website

I’ve been wanting to make my website a bit more “alive” for a while, and I finally had the time to do something about it.

App’s Prices

For the longest time, I didn’t show the prices for my apps on my website (crazy, I know), simply because I didn’t feel like going into the HTML source, updating the static price, and re-uploading the page every time I had a sale.

Now, I have a PHP script that takes care of it for me. It can load prices for different localities using the App Store API, or from Paddle. I currently just get them from Apple right now, because my apps’ prices are the same on the App Stores and my website. The results are cached for 6 hours so I don’t have to query the API for every page load. For time-sensitive sales, I can easily discard the cache and have the page (and thus, prices) reload for everyone instantly.

Prices are now shown on the main website (see above), and on each app’s webpage:

“Current Version” Indicator, Release Notes

For ScreenFloat 2.0, I built an entire API and database with PHP and MySQL for the release notes I show in-app:

It allows me to get all sorts of information about any release, the obvious ones being version, release date and download file size.
This powers my in-app update mechanisms, the in-app release notes you can see above, and now the “current version” of apps on my website (see below), along with a web version of my apps’ release notes.

A click onto the version brings you to the web release notes. I tried to replicate the in-app release notes as closely as possible, with image- and video previews of features, etc. You can switch between English and German, rich- and plain text, and browse through the release history.

Highlighted Blog Posts

Though I’ve always linked to my blog from my website, I thought it would be neat to feature the newest blog post on the main page and the latest app-related post on the app’s webpage. I hope this is more enticing to click than a simple “Blog” link.

This uses the basic WordPress API. It looks for posts with specific tags or within specific categories, published within the last 2 months. If there aren’t any blog posts with that criteria, nothing is shown. I thought that better than showing old, outdated posts. I don’t want to give off “deserted” vibes.

Friends Page

I have a new Friends page where I highlight a few long-time friends of Eternal Storms Software. I still need to find a way to include that into the main website better.

Auto-Applying Discount Codes on my Web Store

Probably a no-brainer for anyone else, but I coded my web store myself, and only for Black Friday 2025 had the idea of auto-applying discount codes. That way, everyone gets the benefit of a discount when a sale’s going on, even if they don’t know about it.
The way it works is, I have a specific naming scheme for site-wide and app-specific discount codes, and the web store looks for them and applies them automatically.

Tip Jar

Recently, I’ve been implementing Tip Jars into my apps, for anyone who’d like to completely voluntary further support my work, beyond the app’s one-time purchase price (I don’t offer subscriptions).

Since I implemented it for both the App Store and via Paddle for the direct-purchase versions of my apps, I figured I’d implement a small web version of the latter, too.
I’m linking to it from my blog, but I’m still undecided about adding it to the main page. Probably going to leave it out.

Things Still In the Works

For now, there are two things I still haven’t gotten around to including.

Dynamic App Reviews

I do include reviews from the App Stores on the main and app pages, but they’re static. I’d like it to be a bit more dynamic, where I’d show random 4- and 5-star reviews. Apple offers APIs for that, so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle.

A “Sources” Page

I’d like to have a page up indicating official sources for my apps: my website, the App Store, Bundlehunt (on occasion), MacUpdate, etc.
Basically a single source of truth for figuring out if a website offering a download of or licenses for my apps is official and legit.

Now back to work. Since I’m not vibe-coding, my apps don’t develop themselves!

In an effort to bring some personality to my apps, website and blog and make them easily recognizable by “connecting” them visually I rolled out a minor re-”design” of my website and blog yesterday.

The Color Scheme

The entire color scheme is based off the Eternal Storms Software logo.
Up until now, neither the website nor this blog reflected those colors. As a matter of fact, the only place that had some of this personality was the iOS part of Transloader. In its “About” screen, you’d see this:

Screenshot of Transloader on iOS

It’s immediately recognizable – and not only by the logo.

The Website and Blog

It was about time I brought that over to the website, because it looked like this (please excuse the missing text and bezels, I took this from the Wayback Machine as I stupidly don’t keep old websites around):

Old eternalstorms.at website eternalstorms.at before the re-“design”

At the time, I had a good reason for it. I wanted the user to be able to see all my apps at once, without any distraction. But it lacks a certain “je-ne-sais-quoi”. It has no identity. You don’t know who it’s from. Heck, there’s not even a logo anywhere to be seen.

Lo and behold, the new website looks like this:

Untitled eternalstorms.at after the re-“design”

It’s probably not the best website you’ve ever seen, but it’s certainly an improvement over the old one.

The Apps

Now I can’t go in and make all my apps purple. That would look ludicrous (or would it?). But I still want to carry over some of this into my apps, and I believe the best place to do this is in the apps’ About windows. Currently, they look like this:

Briefly's old About Window Briefly’s About window before the re-design

It has all the necessary information in there, but it could be more personal, more fun, if you will. Here’s what the new one will look like:

Briefly's new about window Briefly’s About window after the re-design

It will roll out in all apps with future updates. The nice thing is that it’s very much a drop-in replacement for the standard about panel Apple’s providing in Cocoa. It takes all its information from the app’s Info.plist file and additional information (like twitter, Facebook, Acknowledgements, Credits) can be provided in a strings file which will then be used in the about panel. So I just drop it in, change some strings in the strings file and I’m done, I don’t need to touch the xib in Interface Builder. Perhaps I’ll do a blog post about it some other time.

App Store Screenshots

All this kind of raises the question – should I brand my App Store screenshots as well? I’m leaning toward “no”. Definitely no logo or slogan, though. That would just distract from the product. Perhaps I could color explanation text accordingly, or put them in colored overlays. Or create an Eternal Storms Software Desktop Background Image that will be present in all App Store screenshots, that would definitely be a more subtle way of doing it. I might try it out on an app and see how it does.

But in general, I am against branding of App Store Screenshots. They should present the app. A description of the company could always be put into the last paragraph of the App Store App description. That’s a nice place for it.

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