NEWSCHOOLERS APP!!!?

[steeze4days]

Hey guys whats up,

Newschoolers is constantly open in my web browser (and probably yours too), and its one of my favourite websites for some pretty obvious reasons, i mean come on whats not to love?!

But when i go out and what not, its rather difficult and tedious to go to my browser on my phone, wait for my search to load, go onto the website, log in overtime i open it, and double tap everything i want to interact with, never mind some of the technical problems often presented when accessing newschoolers from mobile browser, so heres my idea:

I think us Newschoolers needs a downloadable app like Facebook has, or twitter.

It should be optimised for mobile phones and display threads with better ease of viewing, have a touchscreen friendly interface and this would hopefully help solve some of the problems which are often reported on site discussion about the mobile website and some of the difficultys of using it, hopefully some of the technical problems with accessing the site from mobile browser would be fixed aswell!

So, i guess what i'm trying to say is, i think that Newschoolers should try develop an app in which is easier for mobile users to access and use!

What do you think?

Also would appreciate any significant people on newschoolers who may have a influence bigger than mine on the website to back this and help get this started!

 

[psiemens]

This has probably been talked about a million times before, but whatever.

I'm sure they'd like to develop one if they could, but I highly doubt that NS has anything close to an exposable API, thus making the job a lot harder. Personally, I would love to go about coding a NS app if there was an API I could hook into, but sadly the development of an API is a large enough job in itself. I know nothing about the Newschoolers.com back-end code, but an API would probably make more sense if accompanied by a re-code of the site itself.

 

[S.J.W]

Disclaimer: This wasn't my finding.

Anyways, to get a newschoolers app, or the closest thing to it.

1. Search newschoolers on your mobile

2. Select the view you wish to be taken to every time you open up.

3. Choose save to book marks.

4. Change from bookmarks to home screen.

5. Press OK.

6. Will now have NS straight from your mobile without searching.

Hope you enjoyed this.

 

[Mr.Bishop]

This has probably been talked about a million times before, but whatever.

I'm sure they'd like to develop one if they could, but I highly doubt that NS has anything close to an exposable API, thus making the job a lot harder. Personally, I would love to go about coding a NS app if there was an API I could hook into, but sadly the development of an API is a large enough job in itself. I know nothing about the Newschoolers.com back-end code, but an API would probably make more sense if accompanied by a re-code of the site itself.

Boom.

THe one time we tried an app it was with a 3rd party developer that just did an HTML scrape of the page. Every single time we launched an update he had to put in an enormous amount of work just to make it work.

The site was never built with a public API in the back-end because frankly nobody did that shit in the early 2000s when most of the infrastructure was built.

We've had it on 'the list' for years to actually rip out the guts and re-build it with modern web infrastructure in mind, but its an enormous task that we haven't yet managed to get the time/funding to do.

The other option is to kind of re-build the site one chunk at a time, which is what we've been doing for the last few years. This works great, but has a lot of limitations compared to starting fresh, and things tend to take a lot longer than they should.

Believe me, as an avid iPhone user I understand the absolute god damn atrocity that is the mobile experience on NS. We've done our best to provide something that will hold people over until we can address properly, and doing so is very high up the priority list. Its going to be pandoras box though once we let the app floodgates open, so we need to make sure we do it right and address all the future demands of the codebase that will come with going there.

If we could raise like $200k through kickstarter we could easily re-build the site in 6-12 months with a team of fucking animals.

 

[jackdonovan]

you must be new here

 

[Mr.Bishop]

you must be new here

To be fair, its pretty ridiculous that we don't have an app. So you can only semi-fault people for bringing it up. Searchbar is useless too.

Sheesh.

 

[Holte]

Believe me, as an avid iPhone user I understand the absolute god damn atrocity that is the mobile experience on NS.

Honestly, the only thing that bothers me about the mobile site is that it takes two clicks (page loads) instead of one to change forums. And I think I tried to upload a photo from my phone once and learned that it wasn't possible. Works pretty well for me - what sort of functionality would make it better?

 

[Mr.Bishop]

Honestly, the only thing that bothers me about the mobile site is that it takes two clicks (page loads) instead of one to change forums. And I think I tried to upload a photo from my phone once and learned that it wasn't possible. Works pretty well for me - what sort of functionality would make it better?

You android or iOS?

As an iOS user I can't figure out why, but mobile sites just seem to suck way more. Page load time, browser load time - all of these things are just so much slicker when you're in an app.

We'll definitely take another pass at the mobile view - that was a huge reason we did the big forum upgrade, we needed to get a better codebase out there that will allow us to improve the mobile experience.

The photo thing is a long story, but also on 'the list'.

 

[Holte]

You android or iOS?

As an iOS user I can't figure out why, but mobile sites just seem to suck way more. Page load time, browser load time - all of these things are just so much slicker when you're in an app.

We'll definitely take another pass at the mobile view - that was a huge reason we did the big forum upgrade, we needed to get a better codebase out there that will allow us to improve the mobile experience.

The photo thing is a long story, but also on 'the list'.

I'm on iOS too. I don't use very many website apps because I feel like it's too much clutter to have an app for every site I frequent when I can get approximately the same experience through the browser. I chalked up the photo thing to Apple's highly regulated access to iPhone storage (which is one of my biggest gripes about iOS) but that just goes with the iOS territory.

 

[Mr.Bishop]

I'm on iOS too. I don't use very many website apps because I feel like it's too much clutter to have an app for every site I frequent when I can get approximately the same experience through the browser. I chalked up the photo thing to Apple's highly regulated access to iPhone storage (which is one of my biggest gripes about iOS) but that just goes with the iOS territory.

Yeah I dunno... some people are fine with mobile sites and others just can't deal. Personally I really like apps for their seeming performance increases.

It actually is possible. You can add a photo in the review section quite easily... and we can enable this in forums, we just need to make a few changes.

 

[toastyteenagers]

Your basically trying to mash perl, html, and some java into a obj-c environment, it gives me a logistical headache just thinking of it.

How do other sites do it?

 

[Mr.Bishop]

Your basically trying to mash perl, html, and some java into a obj-c environment, it gives me a logistical headache just thinking of it.

How do other sites do it?

You build a really nice REST API as the backbone of your site, then you can just build the app in apple's new language Swift or whatever its called.

The problem is there weren't smartphones or apps until 2007, when NS was already eight years old. Even when that happened it was still a few years before apps really took enormous hold of the world out there. We simply never planned on having to support a data structure like that - there wasn't much of a chance to predict that back then.

We know exactly how to do it, but it's the equivalent of needing to rip out the guts of a car and turn it into a boat. I mean sure its possible... but you might be better off just building a boat from scratch.

Throwing NS in the garbage then taking 1-2 years to completely re-build it from scratch would be a dream come true.

 

[JibbingGirl]

Boom.

THe one time we tried an app it was with a 3rd party developer that just did an HTML scrape of the page. Every single time we launched an update he had to put in an enormous amount of work just to make it work.

The site was never built with a public API in the back-end because frankly nobody did that shit in the early 2000s when most of the infrastructure was built.

We've had it on 'the list' for years to actually rip out the guts and re-build it with modern web infrastructure in mind, but its an enormous task that we haven't yet managed to get the time/funding to do.

The other option is to kind of re-build the site one chunk at a time, which is what we've been doing for the last few years. This works great, but has a lot of limitations compared to starting fresh, and things tend to take a lot longer than they should.

Believe me, as an avid iPhone user I understand the absolute god damn atrocity that is the mobile experience on NS. We've done our best to provide something that will hold people over until we can address properly, and doing so is very high up the priority list. Its going to be pandoras box though once we let the app floodgates open, so we need to make sure we do it right and address all the future demands of the codebase that will come with going there.

If we could raise like $200k through kickstarter we could easily re-build the site in 6-12 months with a team of fucking animals.

If every member on the site donated $1, it would happen...

You android or iOS?

As an iOS user I can't figure out why, but mobile sites just seem to suck way more. Page load time, browser load time - all of these things are just so much slicker when you're in an app.

We'll definitely take another pass at the mobile view - that was a huge reason we did the big forum upgrade, we needed to get a better codebase out there that will allow us to improve the mobile experience.

The photo thing is a long story, but also on 'the list'.

On android (s5) the mobile site is a dream. The screen is big enough to really see a lot and it loads pretty quick on wifi. On my old iPhone however, the site was a nightmare and I only ever used it once, and hated it so much I didn't use it again till I got my new phone. That was before the changes to the mobile site, so it was a lot worse back then.

You build a really nice REST API as the backbone of your site, then you can just build the app in apple's new language Swift or whatever its called.

The problem is there weren't smartphones or apps until 2007, when NS was already eight years old. Even when that happened it was still a few years before apps really took enormous hold of the world out there. We simply never planned on having to support a data structure like that - there wasn't much of a chance to predict that back then.

We know exactly how to do it, but it's the equivalent of needing to rip out the guts of a car and turn it into a boat. I mean sure its possible... but you might be better off just building a boat from scratch.

Throwing NS in the garbage then taking 1-2 years to completely re-build it from scratch would be a dream come true.

Lets do this! Try starting a kickstarter. No harm could come of it. How much would you need to raise as a minimum to hire someone to do the coding stuff? surely you could get like a freelance college coder or something a hell of a lot cheaper than 200,000. Even a team of people. I don't really know anything about the tech stuff though, so I can't really judge.

 

[.Hugo.]

You android or iOS?

As an iOS user I can't figure out why, but mobile sites just seem to suck way more. Page load time, browser load time - all of these things are just so much slicker when you're in an app.

Have you tried using chrome instead of safari? On android its like night and day switching between chrome and the standard internet app