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A NeoGAF iPhone Web App

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Search isn't working for me.
When I press the search button it just shoots me to the bottom of the page.

Anyway, as I've said before.. your app is a fucking LIFESAVER.
 
Yeah, I've refreshed/force quit mobile safari a few times.
Gonna do a hard reset, tell you how that goes in a few minutes.
 
Yep, reset worked.
Awesome!

Also: some feedback.
A link from OT to Gaming/Gaming to OT would pretty nice.
Easier than going to the homepage first.
 
Marty Chinn said:
Is there any way you could add the time of the last post in a topic when listing all the topics?
Click to expand...
I've done some tinkering around with this. Adding the last updated time isn't hard but it can get a bit wordy ("Last post: Today, 12:57pm" for example) and sometimes results in making the list of threads longer to scroll through or simply muddies up the list. Maybe there is a more elegant solution. One idea I have would be to color code the thread titles by age. For example, threads updated within the last minute of loading would be black. Threads 2 minutes old would be a dark grey. Over five minutes old would be a lighter grey and so on.

An even better feature would be for the web app to keep track of which threads you clicked and when. That way, threads show up grey until they have been updated again. I have an idea how to do this with cookies but I need to look into it more to find out if it would work as well as I want. There are limits to how much data you can store in a cookie and I'm hesitate to start adding a database to this project just yet. It currently works using NO database tables what-so-ever!

deadbeef said:
This. Hell, I feel like I should give you a few bucks for this - I use it every day, multiple times per day.
Click to expand...
No worries. As long as my bandwidth never becomes an issue (it is hardly impacted at all) I don't care how may other people use this. Besides, it's fun knowing other people find this useful. :) As for making money on it, I don't think there is really a market for this. If a forum operator wanted to add something like this, all they really need to do is look into adding a mobile-friendly skin. My screen scraping method is a backwards way of doing it.

Jtwo said:
A link from OT to Gaming/Gaming to OT would pretty nice
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There's no room left to put one! I still think it's only a minor issue anyway.

TurtleSnatcher said:
This thing rocks. Works great on my Blackberry Storm
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Can you take a screenshot? I curious to see what it looks like on non-Safari mobile browsers.
 
Never said this before, but I love the app. Use it all the time. The one-hit button to jump to the bottom of a thread page is the absolute best.
 
doesn't work on the DSi browser - any chance to add that to the whitelist?

Love it on my mobile though. Such a breath of fresh air when many forum sites are 500k+ per page
 
Xeke said:
One quick suggestion when you search in landscape it switches to portrait to enter the term.
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Hopefully iPhone OS 3.0 will fix this behavior but if it doesn't, I have an alternate idea.

y2dvd said:
Is it possible to add Quick Reply?
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Not without it asking for your login information.

mrklaw said:
doesn't work on the DSi browser - any chance to add that to the whitelist?
Click to expand...
Try it now. In fact, everyone should test it. I swapped out the function to detect mobile browsers with a newer one that hopefully works better but I won't know for sure until you guys test it.
 
ckohler said:
I've done some tinkering around with this. Adding the last updated time isn't hard but it can get a bit wordy ("Last post: Today, 12:57pm" for example) and sometimes results in making the list of threads longer to scroll through or simply muddies up the list. Maybe there is a more elegant solution. One idea I have would be to color code the thread titles by age. For example, threads updated within the last minute of loading would be black. Threads 2 minutes old would be a dark grey. Over five minutes old would be a lighter grey and so on.

An even better feature would be for the web app to keep track of which threads you clicked and when. That way, threads show up grey until they have been updated again. I have an idea how to do this with cookies but I need to look into it more to find out if it would work as well as I want. There are limits to how much data you can store in a cookie and I'm hesitate to start adding a database to this project just yet. It currently works using NO database tables what-so-ever!
Click to expand...

Well my situation would be something like I last looked at the forum last night, and then the next day I'm stuck waiting for some appointment so I'll browse GAF on my iPhone and want to browse as far back as about where I left off. So the suggestion of color coding withing a few minutes or using cookies wouldn't work in that situation. You've got a good point on the limited amount of text area though.

Might I suggest that maybe you don't need "Last Post" as that will be implied and it would look cluttered anyway. So all you need is to indicate how many days ago it was and the time. How about we use your idea of color coding and just simply display the time with a color coded text. So Today would be Black, then, then yesterday would be Grey, or something to that effect. That way you keep the text limited and still convey the same amount of info.

Glad you've been thinking about it though and the work you've done is beyond amazing so hopefully someone can suggest something that would work out. I'll try to brainstorm of a few ideas too. Thanks again for listening.
 
ckohler said:
Can you take a screenshot? I curious to see what it looks like on non-Safari mobile browsers.
Click to expand...
Here's how it looks like in Opera Mini on a S30 Instinct:

72dczs.jpg
9ib88h.jpg


241wow9.jpg
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On the thread listing screens: Is showing the total replies helpful to anyone? I'm thinking of removing either the total replies or total pages and putting something like "Less than a minute ago" or "5 Hours 13 minutes ago" to show when it was last updated. Thoughts?
 
ckohler said:
On the thread listing screens: Is showing the total replies helpful to anyone? I'm thinking of removing either the total replies or total pages and putting something like "Less than a minute ago" or "5 Hours 13 minutes ago" to show when it was last updated. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Hmm, I would think total number of replies is more useful than total pages since it changes more freqently?

Do you think it's better to have how long ago which is longer compared to just the time?
 
ckohler said:
On the thread listing screens: Is showing the total replies helpful to anyone? I'm thinking of removing either the total replies or total pages and putting something like "Less than a minute ago" or "5 Hours 13 minutes ago" to show when it was last updated. Thoughts?
Click to expand...
I think a "last updated" time is more useful than showing the amount of replies. It's been missing that.
 
Any thought of packaging this in some way as an app? I'd buy it in an affordably-priced second!
 
I don't think the number of posts really matters to anybody. Or the number of pages. I'd just like last post, and the user that made it.
 
ckohler said:
On the thread listing screens: Is showing the total replies helpful to anyone? I'm thinking of removing either the total replies or total pages and putting something like "Less than a minute ago" or "5 Hours 13 minutes ago" to show when it was last updated. Thoughts?
Click to expand...


Well, I guess I'll be the lone voice sticking up for number of replies. I like seeing how big a thread is before entering.

but, I suppose showing either pages or total replies would be good enough for me. no need for both if you can add the "last updated" info.

but I do request that you keep at least one bit of info concerning the thread size.
 
Update:

Version 1.7 is now live. I had an epiphany about how to show how recently threads have been updated as well as who did it. Take a look.

NEW FEATURES:
  • Added the name of last user to post in a thread to View Forum screen
  • The threads on the View Forum screen are now separated by the duration of their last update. I tried to use good judgement on how often these separators appear versus how recent a thread is. Once the time goes beyond a few hours, the durations get longer.

OTHER CHANGES:
  • Removed number of replies to each thread. I agreed with those here that it wasn't really a useful number, especially when you already know the number of pages which I find more useful to know how popular a thread is. Removing it saves space for the name of the last user to post, instead which is also more useful to know.
 
I'm not sure I'm so keen with how the time is dealt. I think I would like something more precise. I'm not sure about anyone else but say I stop reading GAF at midnight and then the next morning at about 9, I'm out browsing it on my phone, I sorta know where I stopped by checking the last post time. This makes it great if you were reading fairly recently but not so great as time gets out further, especially if you wer following a thread rom the previous night. I think knowing the time is probably more important than knowing who posted last, but that's just my take on the whole thing.
 
Marty Chinn said:
I'm not sure I'm so keen with how the time is dealt. I think I would like something more precise. I'm not sure about anyone else but say I stop reading GAF at midnight and then the next morning at about 9, I'm out browsing it on my phone, I sorta know where I stopped by checking the last post time. This makes it great if you were reading fairly recently but not so great as time gets out further, especially if you wer following a thread rom the previous night. I think knowing the time is probably more important than knowing who posted last, but that's just my take on the whole thing.
Click to expand...
I don't agree. This doesn't really fit with how I imagine most people use this, myself included. I always start from the first page of threads and work my way backwards until I've reached a point where no more threads have been updated since I last read the forum.

In fact, your example about catching up with a previous day's thread by finding the date from yesterday doesn't even make sense when you consider there is no guarantee it'll have that date since the time you checked it. The thread could even be on the first page now due to a recent reply. Since we know threads can always move forward in time, not backwards, it makes far more sense to always start reading a forum starting from the most recently updated threads.

And even if the thread you're looking for hasn't been updated in over 24 hours, it's no big deal to tap a few pages back until you see the header that says "more than 24 hours ago" to find it.
 
ckohler said:
I don't agree. This doesn't really fit with how I imagine most people use this, myself included. I always start from the first page of threads and work my way backwards until I've reached a point where no more threads have been updated since I last read the forum.

In fact, your example about catching up with a previous day's thread by finding the date from yesterday doesn't even make sense when you consider there is no guarantee it'll have that date since the time you checked it. The thread could even be on the first page now due to a recent reply. Since we know threads can always move forward in time, not backwards, it makes far more sense to always start reading a forum starting from the most recently updated threads.

And even if the thread you're looking for hasn't been updated in over 24 hours, it's no big deal to tap a few pages back until you see the header that says "more than 24 hours ago" to find it.
Click to expand...

No, I think you're misunderstanding me a bit.

I always start from the first page of the threads and work my way backward too. The problem is when you work your way backwards, by the time you get to say like page 3 or 4 you start looking at the time to about the last time you were browsing. Now with your update, the further back in time you go, the larger the intervals to the point where you have six hour gaps between 6 hours ago and 12 hours ago and you now have this huge inprecision to know where you should stop. Where as having the actual time would tell you about where you left off.

In the instance of me knowing if an older thread got updated, it will be more or less, did I see the thread on my way of making it back to about the time that I last was browsing the thread. Using my example of midnight, if I browse back to say 12:15 and see the thread I was following was updated then, then I know it got some new posts but it's hard to see that it's 12:15 vs 12:00 with the way you update the time.

It's the large inprecision that is the problem when you go further back in time. So while your update is great for short intervals, it's not so great for longer intervals. This is where I think having the exact time on the last post is much more useful than who last posted. Not to mention, I tend to remember what time I last read the forum and not how many hours ago I did. Sure I could calculate but it's easier to look at the time for me.
 
This app just keeps getting better and better while maintaining its simplicity which makes it a pleasure to browse with. Amazing work Mr. ckohler!
 
The new time stuff and last poster is really nice. I personally prefer seeing the number of replies though rather than pages. The page number doesn't change nearly as much as replies.
 
LCfiner said:
Well, I guess I'll be the lone voice sticking up for number of replies. I like seeing how big a thread is before entering.
Click to expand...
You're not the only one... not a huge blow for me though. NeoGaf web app is still awesome.
 
edgefusion said:
I love it, just like everyone else. :D

Please add me to the list of people who want an app-store version.
Click to expand...

I don't see what an Appstore version achieves apart from allowing us to pay him for it (but means he has to sign up as a developer and so on).

It's a really awesome app as it is, but I dislike the new separators denoting time of update. It's unnecessary.
 
mrkgoo said:
I don't see what an Appstore version achieves apart from allowing us to pay him for it (but means he has to sign up as a developer and so on).

It's a really awesome app as it is, but I dislike the new separators denoting time of update. It's unnecessary.
Click to expand...

I would imagine an app store version would allow us to reply since we could actually login.
 
drknite said:
You're not the only one... not a huge blow for me though. NeoGaf web app is still awesome.
Click to expand...

Maybe there can be configurable settings? It's clear people want different info. You want number of posts, I want the time of last post, ckohler wants a bar that divides up the posts for time and the person last posted. Couldn't this be configurable a bit in the settings?
 
I don't like the "last update x minutes ago" and the "recent last post by x." The old way of putting page and reply number was better.

Also, where did the "last page" button go? I liked it =(

Other than that, fucking it's fucking awesome. I use it daily.
 
reggieandTFE said:
Doesn't the " button just open up another browser page where you can reply? That's what I do.
Click to expand...

Ya, but that's always been sort of a clunky way of doing it. Sure it's functional, but it would be nicer if it was all within the same interface and stuff, so I can see the want for it to be an actual app.
 
Still hoping ckohler will address the fact that the settings don't work for people not on iPhones... a non-sliding option would be really, really appreciated!
 
salva said:
Also, where did the "last page" button go? I liked it =(
Click to expand...

It still there. It only shows up if the thread more than one page (duh).

Meier said:
Still hoping ckohler will address the fact that the settings don't work for people not on iPhones... a non-sliding option would be really, really appreciated!
Click to expand...

The sliders are fake. You don't actually slide them. You just tap them like an icon to change them. Try it and let me know. If they don't work, then it's probably some issue with Javascript not working for you for some reason.

New updates on next page...
 
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