Porting Dictionary Application to iPhone.
Games and Quizes
Customer
Our client company was founded in 2003 and has offices in Manhattan, NY and San Diego, CA and has launched such best-selling games as Jail Trail, Cadena de Presos, and Armadillo Gold Rush in Latin America. Over the last few years the client's games become a profitable business with 4 titles, including 2 best-sellers, distributed in over 15 countries Our client have launched its products on all the top US wireless phone operators such as AT&T, Alltel, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, as well as in Latin America and Europe on both BREW CDMA and J2ME GSM carriers.
Business Need
The customer contacted SoloSoft to build the next version of their commercially available Spanish Anywhere mobile Spanish/English phrasebook, dictionary, and verb conjugator and to port the software to all major mobile platforms. The goal of the project is to expand the features and distribution of the current application to reach more customers and provide a better experience to new and current customers.
Solution
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To take advantage of the extensive new capabilities of the iPhone, the application was substantially rewritten for the iPhone OS, using the existing applications as a specification.
The application has a phrase book, dictionary, verb conjugator, and more. It contains over 1,800 practical phrases and expressions for everyday situations; over 10,000 handy words in the dictionary and in useful reference lists; helpful grammar lessons; and conjugate over 1000 verbs in the bilingual verb conjugator.
The elements are searchable and grouped by situation for easy reference. The user can quickly switch between Spanish to English and English to Spanish translation.
The app is stored in user's device and no data connection is required.
The entire program (vocabulary lists, dictionary, phrase book, verb conjugator, and grammar lessons) is at users' fingertips anytime. -
The Study List feature was added; it allows the user to mark words they want to study, and then create their own word list from the starred words. The "Study List" appears in the new Tools menu. The user can add words to the study list from anywhere in the application.
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The new Quiz component was added to the application; it allows the user to test their Spanish and English knowledge. There are many different types of quizzes, each testing a different part of the language. These are in Spanish and English, depending on the master language selected.
Word Scramble quiz: the user selects a category and is presented with a word in Spanish (or English) with the letters jumbled up. They have to write the correct word by rearranging the letters and entering the correct spelling.
Hangman Game. A version of the classic hangman game. The user selects a category, and the software displays a series of blanks for each letter in a hidden word. The user has to select letters to fill in the blanks. Each wrong letter adds another line to the hangman, and if too many incorrect guesses are made, the user loses.
Plural Quiz. Select the correct plural form of the word. The user is presented with a word and several pluralized versions from which the user must select the correct plural form of the word.
Article Quiz. Identify the proper article for each word. The user is presented with a word and several articles, only one of which is correct.
Spelling Quiz. The user is presented with 4 spellings of the same word. 1 word is correctly spelled, and the others are incorrectly spelled. AppAbove will provide sample PHP code to generate the misspellings.
Math Quiz. Choose the correct answer to each math problem presented in the other language. These questions will be generated randomly.Time Quiz. Identify the correct time based on the face of an analog or digital clock.
At the end of each game, the user is shown their final score, as well as a list of the words they got incorrectly. They are given the option to add the words to the Hot List, and to replay the quiz again.
Features
SoloSoft developed the following modules for the customer:
- A data access module to handle ordinary searching and data management
- A specialized word item access module to provide advanced searching and retrieval for words and phrases
- A Menu UI module to present all menus and manage the user's navigation through the application
- A List View UI module to present lists of words, phrases, rules, etc.
- A Search UI module to manage the user's interaction with search functionality
- Tools menu
- Games and Quizes component
Tools and Technologies
- iPhone SDK including Xcode, iPhone simulator and performance tool
- SQLite - database, used for application data storage
- C# - used for writing sql and script generation tools