Forums Apps on iOS and MacOS

What do you mean by forums? I mean, social media is one big forum no?

I would like to especially use an app on my iPhone for the new MPU forum, instead of the browser. If this is possible. Thanks

This should do it! Discourse is the tech this was built on. You should be able to access it from here. I haven’t tested it yet, though.

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Thank you so much, I have just downloaded Discourse and added MPU and it seems to be working just fine, so far. Thanks

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where did you add MPU, to add? thank you

There should be a big button in the middle on the first screen that says add your first page, then type in talk.macpowerusers.com for the URL.

The post on it with more detailed instructions is over here: App for Discourse

Hope that helps!

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It seems the Discourse App is “just” a wrapper for the browser experience, or am I missing something? It does add notifications, but formatting etc. looks unchanged from e.g. Safari.

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It keeps you logged in, and as you said provides notifications. It is essentially a wrapper, albeit one that allows you to use Safari at the same time and works in the various sizes of split screen!

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Has anyone figured out a way to use tabs in the Discourse app?

Thanks. As you can see I only joined today. So far Safari works out fine for me. I’ve pinned the Talk page, and Safari gives me notifications as well. I’ll see if I get logged out at some point.

Edit: Oh, I already started mixing up the experience on the Mac (above) and on iOS…

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The Discourse app isn’t fancy, but notifications + the ability to have Safari split screen on the iPad is why I use it. Also in my time using it I haven’t been logged out!

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Does this forum support Tapatalk @RosemaryOrchard?

No, Discourse doesn’t support Tapatalk - though last I checked they make both the forum host and the end user pay to get rid of ads which I’m not sure is a business model that should be supported.

Hmm…are you sure about the host part?

I would’ve loved the Tapatalk integration since it’s a full fledged native app, instead of being a HTML wrapper, like Discourse. Otherwise, it’s an excellent forum software. Congratulations on the move!

Out of curiosity, what’s missing in the mobile version of the app through the iOS app? As a developer that builds on top of Discourse I’m always curious about this point as it comes up from time to time but I can never nail down what features are missing through the current app.

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A couple of things actually:

  1. The UI/X is one of the primary advantages. I mean, think about it? What do you think might have necessitated the Discourse app even in the current form? I could’ve just created a website shortcut on my home screen instead, right? But one of the advantages the app gives is push notifications. Also, the overall UX can be customised a lot more in a native app.

  2. Advantage of using Tapatalk is that I can combine multiple forums that I follow in one single app. Sure, Discourse does that too. But the subset of forums supporting Discourse is much smaller than those supporting Tapatalk.

Sooo… what would you change? I don’t think it makes sense to go through the massive build to create a native app unless there’s a major driver behind it. But I’m not the one calling those shots either.

That’s likely true at the moment. I know from experience that there a quite a few forums migrating from the Tapatalk structure to Discourse currently. It’s part of the reason I’ve focused my dev work on it.

At the same time, it’s encouraging to see folks like yourself asking these questions. Shows me that it matters. :wink:

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I’d never ever ask you to reinvent the wheel and develop a fresh new app for MPU. Makes no sense. I just felt that making use of the existing infrastructure set up by others and ride on them, with minimum effort, is not a bad choice. Also, at least in the case of Tapatalk, it highly increases the chances of discoverability, compared to the current scenario.

I hope you don’t feel like I’m dissing on your efforts, because that’s not my intention at all. All I’m saying is, at least from my perspective, support for Tapatalk seems like a pretty low hanging fruit, with good potential returns.

I have a few more feelings about using forums on the web on mobile devices, but they might not represent the majority of this forum’s TA.

By the way, I wanted to quote a part of your reply while responding to this message. I couldn’t. Didn’t even allow me to select any text from your reply. I’m on the Discourse app on iPhone X. Not sure if that’s because I’m on iOS Beta, or because that’s intended behaviour.

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I’m able to quote, and I’m on iPhone X too, I just select text and a grey button appears to allow me to quote.

The developers of Discourse are the one who would have to implement Tapatalk support, it’s not a trivial thing to do (not that you’re implying it), it’s been requested a few times in the official forum but that’s all I’ve seen. I personally didn’t like the app all that much as it keeps showing intrusive and often inappropriate adverts.

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Thanks. I finally managed to quote by loading the forum on Safari. It wasn’t working while I accessed the forum via the Discourse app. I’m on iPhone X, iOS 12 beta 2.