phpBB3 iPhone client

yellowpeter · Post by **yellowpeter** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 4:18 am

Hello all,

I'm new to this forum system although I have been using other products such as vBulletin for a long time. I have been playing around an idea of developing a native iPhone client to access to phpBB3 system and wondering if it is worthwhile to do so. Therefore I'm posting this in hope of getting some feedback from existing phpBB3 users. Some questions on top of my head are:

- is there other similar product/solution already out there that allows iPhone to access it?
- what potential issue do you see in allowing iPhone to access your forum system?
- does it really help you to achieve your business goals? e.g. improve your member loyalty? improve access?

If you have any other thoughts about this topic, would love to hear from you...

chAos · Post by **chAos** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:58 am

It might be easier to create a custom style for the iPhone and have it default to that if accessed from that device.

Phil · Post by **Phil** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 2:10 pm

Incidentally, proSilver works quite well in the iPhone version of Safari. I use it quite a bit.

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:55 pm

it is just about the style/layout.

you can access a phpbb board using any type of hardware/software that can access web pages.

robert

yellowpeter · Post by **yellowpeter** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 5:41 am

thanks for the insights.. i think it's all about the consistent user experience that relates to the user's device.. as an iphone user i would want specific features that can leverage the device features such as able to view user's uploaded image in the forum in full screen (and can flip thru the photos), or even push notification when someone responsed to my topic and so on, that's make it unique to the mobile nature of the devices. i just feel that providing a style that's compatible to iphone is only solving half of the problem.

Lumpy Burgertushie · Post by **Lumpy Burgertushie** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 3:32 am

yellowpeter wrote:thanks for the insights.. i think it's all about the consistent user experience that relates to the user's device.. as an iphone user i would want specific features that can leverage the device features such as able to view user's uploaded image in the forum in full screen (and can flip thru the photos), or even push notification when someone responsed to my topic and so on, that's make it unique to the mobile nature of the devices. i just feel that providing a style that's compatible to iphone is only solving half of the problem.

to get that type of thing, you would have to re-write a bunch of the code and create some new functions that are not part of phpbb at all.

not saying it couldn't be done, just that it would not be quick or simple.

robert

yellowpeter · Post by **yellowpeter** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:41 am

Sorry to revitalizing this old thread.

Believe it or not we did spend the effort (yes a lot of effort indeed) to create an iPhone client for forum system and you can take a look at this solution at http://www.tapatalk.com

We have finished the vBulletin support and phpBB3 is still in development, but we expect to start the pilot with phpbb3 forum owners (let me know if you are interested) end of this month.

You know, wow, 7 months has passed since we coined this idea and we are so excited to see this finally shows up.

I will start a thread in 3.0 Dev MOD sub-forum to provide more information about this solution for phpBB3!!

Here are some of the screenshot:

: IMG_0009.PNG (133.77 KiB) Viewed 8050 times

: IMG_0085.PNG (43.45 KiB) Viewed 8050 times

: IMG_0001.PNG (90.71 KiB) Viewed 8050 times

: IMG_0002.jpg (93.33 KiB) Viewed 8050 times

Post by **Derky** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:24 am

Nice project!

How is that iPhone client working? Are you exporting all data to some sort of XML format or did you customized viewtopic.php, viewforum.php, etc?

Derky has no experience with iPhones, but did touched one last week

and the things I've tried, worked cool

yellowpeter · Post by **yellowpeter** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:44 am

Hi Derky,

This is not a style based change - we wrote a web services API that can let iPhone and phpbb talks with all the security / session management in place. I would say this is a style on steroid

Would like to hear more feedback from phpbb3 specific fellows on what need to pay attention to.

yellowpeter · Post by **yellowpeter** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:10 pm

No love for a phpBB iPhone client?

I guess not too many board owner with iPhone?

Eelke · Post by **Eelke** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 8:16 am

I think there's loads of people here with iPhones. I have one

I think it's an interesting project, although I have my doubts whether I would actually want to enable this on my board. I don't think iPhones are particularly suited to write text, which I believe will likely mean that posts posted from such devices will tend to be the short "chatty" variety like "LOL", "Me too", "Love it", etc. I don't want to promote such posts on my board.

CMCDragonkai · Post by **CMCDragonkai** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 1:29 am

Woah, very cool. Keep up the work, it doesn't matter that not many people is interested now, this lays the ground work for forums for portable computers. Awesomeness. Would even be cooler, if you could port this to Android too.

kmklr72 · Post by **kmklr72** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:56 am

Eelke wrote:I think there's loads of people here with iPhones. I have one I think it's an interesting project, although I have my doubts whether I would actually want to enable this on my board. I don't think iPhones are particularly suited to write text, which I believe will likely mean that posts posted from such devices will tend to be the short "chatty" variety like "LOL", "Me too", "Love it", etc. I don't want to promote such posts on my board.

I have an iPod Touch and I use it quite a bit for posting on my phpBB boards as well as this one, and I haven't had a problem with writing long and drawn out posts and private messages. I used to experience some lag on bigger boards like this one, but it seems to be better with the new 3.0 firmware. I think the only people that would post chatty posts like the ones you talk about are the same people that would do so using a regular computer browser anyway. I'm not saying that it wouldn't have chatty posts come through, but I think an app like this would actually promote better posts by streamlining the entire forum browsing process

.

Eelke · Post by **Eelke** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 7:18 am

Maybe you're right. Personally, I find navigating bulletin boards too cumbersome from my iPhone. It's doable (as opposed to so many other mobile devices - don't get me wrong, I love the web experience on my iPhone), but usually I'll just wait until I have a "proper" (well, often it is my Windows Vista laptop, which degrades "proper" to a very relative term, but hey

) desktop machine at my disposal. This app will most definitely improve the navigation of the board. That's what worries me, because the actual writing will be the same and like I said, I'm not a fan of posting any amount of serious text using any mobile device (again, the iPhone is among the best, but I still prefer a full size keyboard by far).

Mind you, this is a very personal POV and I might be completely wrong. I'm just explaining why I personally have my reservations (which others could have as well, explaining, maybe, the less than overwhelming response, at first).

kmklr72 · Post by **kmklr72** » Fri Jun 19, 2009 4:06 pm

I couldn't agree with more with you on how mobile devices are, clunky, Eelke. I also prefer using a full sized keyboard do type messages out for anything, but my problem is I travel quite a bit, but it's not far or long enough to warrant taking a laptop with me. That's where my iPod comes into play. Like you said, it's all a personal decision whether or not to use an app like this, and for me it would be a great tool to have. As long as this app had a landscape typing mode, I don't see anyone posting short chatty messages unless they specifically want to. I could be dead wrong on that, but it's how I feel.