First off, this is a great service and have to commend you guys for the great work that you are doing. I created an IOS app, and the question I have is what view controller (or other file) has the code to change the background color of the sub menus (or add an image next to each submenu). Which is the generated file that will have all the menus and submenus defined for a specific app.

This is a good question and we here it all the time. Our next release, v.15 is due out soon (for iOS, Android to follow) and it will make this much easier. In the meantime there are two files you'll want to look into. The home screen menu and any sub menus you may have created. For the home menu, check out AppViewController.com, for the sub-menus, check out SubMenuViewController.m. These are iOS classes that use a UITableViewController to render the menu's. If you want to add image next to each item, have a look around in images/icons, there are a few to choose from. If you have never done this before, you'll likely end up frustrated. iOS is complicated in the way it renders each item in the list. Again, we hear this all the time and have removed the complexity of this in v1.5.

David, I appreciate the quick response, and will try out your recommendations. Do you know when v1.5 will be released ?

Tough to say, we've been crazy hard at work on it! I'm hoping to get an alpha version in the hands of some end users in the next few days. This version is the foundation for the production release. If you want to tinker around with it, send an email to info at buzztouch.com with a subject line: Early Adopter. It won't have an online control panel until the release date and instead is configured 100% from an included text file. We are excited about the next release and would be happy to hear your comments ;-)

David, A quick question, what is the basic configuration file where all my menus and sub menus get created. Is there a help/documentation, that will help me get to that. Also how easy is it to make the header/app image small ? Where would the code for that be ?

In the current version (the one you have), the configuration data resides on our server and the phone asks for it each time it launches. This is a HUGE drawback that we originally thought was a good idea. THe next release changes this and includes the config. in the project and only asks for one from a remote server IF you decide. Today, you're going to have trouble putting your eyes on the configuration data without understanding each class, method, routine. Again, we look forward to helping clear up this confusion. In the meantime, to change the image on your app's home screen have a look at AppViewController.m. You'll see some code in there that creates an Image View with sized at 150 X 300. Like UIImageView appImageView = [[UIImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 0, 150, 300)] (or something like that). This is zero pixels left, zero pixels top, 150 pixels wide, 300 pixels tall You could change the size of that and adjust the location of the other 'parts' on the screen. Sounds like you should wait a week or so for the new release ;-)

Thanks for the workaround, will try it out. If I get it right, an app created from v1.5 will not talk to the server to read any configuration ? Are we looking at the 1.5v for the early adopters, the coming weekend ?

v1.5 'can' talk to a server (yours or the buzztouch servers) but does not have to. The configuration data is stored locally in one plain non-cryptic file. Optionally, a dataURL can be provided to check for updates and content changes. Updates and content changes can come from any URL as long as the server outputs data in an expected format. There can be zero dependence on the buzztouch back-end if that's what the app creator wants. This was a major hurdle for us to solve but we think we have it figured out well. It's mostly about the documentation - 'how can I get this thing to work with my server or without a server' is an important question and we are working hard to get the documentation written 'good enough' for the early adopters. We hate writing and LOVE programming so it's been a bit slower than we hoped. An email with a special URL to download the beta / documentation will go out as soon as we feel confident in our writing! lol.

That is amazing to remove that dependency, yours might be the first one to provide such a service. I am myself a developer and I understand your viewpoint about the documentation and appreciate it a lot. Let me know if I can help in any way, if you need an Early early adopter to provide a third person's perspective. Looking forward to v1.5.

Great offer to help - awesome. When get this first-run of documentation done, tear into it, edit it, improve it, tons of folks will benefit. This is the plan a) Send updated project source-code and documentation for iOS to those interested b) Fix fix fix, always issues at first but it's pretty solid at this point c) Port same project for Android so it's cross platform d) Turn on newer version of web-based control panel so non-techies can easily create apps using the foundation. Back to typing...screen grabbing...documenting. Thanks again for the offer, looking forward to your input.

I believe it is solid and bugs are a part of life. Looking forward to helping with whatever you need. Had sent you the email, so I should be on the list of early adopters. I will get into it as soon as I receive it, as I am waiting to start a brand new app and I rather use 1.5 for two reasons (one for the new rich custom features and second so this can help you with feedback)

I just have some ideas for apps which may or may not be commercially viable. I am o w/computers, but definitely NOT a guru. I would like to find someone locally to help me develop apps for a % of any profits. [email protected]