the xenForo mobile app created by xenForo, when ?
- Thread starter wal94
- Start date
you do not see a difference in this?
I take a pic of a cat.
I click share from the camera view of the cat pic
i am presented with fb as an option to share to (and other sites besides mine)
fb is auto-logged in, and i mumble a few words about the cat and push a button.
interaction ensues.
i get instantly notified about friends checking out my cat in my phone tray.
OR, our world.
I take a pic of a cat.
I close the camera app.
I find chrome/etc app
i type in or bookmark select my.com
I navigate to a forum that takes cat pics
i click on post new thread
i type stuff... ugh, so annoying to type on a phone.
i click attach.
attach doesn't bring me to the right spot, so now i search endlessly for the photo i took
it uploads.
i decide if i want a thumbnail or a big image in the thread and click more buttons.
I post the thread.
interaction happens for those on the forum, viewing that forum, even if they are friends and follow me.
IF i have notifications enabled and i'm on android and chrome is open, i may get notified about responses. but they won't be in my phone tray.
it's twice as long and half as good.
What really happens in my world many times:
option 1 happens.
later that night, on a pc or laying in bed, decide to share the pic to the forum.
hot links from facebook/etc.
dead thread / little interaction.
why? Many people on the board are also facebook friends. they've already seen it. this is old news and all the catlols are dried up.
There's opensource libraries that can accelerate this as part of a larger app in the likes of react native.
github.com
Blue sky:
xf goes all api microservices
templates become a react front end
react native app hits those apis just the same as the web gui
but that's xf3 or 9 :/
and by that point, we're irrelevant in the market.
I take a pic of a cat.
I click share from the camera view of the cat pic
i am presented with fb as an option to share to (and other sites besides mine)
fb is auto-logged in, and i mumble a few words about the cat and push a button.
interaction ensues.
i get instantly notified about friends checking out my cat in my phone tray.
OR, our world.
I take a pic of a cat.
I close the camera app.
I find chrome/etc app
i type in or bookmark select my.com
I navigate to a forum that takes cat pics
i click on post new thread
i type stuff... ugh, so annoying to type on a phone.
i click attach.
attach doesn't bring me to the right spot, so now i search endlessly for the photo i took
it uploads.
i decide if i want a thumbnail or a big image in the thread and click more buttons.
I post the thread.
interaction happens for those on the forum, viewing that forum, even if they are friends and follow me.
IF i have notifications enabled and i'm on android and chrome is open, i may get notified about responses. but they won't be in my phone tray.
it's twice as long and half as good.
What really happens in my world many times:
option 1 happens.
later that night, on a pc or laying in bed, decide to share the pic to the forum.
hot links from facebook/etc.
dead thread / little interaction.
why? Many people on the board are also facebook friends. they've already seen it. this is old news and all the catlols are dried up.
There's opensource libraries that can accelerate this as part of a larger app in the likes of react native.
GitHub - alinz/react-native-share-extension: react-native as an engine to drive share extension
react-native as an engine to drive share extension - alinz/react-native-share-extension
github.com
Blue sky:
xf goes all api microservices
templates become a react front end
react native app hits those apis just the same as the web gui
but that's xf3 or 9 :/
and by that point, we're irrelevant in the market.
Max Taxable
Well-known member
No idea why you insist on typing with your phone when it's not necessary. I'm talking to mine right now and it is doing my typing.
But I'm glad to see you are indeed able to upload files to web pages. You had me scared for a bit.
But I'm glad to see you are indeed able to upload files to web pages. You had me scared for a bit.
How would the app automatically attach the cat image to the cat forum?
All too often I see the inaccurate comparison of FB/Instagram/whatever to forums.
The equivalent on a forum would be your profile page, not a forum.
DigNap15
Well-known member
Its a very interesting debate.
I am a casual dslr user and camera sales are down, and one of the reason is of course mobile phones getting better.
But aslo, the ease of connectivity from a mobile to FB or intstram.
But there again, on my forum I want people to mostly talk (type) about the topics in my forum.
As an older guy, I do know that forum is an oudated term, as is bulletin board or online community.
I am a casual dslr user and camera sales are down, and one of the reason is of course mobile phones getting better.
But aslo, the ease of connectivity from a mobile to FB or intstram.
But there again, on my forum I want people to mostly talk (type) about the topics in my forum.
As an older guy, I do know that forum is an oudated term, as is bulletin board or online community.
Joe Kuhn
Well-known member
Plus the list of steps seems long.
Actual steps on my Android phone:
Touch Attach files
Documents
Gallery
Last group of pics in gallery (familiar)
Select pic
Touch Done
Wait for upload to finish
Touch Thumbnail or full pic
Type msg or hit microphone and talk
Fix typing errors
Touch post reply
How do you like my pic from a dog walk two days ago?
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Joe Kuhn
Well-known member
Plus the audience is completely different. Here it's xf guys and gals. Fb is friends and family.
And the theme or purpose of the site is different. Here we have a topic - xf. On fb, the topic is broader - anything in your personal life.
Here's my dog.
And the theme or purpose of the site is different. Here we have a topic - xf. On fb, the topic is broader - anything in your personal life.
Here's my dog.
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Joe Kuhn
Well-known member
I'm posting pics from my personal life to make my last point above.
Boot error on friend's machine I fixed the other day w an ssd for $75. Upgrade to Win10 was free.
Ok, I'm done now.
I agree w Brogan. There are lots of diffs. Could the steps be optimized? Sure. Is it a big deal? Not for me. The hardest part for me was figuring out where to go after i hit Documents. (Not Camera, but rather Gallery which was way down at the bottom). But that's an Android issue as far as I know.
Boot error on friend's machine I fixed the other day w an ssd for $75. Upgrade to Win10 was free.
Ok, I'm done now.
I agree w Brogan. There are lots of diffs. Could the steps be optimized? Sure. Is it a big deal? Not for me. The hardest part for me was figuring out where to go after i hit Documents. (Not Camera, but rather Gallery which was way down at the bottom). But that's an Android issue as far as I know.
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Joe Kuhn
Well-known member
If my daughter, who is 25, wants to tell her friends and family about her new job, she posts pics of it on fb. If she wants to discuss problems with the seeder at the garden farm where she works, she opens a thread on the forum from the company that sells the seeder and posts pics of the issues. We've done both.
RobinHood
Well-known member
You create a custom UI that guides the user where to share it, just like with all the other apps.
You share to the Forum App through the native mobile share sheet., it then asks you which community to share it on, then which node, your profile, to the gallery, or a specific member.
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Joe Kuhn
Well-known member
You're right. When I'm looking at a pic on my phone and I hit Share, the forums I'm on don't come up...
That's what a dedicated app would bring, right? I'm for that.
It's a valid concern and one that needs to be solved for. Social is not categorized like Forums.
I don't have the answer. But there are options.
1- Perhaps the default share is actually 'share to a new thread' and it prompts you to pick a forum to put it in and title it. the con is generating that list of forums, and on some boards it may be overwhelmingly long.
2- I think people would not use this 'push' approach (camera->post) to append to existing threads. That's a pull in (already on the forum-> reply w/ attach). So i wouldn't solve for that via this method. The standard app or interface could handle that as-is with the reply box.
3 - Other options exist but require functionality changes. Eg, the share could post to the user's profile and generate a feed. Blend forums into social a bit. Perhaps feeds need to be tighter to the board. A much more intense whiteboard to solve. I know this concept has been tried and failed many times as far back as vb days. I think it warrants a broader discussion.
Then there's the broader problem of how many boards are people on? Is my phone tray going to get cluttered with 15 .com's sharing apps because i got them from the app store? They all do almost the exact same thing. Is there one app to rule them all where we can drill-down and select forum.com and then a forum topic? That doesn't sound feasible without a unified login across all xf forums running as SaaS. Sounds a bit like forumrunner... and we all know how that ended up
Thinking back to the first comment, social is not categorized, i think of older bbs's that were just 1 big nested list of topics with replies.
Can we leverage that somehow, and have 'social' moderation to categorize? have a dumping ground, have everyone moderate (eg stackoverlfow) and when 3 people pick the forum it belongs in, it moves there. Or, have a hashtag analyzer that an admin can set #cat to /forums/cats/
All ideas, all not perfect, but warrant further discussion.
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RobinHood
Well-known member
Except it's not, and usually greatly streamlined and easier to use when done right.
It provides an upload process from the media source itself on your phone OS. Whether it's from the native camera roll where you can inspect the media better before uploading than using an attachment picker, or maybe another editing app, and it would be fewer steps if done right. Plus it creates an opportunity in the upload process to offload any media manipulation of the device locally before upload, potentially greatly reducing strain on server resources and user bandwidth.
The current XF mobile submission method on mobile is currently a pretty poor experience in a mobile browser. There's no global button for adding new content or creating a new post, so if you're not on the forum index or if the forum index isn't the root of the site you have to jump through hoops to navigate to wherever you want to submit media. There's not even a button in the menu to submit content when you look.
You have to think about if you want to submit a post, or upload to the gallery and then consciously think about how the heck to find a button on the website to add that content. It's just plain harder than other platforms.
If it's a new thread you have to go to the menu, go to the forum index and use the post thread button, then scroll down and browse to find the correct node. Plus there's no search functionality which makes for a rubbish experience if there's a large number of nodes.
The whole content submission process could be better addressed in the web interface. But that fact that it is in it's current state just makes all the other native app workflows seem that much better, and the current forum experience that much more frustrating.
Then you have site admins trying to solve it themselves and it becomes more confusing if not done well.
I just went on forums.MacRumours.com and there isn't even a new post button on the forum index. It's completely been removed.
How am I supposed to add a thread? Lets check the scrollable menu. Nope, nothing there.
Lets check the hamburger menu. Nope nothing there.
Surely I don't have to scroll through the entire massive forum index filled with distracting fluff such as post counts, latest thread titles, how many minutes ago something was posted to find a node that I want to post in? Well, I could do that, but why isn't there a proper user flow for submitting content? One that's accessible from anywhere on the site, even if it's hidden in the menu.
The only alternative is to click on some weird list icon that I've never seen on a forum before to get a nice clean, uncluttered list and figure out that the plus icon within that lest mean post a new thread in that node.
As someone new to that particular forum on mobile, that's incredibly unintuitive, and completely unique to that XF2 forum. Once I understand it, it's actually quite good. It turns out that the list icon is global and is effectively the global jump menu from XF1, a node watch tool and new post button, all improved with a live search function. Very cool, great feature, now I get it, but it took me way too long to figure it out because it's not on any other XF forum, and it's got a a new and unexpected icon not usually associated with submitting or creating content.
It shouldn't be this hard to create posts and figure this out how to post content on a new XF site. Why is it that that forum admin has had to create it's own unique and initially confusing content submission flow. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be addressed in the core so I can log onto any XF forum and easily find a method of submitting all types of content from anywhere on the site without getting frustrated.
It's not just about the number of steps it takes, it's about creating an easy to use and pleasant experience to educate and guide the user about what kind of content they can submit and exposing where they can submit it and getting them to that spot, this is something that all XF sites are currently lacking mobile app or not.
SoulReplicant
Member
Well the app should read your xyz.com forum and automatically load the existent nodes which the user has permissions to post pics images (or whatever attachment). The user picks the node, put the title, some additional text if desired (the thread 1st post) and publish.
Nothing radically different from what FB, IG, etc does. And all of this could be done using the XF REST API (which btw many native apps use REST to work). You can use your already existent power for it. No one wants you to re-write XF core.
sbj
Well-known member
I literally had to explain a youngish member of ours on Facebook messenger 10 minutes ago the following thing:
Him: "For the stuff I am sharing here on this site, can I get an notification for that? I guess since the site is not an app, I won't be able to."
Me: "Hold on, what is your device?"
Him: "Apple."
Then I had to explain him that it is not possible, only on Android. FeelsBadMan.
Him: "For the stuff I am sharing here on this site, can I get an notification for that? I guess since the site is not an app, I won't be able to."
Me: "Hold on, what is your device?"
Him: "Apple."
Then I had to explain him that it is not possible, only on Android. FeelsBadMan.
sbj
Well-known member
Push is not possible for Safari as far as I know, am I wrong? I don't have Apple devices, so can't test.
Max Taxable
Well-known member
sbj
Well-known member
The guy clearly talked about an app and how to get notifications on his phone. And you thought about email notifications? It makes no sense.
Anyway, your solution is much worse than push notifications. It spams your mailbox. I rather have it as push.
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