[Suggestion] There's an app for that

Discussion in 'Suggestion Box Archives' started by deadmon5, Oct 8, 2015.

  1. I was at work last night and was, of course, browsing the forums and what i found out was that it is horrible to do it on a browser. maybe try an app?
  2. Suggested plenty times before. Up to the community to make an android app and an iOS app likely will never happen because they charge a lot to get an app made.
  3. well i dont know the first thing about app design. But why try crowdfunding?
  4. This has been suggested so many times, and denied many times. Its not going to happen, and it costs a lot of money to fund it. It probably won't happen.
  5. They would not crowdfund something like this. There's much better things to spend money on.

    Also - edit your posts instead of making new ones.
    ShelLuser likes this.
  6. well it wouldnt be a bad idea anyway
  7. Yes it would when you're spending obscene amounts of money just so the page can load a bit faster. The site is just fine on mobile and although an app would be nice, it's probably not even worth making in XCode (a whole new language needed to code for iOS) let alone shoveling up money for.
  8. not it wouldnt.
  9. Actually it's totally possible, but if you hire someone to do it for you, then it will be expensive. You would need to edit all the pages code to redirect to a mobile friendly version of the forums (like m.empireminecraft.com) and all people with small screens will be redirected to that website. However, since this isn't a custom coded website, and is made with server software called Xenforo (or something like that), whenever they update a page, the forum software will be overwriting the code for redirecting to a mobile website, which breaks the website for mobile users. So technically, until they redesign the whole website (that would take a lot of money for hiring) they can't get a web app.

    For an app, they would need to have app developers hired, but I don't have any experience with app development, so I won't say anything on this topic. I do however have experience with web development, so trust me on the first paragraph :)

    By the way, about the cost thing for web developers, I could probably help make a website way down in the future, when I learn more about web development, and actually have a lot of time on my hands.
    deadmon5 likes this.
  10. I don't understand what you are talking about.. You just quoted my entire post which has multiple ideas and said no. Elaborate.
  11. You can code iOS in Java, or c++ too - If you have an IDE, it becomes very easy.

    However, easy or not, if you want it to be on the marketplace for Apple or Android - it 'at minimum' still costs $50 to publish it.

    ------------------

    The easiest way would be to have in the website CSS a dynamic size change (What some of my websites and what bootstrap uses)

    Code:
    --Default CSS goes here--
    
    @media screen and (max-width: 1680px){
        --Add CSS Here --
    }
    @media screen and (max-width: 1280px){
        --Add CSS Here --
    }
    @media screen and (max-width: 736px){
        --Add CSS Here --
    }
    @media screen and (max-width: 480px){
        --Add CSS Here --
    }
    
    This way you can have certain aspects of the site hidden, added, etc ... like:
    • accordians to hide long posts on mobile
    • clickable buttons to interact with hovers on smaller screens
    • remove the 'advertisements' and affiliates on smaller screens
    • put all of the navigation in a dropdown box on one side - the profile dropdown on other site
    SoulPunisher and xHaro_Der like this.
  12. When the forums are eventually updated to a newer version of Xenforo, they will become responsive and therefore natively support pretty much all devices.
    SoulPunisher, ww2fan168 and xHaro_Der like this.
  13. First of all, according to the already suggested ideas wiki page there has already been a suggestion to set up some kind of mobile version of the website. And that suggestion got accepted as well (see site and forums section) which should eventually make it easier to navigate the site on a phone / mobile platform.

    As to the app. I'm not familiar with everything out there, but to my knowledge there are several apps which focus themselves on providing access to specific fora. I'm not sure but I can't help wonder if there shouldn't already be something out there for Xenforo. If you can get hold of such a general app (supports xenforo or maybe even other fora) then you should be able to use that to access the EMC forum.
  14. That's excactly what I was going to say.
    This newer version would be perfectly fine for mobile phones, because I've seen it.

    Making an app would probably be a problem, because it would most likely be lacking features because the app wasn't carefully planned and had no financial support at all.

    So updating Xenforo would be much more time efficient, costs (probably) no money, and won't miss any features the desktop site does have.

    Aikar is busy trying to update the forums, but because all of the custom coding this might be harder than hitting a few buttons. :)
  15. To super simplify everything:

    To build with Lego you're supposed to put different blocks together. To build a big Lego house the right way, I'd put the Lego blocks on top of the Lego board and let them snap together. This is how Xenforo addons are supposed to be done.

    The way EMC's Xenforo stuff was done years ago is like getting that Lego board and using a hammer and chisel to shape it like what you want. Sure, it sorta looks okay and kinda works, but good luck changing it.
  16. So, if I understand correctly, Aikar was supposed to make addons for Xenforo, but instead messed with the source code itself.

    So basically we need to get a new Lego board and start from scratch. That's gonna take a while! :O
    xHaro_Der likes this.
  17. Either get a new lego board or try to hammer/chisel it again. I think he'll probably get a new lego board lol.
  18. He can't just 'damage' it even more, because he HAS to get a new one (after all, we'd need an 'updated' board.)
  19. Actually wasn't me :p Was the previous owner of EMC. But too much was done to quickly 'fix' it. We have to essentially clean slate, rebuild as addons what we need, and build completely new templates and find all the broken elements, as many of EMC's custom templates were also done wrong too.

    It's going to be a nightmare.

    I did offer a reward if any designer was willing to do the work for a proper CSS sheet to 'improve' the current design to be more responsive, but never had anyone complete it.
    nltimv and SoulPunisher like this.