Faking an interface on a iPhone or iPad

First, I know nothing about iPhones or iPads and neither does anyone else in our group. I haven’t used an Apple computer since the mid-90s.

But the boss wants to show an interface (6 screen grabs) on an iPhone or iPad during some research in 10 days. Normally, it would be easy to fake such a thing in Flash but my understanding is that Apple doesn’t support Flash. The interface could be as simple as a slide show or just a few buttons that toggle between the 6 slides.

What app would you recommend for a simple slide show and what app would you recommend for very simple goto buttons? Cost is not an issue but obviously time is.

I believe you can show an iPhone preview in Dreamweaver these days, correct? I don’t do much web design, but I think I’ve seen this. So you could quickly create something and show that preview…

Oh crap. My html skills are rusty at best and we certainly don’t have any web expertise to get quickly. I prefer not to work on this over the holiday weekend. Sorry to look a gift-horse in the mouth, but is there something easier?

My Flash skills don’t suck only because of the need for the occasional animation.

You could save it as a movie and play it back as a .mov file. Would ahve to be rehearsed and for you to fake the interactions or just played as a timed series of slides.

What exactly do you need to pull off? If all you need to do is display still “screen grabs” you can always sync still image files over in an album and just slide from image to image with your thumb, but if you want animations and interaction that won’t work.

I think you can set slide timing in a PDF if you have the full Acrobat version. Not sure if this is supported in the iPhone playback. Alternately, you can get Keynote on the iPhone which I am pretty sure can do such a thing. That or the video playback as has been suggested could be an option.

If you know flash, I’d bet you can export as some other file type the iPhone can support.

R

So I have had the iPad for a couple of days. I have yet to find a reason to purchase one for personal use. In fact, it only contributes to my disdain for Apple.

Why does everything need to be synced? What is wrong with drag and drop? For those who don’t know, you need to sync with iTunes to edit anything on the iPad. Want to delete a picture? Do it on your computer first and then sync the new information to the iPad. Want to change the order of the pictures? One would think you could just drag a picture to a new spot. But no, you need to sync again.

I haven’t had a chance to find a photo album app and I have heard some good things about Keynote, but what I have so far is utter crap.

I started making an HTML file of the interface but I have absolutely no idea how to load it onto the iPad. You can’t make a folder. I can’t drag and drop the HTML file to the hard drive and open it through Safari.

Brilliant.

Friggin brilliant.

:unamused:

Try drop box. Or just upload HTML file to a server. Should be pretty easy.


R

Sent from my iPad.

Couldn’t agree with you more… their control freak grip on the content going from a computer to the iphone is ridiculous. After having an iPhone from the day they came out in 07’, it’s hard to even remember how easy it used to be to drag and drop content on a usb connected phone

That aside - I was thinking the same as many of the people above… somehow make a slide show to play on a ipone, then choreograph your touching the interactive buttons while the slideshow is playing. Maybe you could film yourself running through the choreographed interface on the iphone.

How to get it on the iPhone: send a pdf to yourself as an attachment… or … make it some kind of HTML slideshow and navigate to it.

I believe there is some templates in Photoshop for phone interfaces design… like the front of an iPhone with correct pixel count for the screen. You could use one of those and something like director (am I dating myself?) or flash and make an illustration of a hand touching buttons and interacting with the GUI, without ever using the real iPhone

Sure. Rub it in. :wink:

Thanks for the hints, this noob needs them.