to do the following workflow:
user clicks Upload File
user selects File to upload
user clicks "Go" or whatever button
Application says "your file is being uploaded. You will be notified when it's complete"
user continues to use the application as normal.
Some things to be aware of: I already have an internal messaging system implemented. So when I say that the app will notify the user when it's complete - all it needs to do is insert a new message into the queue. It DOES NOT need to notify the user's current screen or anything like that - so I'm not worried about a return value of any kind. I also have a background Error log implemented, so I can insert a message into the log if something goes wrong and again - inform the user via the internal messaging system.
So I am stumped on how to implement this. I thought an Async Controller was the right way to go, but if I understand all the stuff I've been seeing - it's not. Feel free to correct me. I implemented a version using Async but when addressing the one problem it had, I was informed that I was doing it wrong anyway.
So uh...help? I'm all ears.
If you can use 3rd party controls then take a look at the Telerik controls:
http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-mvc/upload.aspx
It has an Asynchronous File Upload control.
We are looking at setting up an internal web application (ASP.NET MVC) as a kiosk for the employees that don't have a dedicated computer. We currently do not have this kiosk setup. Each employee will have their own login to look at some basic payroll information and request leaves of absence. This same web application will be used by the office workers with a dedicated PC at their desk.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that no matter how many times we tell the employees, the employees will not click log off when they walk away from the kiosk. What would you do to help prevent this from happening?
lets try to fix the users instead of the code :) , i guess that your log out button is like the one here on stackoverflow. its a little text link "logout" some where in the upper right corner. thats perfect for people who use webapps day by day and are aware of the fact that they need to logout before someone comes along a does havoc to thier facebook profile, but less tech savy users wont think of that and walk away.
you need to the get the attention of your users to this logout-button and teach them that logging-out is a good thing.
try the following
give the logout button more visual weight then usally make it bigger, make it a real button instead of a textlink and even change its color to something more alerting (red, orange, ... whatever fits your ci)
if they dont loggout, use the session timeout and some javascript the refresh the page after any amount of inactivity, but also set a flag that this user has not logged out after his last visit. that way you can greet him on his next login with a nice confirmation dialog, and tell him once again why logging out is so important and where your logout-button is located.
The naive solution would be to enforce a timeout. If there's no activity from the user within a certain time limit (say, a minute or so), log them out. Of course, this won't prevent someone from walking up immediately after an employee is done and seeing how much money they make.
ATMs handle this, I think, by timing out after a minute or two, which isn't super-secure but at least offers some minimal security.
If the employees have any kind of RFID card or other security token, you could require them to put it in a reader slot, and log them out whenever the card disappears. Handling this within a web app, though, could get complicated.
The simple way is to use a little javascript.
Just have it set to something like 30 seconds of inactivity. If the user hasn't clicked on anything have the javascript send it back to a login page.
Here's a link to get you started.
Assuming you've already thought of the obvious (aggressive session timeouts, non-persistent authentication cookies, etc); how about a bit of an "out there" suggestion?
I'm not sure how do-able this would be with a web-based interface; but what about using some form of IR sensor with a usb/serial interface and an API you can tie into? This may make it possible to invoke some form of "logout" operation when someone walks away from the kiosk.
Perhaps someone has a better suggestion for external hardware, but this was the first thing that lept to my mind as a out-of-the-box approach.
I found a jQuery version that seems to work quite well. I'll start by using that and see how that goes.