If there are any iPhone App developers who are curious as to how to solve the unresponsive info button problem, since I spent one of my two Apple Developer Technical Support issues on it I thought I’d share to make it easier for others.

There were essentially three issues:

1. Overlapping views that aren’t in the same hierarchy can lead to glitchy buttons. The fact that the info (and with 1.2 time set) buttons were in the root hierarchy (as the default project that XCode sets up for you does) while the rest of the chess clock views were in the main hierarchy made their overlapping problematic. What’s worse is that the problem will tend to show up on the actual device but not on the simulator.
2. The standard size for the info button is 18x19. That’s not a very big hit area. However, Interface Builder doesn’t let you change it for the standard info button. Since I wanted to put my Info Button under a view I was creating programmatically anyway, the Interface Builder limitation didn’t affect me, but be aware that you’ll have to programmatically set the size of the button to get a better hit area.
3. Less transparency offers a bigger hit area. Buttons don’t click over completely transparent areas of the button’s image. My clock set button had a very large amount of transparency, and even the standard info button has a lot. I changed the graphics to be much more opaque. In order to do this for the info button I had to change its type to a custom button and create an info button-like graphic.

I hope this helps someone else having similar issues. I got a lot of bug reports about this, and someone mentioned that this isn’t the first app they’ve had with the problem.

I submitted version 1.3 to the App Store last night with the following changes:

• Time and Settings buttons are easier to press
• iPhone does not go to sleep while Chess Clock is running
• Digital clock counts down past zero

If you assume the standard week to get things posted, it should appear for download around 11-Sept.

I tried to include many localizations in this release. I used a combination of google’s translation, the various language wikipedias, and internet searches to come up with the localizations, since I don’t speak these languages and ChessClock isn’t making enough money to justify a translation service.

If you want to see the setting screen translated to another language that you know, let me know. Also, if you want to translate the App Store text into another language it would be much appreciated and I’ll credit you at the bottom of the description.

Changes in version 1.1 include:
• Optional sound effects
• Smoother graphics on the analog hands
• Bigger difference between active and inactive clocks on analog clock
• Presets for 5m/30m/1h/2h on setting screen
• Don’t reset current time on app quit
• Language localization
• Fix bug in Fischer time to add time at end of turn

If you have any other suggestions or comments post them here.