I bit the bullet, after developing the RidePSI app for the IPhone a couple years ago said I would never do that again. The $100 a year developer's fee, the ever demanding requirements for screenshots, disclaimers, policies etc and the small sales numbers did not make it worthwhile. But here we are again.
Decided to make the Wordrow word puzzle application available as an IPhone/IPad. One of the main reasons is really test whether the Web Application framework Reken that I used to build Wordrow functions well on an hybrid app. An hybrid app is basically a Native app hosting the WordRow web app. I use the Cordova framework to create the Hybrid Wordrow app.
I must say the Wordrow application works extremely well on the IPhone/IPad. It starts instantaneously, it is small (only 1.5mb) and the screen layouts work in Portrait and Landscape mode. Also both the touch interface is quick and responsive and it also supports IPads with a keyboard. The integration with the clipboard works. I had some trouble here in the beginning as the unicode characters I used for the bubbles showed up scrambled but setting the character encoding to UTF-8 explicitly on the HTML page solved the issue. Cordova probably looks for that.
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
The scoring bubbles showed up correctly in the application as well as pasted from the clipboard.
Fast: 12/40 5:44 New best score!🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 5
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢 5
🟢🟢🟢🟢 4
🔴🔴🔵🔵🟢 3
🟢🔴🔴 1
🔵🔵🟢🔴🔵 4
🟢🟢🟢🔴🔵🟢 5
🟢🔴🔵🟢🔴🔵 4
🔴🔵🔴🔵🟢🔴 3
🔴🔵🔴🔴🔵🔵🔴 3
🔴🔵🔵🔴🔴🔴🔴 2
🔴🔵🔴🔴 1
https://wordrow.fun
To get the application in the store it needed upto 10 screenshot images for 5 different screen formats. Fortunately I could use the IOS Simulator to run the app on the various devices to create the screenshots. I also made a video with audio for the store. The video I recorded as well on the simulator and then edited it to a short 20s promo with IMovie. I still had some upbeat music I had made earlier with Garageband to put under it. The app store did not accept video without an audio track.
Once I had the media files uploaded and the application binary that I had created with Cordova and Xcode I needed to provide a links to a marketing, support and privacy policy page. Then there were various descriptions: App name, sub title, sales pitch and long description. I had to name the app Wordrow+ as the name Wordrow was already taken. Also questions about the audience age (4+), app category needed to be provided. And then it was ready for App review. It took less than 24 hours to get a response. It was rejected. Turned out I used a copyrighted word "tetris" in the subtitle, after fixing the subtitle, resubmitted for review again and it was approved within an hour.
Now the application is available on the App store for $1.99. Proving that the Reken frameword can be used in an Hybrid IOS application.
