Boards on Taptalk ?

Deep Thought

Hi

Was wondering if you guys considering adding the Boards.ie Forum to Tapatalk?

Cheers

DT

ToadVine

Already been asked a few times dude. Wont be happening anytime soon I'd say.

Boards.ie: Danny

Never happening, never mind not soon

We have http://touch.boards.ie for Touch phones, and we're working on it constantly (e.g. Polls were added today - you can view & vote on polls, soon you will be able to make them).

minidazzler

Also, if I remember correctly, they are working on their own app for boards.

Dades

minidazzler wrote: »

Also, if I remember correctly, they are working on their own app for boards.

Though I think they're having trouble finding people to test it.

PogMoThoin

Why would you need an app, just browse the main site. Many of the apps I see in the market are just site specific browsers, a bookmark would do the same

Boards.ie: Danny

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Why would you need an app, just browse the main site. Many of the apps I see in the market are just site specific browsers, a bookmark would do the same

Our app won't be a site-specific browser, it will be freaking awesome though

PogMoThoin

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

Our app won't be a site-specific browser, it will be freaking awesome though

That's all the Journal.ie one is, hope it's nothing like that because that fails. It's easier navigate the web page.

For a good app it needs to present the content differently to the web page. It also needs side swyping action (yes, it's easier to swype sideways on a phone with your thumb than to scroll down). Take a look at the BBC app, you scroll downwards through categories and sideways through stories.

seamus

PogMoThoin wrote: »

For a good app it needs to present the content differently to the web page. It also needs side swyping action (yes, it's easier to swype sideways on a phone with your thumb than to scroll down). Take a look at the BBC app, you scroll downwards through categories and sideways through stories.

I haven't used the BBC app, but I imagine to make side scrolling work smoothly, they preload the news content for each item. So when you side-swipe, there it is in all its glory.

That's easy for news sites, not so easy for a forum which has a lot more content. Not impossible either - if you're displaying ten threads on the page, then you preload for those ten threads. But it could make the "app" very slow when not on WiFi.

Without the preload, you side-swipe and then sit looking at a blank screen while the thread loads. And then people think your app is broken.

Boards.ie: Neil

PogMoThoin wrote: »

That's all the Journal.ie one is, hope it's nothing like that because that fails. It's easier navigate the web page.

For a good app it needs to present the content differently to the web page. It also needs side swyping action (yes, it's easier to swype sideways on a phone with your thumb than to scroll down). Take a look at the BBC app, you scroll downwards through categories and sideways through stories.

boards.ie is not thejournal.ie i think we're safe to assume we have a little bit more content than the journal (no offence to those guys they do an awesome job and are doing great in their infancy). our site structure is also just a little more than news articles.

Don't worry about the boards iOS it will be a FULL app experience and not the excellent touch site or a hunk of crap like tapatalk is (we are bigger than that).

Dades

seamus wrote: »

I haven't used the BBC app, but I imagine to make side scrolling work smoothly, they preload the news content for each item. So when you side-swipe, there it is in all its glory.

BBC app after a sideswipe...

seamus

There's definitely preload in there - the titles of articles. Doable on boards, you could preload the top 10/20 thread titles in each forum, showing ten forums per page.

I think the problem there is that the forum list on touch.boards shows all forums in one long list. Preloading the top ten threads for all of those forums isn't feasible. So you'd have to paginate the forum listing to make preloading feasible.

Maybe having thread titles preloading would be preferable to having a full forum listing, it would be worth sucking it to see.

BBC obviously don't preload the images as that would be too bandwidth-heavy and you don't actually need the images.

Dades

seamus wrote: »

BBC obviously don't preload the images as that would be too bandwidth-heavy and you don't actually need the images.

Then how do you choose what's interesting to read... :pac:

TouchingVirus

seamus wrote: »

There's definitely preload in there - the titles of articles. Doable on boards, you could preload the top 10/20 thread titles in each forum, showing ten forums per page.

I think the problem there is that the forum list on touch.boards shows all forums in one long list. Preloading the top ten threads for all of those forums isn't feasible. So you'd have to paginate the forum listing to make preloading feasible.

Maybe having thread titles preloading would be preferable to having a full forum listing, it would be worth sucking it to see.

BBC obviously don't preload the images as that would be too bandwidth-heavy and you don't actually need the images.

Wait for the beta test and see how the folks over at HQ decide to handle navigation on the IOS app, no point in a beta if they don't take feedback

PogMoThoin

Boards.ie: Neil wrote: »

boards.ie is not thejournal.ie i think we're safe to assume we have a little bit more content than the journal (no offence to those guys they do an awesome job and are doing great in their infancy). our site structure is also just a little more than news articles.

Don't worry about the boards iOS it will be a FULL app experience and not the excellent touch site or a hunk of crap like tapatalk is (we are bigger than that).

Yes, I understand side swype may not work on boards because of the way the content is, my point is I'm just hoping you guys think outside the box for it and come up with something decent. Maybe incorportate side swype between followed forums/threads. It needs to be easier read than the main site

I've never had that issue with the BBC app, on Android it displays the old articles with images until they get replaced after preload. Works pretty quick too, even on mobile. I'd say that is Dades first time opening the app, is it?

Boards.ie: Neil

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Yes, I understand side swype may not work on boards because of the way the content is, my point is I'm just hoping you guys think outside the box for it and come up with something decent. Maybe incorportate side swype between followed forums/threads. It needs to be easier read than the main site

I've never had that issue with the BBC app, on Android it displays the old articles with images until they get replaced after preload. Works pretty quick too, even on mobile. I'd say that is Dades first time opening the app, is it?

Sorry if it seemed I was dismissing the swipe guesture, didn't intend to. It certain cases it's better.

In fact I'm going to shut my mouth about gestures as we have a mobile team that knows a lot more about design and user experience than I do, I just know how to say "that looks pretty whilst wiping drool away".

PogMoThoin

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Wait for the beta test and see how the folks over at HQ decide to handle navigation on the IOS app, no point in a beta if they don't take feedback

I'll be disgusted if there isn't an Android one released at the same time

Willing to beta (even alpha) test

Dades

PogMoThoin wrote: »

I'd say that is Dades first time opening the app, is it?

Nope. Opened the app - let the first story set load... when all done swiped to the right.

As seamus says though - it's the images that need loading.

IITYWYBMAD

seamus wrote: »

There's definitely preload in there - the titles of articles. Doable on boards, you could preload the top 10/20 thread titles in each forum, showing ten forums per page.

I think the problem there is that the forum list on touch.boards shows all forums in one long list. Preloading the top ten threads for all of those forums isn't feasible. So you'd have to paginate the forum listing to make preloading feasible.

Maybe having thread titles preloading would be preferable to having a full forum listing, it would be worth sucking it to see.

BBC obviously don't preload the images as that would be too bandwidth-heavy and you don't actually need the images.

The BBC App uses HTML5 (it's not native), which has in-built caching. It may also use sql lite.

seamus

IITYWYBMAD wrote: »

The BBC App uses HTML5 (it's not native), which has in-built caching.

Caching though is to do with reload rather than preload. The native offline caching that's implemented with HTML 5 is designed to allow someone to browse/use a page after they've loaded it and when they're offline.

HTML 5 does indeed provide an easy way to preload data (using the "prefetch" attribute on anchors), however consideration still needs to be given as to what is appropriate to prefetch. If you have a listing of 1,000 forums, then adding the "prefetch" attribute to all of those links will either not work or cause a lot of pain.

I don't know the ins and outs of HTML5 yet, it would appear from Dades's images that the prefetch only loads text but not images, but they may also have implemented their own prefetch routine.

IITYWYBMAD

In the strictest sense of the definition of caching, you are of course correct. You can, however, pre-populate an Appcache for multiple UI's in HTML5, even for a first time use. This is what the BBC App does, I don't know the absolute specifics of what they pre-populate, but I know it happens for both offline and online use.

As an aside, it was an Irish company who were syndicated to produce the BBC App.

Dades

IITYWYBMAD wrote: »

As an aside, it was an Irish company who were syndicated to produce the BBC App.

It's one of my favourite apps, too.

Though if there was a yardstick for an app to allow users to drill down through a huge amount of information - it's the IMDB app. In a word, it's perfect.

PogMoThoin

Donedeal have done a great job on theirs, much easier navigate than the website, although that's a mess