Acceptable (by ) HIG friendly approach to temporarily highlight a UILabel

Question

I'd like to draw attention temporarily (±1 sec) to a value in a UILabel when a user changes something elsewhere on the screen. I know Apple is pretty particular about what and how people add "pizazz" to their apps...and for the most part I think it's for good reasons but in my case I feel my UI would really benefit from a subtle animated effect of some kind.

So I'm asking the UI police if there is an acceptable way to bring "tasteful" attention to a UILabel?

Currently I'm animating a color change to a lighter shade and back again but it's not quite "strong" enough.

Maybe some kind of a glow effect? (prolly a huge HIG no-no if there is even framework support for it?!?)

Edit - Example:

There's a good example of what I'm thinking might work that is right in front of our eyes. When you type the the 2nd half of a paren or "]" or "}" in XCode other, corresponding half "(", "[" or "{", is briefly highlighted. How is that accomplished? Is that just a simple view behind the character that fades in and out?

Answer 1

Good idea. Well, you could use an image with alpha that fakes the glow. Just fade it in and out quickly.

My english is not so good, but are you concerned about apple rejecting your application just because of an animated lable? don't worry.

Answer 2

Animated color change is probably the best you're gonna get if there's no built in UI support for it. Apple won't reject your app for this, but it will bother some purists.

You could consider some of the more traditional messaging frameworks to draw attention to the concept you want to highlight for the user.

Answer 3

What you are describing probably won't be a problem with Apple. The main thing they seem to dislike is when you take an Apple standard usage and use it to mean something different.

So for example, if you added a symbol like the little x-circle that you find inside UITextField boxes, and used it in a UITableViewCell to mean "Search" -- Apple won't like that.