Tapatalk

[bkwitche]

As an avid user of these forums, I am suggesting something that I think would increase their user-friendliness in a big way. I frequently browse the forums from my piphone, even when I'm in my home not 5 feet from the computer. Its simply more convenient that getting up and starting up the computer and all that when I just wanna check TIA.

What I have noticed is that with my Iphone, browsing the forums can be rather cumbersome. It takes quite some time for the pages to load, the text is small and sometime difficult to read. If I zoom in far enough to see the text, I have to contantly scroll left and right as I read each line.

When typing replies, for some reason the screen will move all over the place, my cursor will shift positions, and I will end up posting some garbled, typo-filled nonsense at the end. I end up having to edit about half of my Iphone posts for this reason.

I know for a fact at least one other user who has pm'ed me has similar problems posting with an Iphone, so I assume it is not an uncommon problem.

I don't know how the site runs on Android phone, but this solution would also address that OS as well.


http://www.tapatalk.com/

Its basically an Iphone (and Android) app that makes browsing forums very simple. It presents them in an Iphone friendly format that loads quickly and is much easier to use. The only thing that need be done is a bit of free code be installed on these boards for it to function. I would like to see this happen, as I think it would increase the average user's ability to use the forums with many of the most popular internet enabled mobile phones.

Thoughts?

I would be more than willing to do the install myself actually. It seems to be quite easy, I would simply need permission to do this.

[danman]

I have the same problem with my iphone.
I just thought I was doing something wrong when the screen jumped all over the place.

when I try to edit, I can't scroll the window within the window to get to the sentence I want to edit.

I can't say it effects my enjoyment of the site though.

[Matt]

Thanks for the suggestion bk.

Anything technical like this I have to run by Max as my knowledge is very limited but this is definitely something we will look at implementing when we can.

[Max]

Cool, thanks for the suggestion.

My only concern would be that if we made the forums more mobile friendly, this could lead to shorter, less thought out conversations and detract the quality of the discussions.

For shorter based discussions, there's always Twitter.

What does everyone think?

[Matt]

The world's going mobile, move with the times, would be my short answer.

A slightly longer one would be that utilising this can do no harm really but only make it easier for people who want to check the forums while on the go etc.

To bk, you should get a Mac mate, they dont take 10 minutes to load up

[Max]

Don't listen to him! Macs are the bain of my life! So limited in the amount of software available... no Sopcast for the dodgy streams...

Windows 7 is the future, apparently.

[Dublin_Kopite]

For shorter based discussions, there's always Twitter.

What does everyone think?

yea..

[Matt]

Don't listen to him! Macs are the bain of my life! So limited in the amount of software available... no Sopcast for the dodgy streams...

Veetle is the future mate, amazing quality on there lately - and they have been so kind to introduce it to Mac's!

[Dane]

Windows 7 is the future, apparently.

A lot better than Vista that's for sure.

[Max]

Ah really, breakthrough that's good. The flash based streams don't seem to work well do they. Haven't used Veetle yet.

Will try and get this mobile thing sorted. Maybe we should have a separate forum for mobile based discussion?

[bkwitche]

That sounds like a good idea to me Max. It will hopefully keep an invasion of one line, tweet like posts from floing in to the main forums. I know you're busy, but when do you think this might be up and running?

[Matt]

I dont think a separate forum would be busy enough. The only solution would be to create an 'intelligent' forum and a 'quick browse' forum. I dont we should change anything until the summer when we overhaul various aspects of the site.

[bkwitche]

Also a good point. It might not be worth it to go in and make small changes at this point, with the overhaul coming in the summer. You can just put it int heidea bucket and review it at the summer when you do the update if you want.

[Mako]

i use mobile versions of other forums a lot and it doesnt affect how i write my posts. I cant see a significant amount of people using a seperate forum for mobile users either which would kinda be a pointless exercise.