iphone RootViewController Login or Menu

Question

Hi All, This is kind of on the back of a previous question. Im currently throwing together a simple social networking iphone. For my question you can think of the application to be quite similar to the facebook iphone app.

It is based off the navigation template and the menu view is the top level view controller for my navigation controller. The user needs to log in to use the application.

Im just wondering whether the navigation controller should be the starting view and if the user has not logged in (when the user logs in I will store the login information so that they do not have to login next time the open the app) than it will throw the login page up modally. Or if the login page should be the startup view and on login the login control will create and go to the navigation control.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

If the user needs to log in before using the application, then showing the login screen modally is probably the best bet for the first view that gets displayed.

Apple does this with their iTunes Connect app that is available when you go to view your sales data. They show a black screen while the app is loading, modally display the login screen, then dismiss the view to show the guts of the app.

Plus in your case it would be nice to have the navigation controller ready in the background by the time the user login screen gets dismissed (i.e. you could delay it with an activity indicator while readying the view). It would give the impression of a more responsive app