Mobile app

[imtrying]

Hi, sorry for the post (not sure if this needs to go somewhere else).

Just wondering...do we have a mobile app for this website?

Thanks all.

 

[Northerner]

Hi Katie, no I'm afraid we don't. One of the things discussed at my meeting with DUK was making the forum more mobile-friendly as I'm aware it's not the most straightforward things to use on small screens so things might improve in the future.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Unfortunately the way the page is rendered doesn't make it possible to rearrange/format differently for mobile/handheld devices.

I suppose the whole site template could be re-written without the existing table-based structure but I'm not sure DUK have the resources among all their other rebranding shenanigans (they got enough flak for that already!)

 

[Northerner]

Unfortunately the way the page is rendered doesn't make it possible to rearrange/format differently for mobile/handheld devices.

I suppose the whole site template could be re-written without the existing table-based structure but I'm not sure DUK have the resources among all their other rebranding shenanigans (they got enough flak for that already!)

They were looking into something called Tapatalk which is supposed to improve access to forums, although I know nothing of these things because I don't have a smartphone or mobile device.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Heard of that, but not tried it. I think it just pulls out the forum content and presents it via the (slightly tweakable) Tapatalk interface unless you invest in a more 'bespoke' rebranding of the app.

 

[NiVZ]

Hello,

I'd be interested in this as well. It also depends how you want it to work as there are essentially two main options.

Option 1: You re-format the web pages so they scale to fit on mobile devices. This way you use the phone/tablet web browser to access the site but it delivers a version scaled to fit the smaller screen. Advantage to this is that you just have one site to maintain which will work on mobile/android/apple products

Option 2: You develop an actual 'app'. I see vBulletin themselves have developed an app for their own forum (which is the same forum software we use). Only disadvantage to this is it requires a seperate app for each OS, ie one app for Apple, one app for Android, etc

I had thought about trying to do this by 'screen scraping' but the file sizes for the pages are too big and would make it slow. The best way would be to access the back-end database directly.

Still nice to know DUK are considering this.

NiVZ

 

[NiVZ]

Did a bit more digging and came across this (looks like what vBulletin are using for their own app)

Maybe a bit expensive though:

https://www.vbulletin.com/mobile/

It's a plugin for vBulletin that allows you to compile an app for Apple and Android to let you browse your forums on the go.

NiVZ

 

[Northerner]

Did a bit more digging and came across this (looks like what vBulletin are using for their own app)

Maybe a bit expensive though:

https://www.vbulletin.com/mobile/

It's a plugin for vBulletin that allows you to compile an app for Apple and Android to let you browse your forums on the go.

NiVZ

Looks good, thanks NiVZ, I'll pass the information along. I suspect it may not happen for a while though as we'd probably need to wait for our vbulletin version to be upgraded. 🙂

 

[imtrying]

Sorry all, I 'lost' this thread and just remembered it today!

Thanks for all the replies. I just need to stop coming on here on my work laptop or I'll be sacked soon! 😱