

Show HN: Beautiful login and signup views for iOS with a few lines of code - andwang
http://blog.parse.com/2012/04/23/a-beautiful-log-in-screen-for-your-mobile-app/

======
rogerbinns
For those developers who also have to support Android, please please please
stop porting your iOS code and its login/signup code/UI. Android already has a
mechanism for dealing with accounts and they are already populated with
Facebook, Twitter, Google, Skype, LinkedIn, Dropbox etc. You can add your app
too if you want to be a provider of authentication/authorization for your
service. All you have to do is use the AccountManager API -
[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/accounts/Acco...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/accounts/AccountManager.html)

This is my number one peeve with apps ported from iOS and highly annoying. The
AccountManager system already knowns my credentials and can provide the
necessary access tokens - there is no need for your app to have yet another
crappy username and password prompt. My passwords are also excruciating to
enter on mobile devices because they are long and varied.

There seems to be some sort of fetish over repeatedly entering passwords and
usernames on iOS. Am I the only one who noticed?
[https://plus.google.com/110166527124367568225/posts/Xdnbu4RP...](https://plus.google.com/110166527124367568225/posts/Xdnbu4RPeYh)

~~~
Xuzz
One of the reasons they added even more of the Apple ID password dialogs is
because of issues like this: [http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-sued-
over-apps-luring...](http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-sued-over-apps-
luring-061807807.html) Basically, without repeated re-authorization (generally
via password), accidental or unintended purchases were causing them issues.

I'll agree it's not ideal.

~~~
rogerbinns
All they need is a little checkbox "Never ask again". The never ending stream
of password prompts I encounter also have nothing to do with paid apps - I
don't even have a card associated with my Apple id and only have free apps.

------
evanwalsh
My idea of beautiful is a bit different than this.

~~~
physcab
Officially adding "beautiful" to the words and phrases that make me shudder:

\- beautiful

\- ninja

\- rockstar

\- web 2.0

\- social-mobile-local

\- ajaxified

\- "I have an idea for an iphone app"

\- gamification

\- hyper-local

~~~
toast76
I better not tell you about my beautiful ajaxified hyper-local social-mobile
ninja game then.

------
technogarden
I've been using Parse for a month or so and I've been really impressed by how
powerful the platform is, and the rate at which they are adding features and
libraries. I also have to say they have some great customer service and take
bug reports and feature requests seriously and professionally. I have yet to
deploy with them, so I can't speak about performance or scalability, but if
anyone is interested I could document my journey. Kudos to the Parse team!

~~~
tl
I'm impressed that your account is a whole 5 minutes older than your post. I'd
be even more impressed if Parse was open source instead of yet another walled-
garden PaaS hyped by shills.

~~~
markerdmann
I've been following Parse for a while now, and I agree with technogarden.
Their platform is impressive, and they're adding useful new features at a
rapid rate.

It would definitely be cool if they open-sourced the platform, but, in the
meantime, you might be interested in this project:

<http://code.google.com/p/openmobster/wiki/learnmore>

Personally, though, I don't mind paying for a service like Parse. If someone
is willing to not only build the features I need but also to wear a pager and
get up at 3am just to keep my users happy, I'm more than happy to give them
some of my money.

~~~
plasma
Same here, happy to give money to make a pain point go away so I can focus on
the product itself.

My only wish was that I could place an easy API layer between Parse and my
app, because I would want more fine grained control over how data is mutated
(even with ACLs, someone with write permission could mutate data and corrupt
it if desired).

There's a REST API, but I don't think I would want to use that as much.

~~~
adelevie
Check out Weary (<https://github.com/mwunsch/weary/wiki>). It's a framework
for building REST clients in Ruby. Clients written with Weary are also Rack
apps which can can be mounted in a Rails app, for example. Then you can add
your own layer of authentication/whatever to the Rails app which will act as a
proxy to your Parse db.

------
DrJokepu
I think one of the hardest part of login views and other forms in iOS is
dealing with the keyboard. You don't want the keyboard to hide stuff but you
also don't want emptiness where they keyboard would be when the keyboard is
not visible. Also they size of the keyboard is not fixed. In this particular
case, the input accessory view of some keyboards, such as the Japanese
keyboard would overlap with the button. In the case of a login view, you want
to trigger a login event when the user touches the Done button as opposed to
making the UITextField resign its first responder status, which means that on
the iPhone the user won't be able to dismiss the keyboard, so all the other
login options as well as the sign up button will be hidden forever if the user
changes his mind. Ultimately, you want to have the whole thing in a
UIScrollView (or a UITableView) to avoid such problems. And leave more space
for the keyboard.

~~~
rimantas

      > Ultimately, you want to have the whole thing in a
      > UIScrollView (or a UITableView) to avoid such problems.
    

Or you can just change the class of background view to UIControl and wire it
so it calls resignFirsResponder on inputs if touched.

~~~
DrJokepu
Yes, that would work as well, but if you do that, you have to make sure that
you leave a wide enough margin (at least 44 points wide) on each side of the
controls to allow for touching the background.

------
sunnynagra
I love using Parse. We are integrating them into two apps we are currently
building, Reminders With Friends[1] and Hiiire[2]. If anyone has any questions
about my experience feel free to contact me.

[1]<http://www.slyceapps.com/reminders>

[2]<http://www.slyceapps.com/hiiire>

~~~
aculver
Tried to get in touch but the only email I could track down on the website in
your profile was your support email. :)

~~~
sunnynagra
snagra[at]slyceapps.com

------
arunoda
Welldone parse. Good job. I hope you guys are moving on to the HTML5 areana
pretty soon. I don't like the current HTML5 support you have. It allows JS to
handle your full DB. If I am wrong please correct me

------
mace
Not related. But their blog served over HTTPS throws an error:
<https://blog.parse.com/>

