Article Preview
Buy Now
| Print: | |
| PDF: |
Feature
Trial Versions
Make your time-limited trial difficult to break
Issue: 4.6 (July/August 2006)
Author: Christian Schmitz, cSchmitz-at-rbdeveloper.com
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 7,543
Starting Page Number: 31
RBD Number: 4611
Resource File(s): None
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Excerpt of article text...
This article is about some ideas on how to make a time-limited trial of an application. There are a few limits we have to keep an eye on and a few strategies on how to limit the user from resetting it too easily.
Where to Save Data
The first thing to do is to think about where to save the preference data. The preference data includes all the user settings and the information about your time limit. In a limited user account or with the user account on a network server you have only two real places for saving your preferences: the Preferences or Application Support folder. All other folders are likely to be read-only to the user. And no, you do not want to ask the user for an Administration Password to save your preferences in some other place!
There is always the risk that the user deletes your preference file to reset the time period. However, the user will not like to delete the file if you have some more data stored there and the configuration of the software takes some time. For example, a mail client could store the mail accounts with the time limit counter data so a deletion of the preference file requires the user to set up all the email accounts again.
...End of Excerpt. Please purchase the magazine to read the full article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
|
