Wildcat Media
Well-known member
The thing about mobile apps is that people really want them. They may just download apps but not use them EVER; but they keep asking for it. The only thing that's missing from the responsive design is that it doesn't push notifications - which our members want! If there's an alert - people want the notification on their mobile.
The default theme isn't really as mobile friendly as I'd like, but I no longer code for a living and don't have the patience with CSS anymore to even bother attempting to do what I want. But a more mobile friendly theme at smaller screen widths would be a big step. (Essentially, just enlarging tappable links as "buttons," and tapping an entire "cell" in the thread list to load the thread...that sort of thing, making the tappable targets larger.) Adding push (even if it were pushed from a process running on our own server) would be the icing on the cake. As for installing an "app," it would not be hard to create something they could download that puts our icon on their home screen and runs Chrome as an "application" (no browser "frame", if you will). I do that now, manually. Works nicely.
Tapatalk became popular for a reason and it's not because of their support for a broad array of features for each platform that's supported. It's a very basic, simple, fast and easy to use app with push support. Enough to generate between 5-10 million installs via Google Play alone.
And admins are dropping Tapatalk as well, due to their ongoing distrust of the company, the poor support, broken features, and continual security and privacy issues they have. It is falling out of favor. I dumped it three years ago. Members complained briefly but haven't asked for it since. Another few years and they'll be out of the game.
I am going to read through more of this thread when I have time, after the holidays. Anything being done to improve the mobile experience would be greatly appreciated. I am making my list of suggestions already, in fact. Very excited to hear about the progress thus far.