The Round Stable

Due to our helpful Patreon users, we have a surplus in funds for running the forums. This means we can have some features that we didn't have before, like Linode backups to prevent the forum from being wiped.

A new thing we can do is the Tapatalk extension. Tapatalk is an app that you can use on your phone to browse forums. Even though we have responsive mobile theme support now, Tapatalk on your phone would use less data and also give you things like push notifications for every shitpost in PPPP. They have a no-cost version, but it uses ads and frankly I don't want to subject people to ads. The ad-free premium version is only $5/month, which is well within our Patreon budget. However, I won't sign us up for it if people have no interest in using Tapatalk on their phones. Since people requested better mobile support in the past, we're looking at this as a method to help mobile users.

I humbly request that you air your opinion on whether or not you would use Tapatalk if it was available.

When implemented, any user would be able to use Tapatalk, and you would get ad-free mobile posting.

Personally, I wouldn't. I generally don't care to install apps unless they add some major functionality that otherwise can't feasibly be done in a browser. Tapatalk looks like it mostly exists to make the forums pretty and shiny and easily accessible for people who prefer a really polished mobile interface (like using the Awful app for browsing SA, I figure), but that's not enough to make me want to bother installing it when Safari works just fine for my needs.

I'm completely fine with browsing on my phone as is.

Is there a commitment to using it? Maybe get it for a month to try out.


Didn't vote because I feel like I'm right down the middle in an "i don't know" camp.

I wouldn't get an extra app for browsing when my phone works just fine as is. Backups would definitely be a good thing to spend money on. If you still have a bunch of money left over, you could always run raffles or contests or something similar.

Nah. In my opinion it seems to be a waste of money to put it on Tapatalk.

I absolutely hate it when I'm on mobile, search for something, find a forum, and
YOU COULD HAVE A BETTER EXPERIENCE IF YOU VIEWED THIS PAGE THROUGH TAPATALK

If that's when just trying to view one thing, I would hate that even more on a forum I actually used.

If it added speed and extra features on mobile, then maybe.
If it took three days to switch to like twitter, imgur, etc. then no way!

People had requested better mobile options in the past so I'm doing my due diligence by running the poll before taking action.

Venusy wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:12 am

I absolutely hate it when I'm on mobile, search for something, find a forum, and
YOU COULD HAVE A BETTER EXPERIENCE IF YOU VIEWED THIS PAGE THROUGH TAPATALK

If that's when just trying to view one thing, I would hate that even more on a forum I actually used.

If I were to install the extension, I would disable that message, for it annoys me too.

In that case, wouldn't use it, but no theoretical objection to other people using it providing that doesn't affect other aspects of browsing on mobile web (e.g. how much additional data would be transferred, how much additional JS would be run). TRS isn't exactly the most complex site, and I do not feel an app could handle it better than mobile web.

Maybe, but probably not.

My phone is so poor it likely wouldn't have enough room to hold a new app.

So to be clear, the $5/mo is for the forum to have the no-ads version? It's always free for the end user?

If that is the case, and you spring for the no-ads, I might at least try it out. I can't say anything more definite than that

Here's a thought: For people who really, truly need an even more light-weight version of the forum for when they're on the go, maybe add an option in the control panel to disable avatars and signatures and make all images tap-to-load when viewing on a phone (as detected by the user agent data or something). Is that a thing that PHPBB lets you do?

Vanilla phpBB already lets you disable avatars, signatures, and embedded images. However, it's done on a per-account basis, not per-device. A "per-device" function (really, just a set of CSS rules based on the horizontal width of the screen) could possibly be hacked in, but that'd require us to either find or make the functionality for users to inject their own custom CSS into their individual views of the forums.

No, boss. Sorry, boss.

It would have to be server-side to get the bandwidth benefits, since hiding images with CSS doesn't stop them from loading.

Bigdog wrote: ↑

Thu Jan 11, 2018 5:25 pm

So to be clear, the $5/mo is for the forum to have the no-ads version? It's always free for the end user?

If that is the case, and you spring for the no-ads, I might at least try it out. I can't say anything more definite than that

Yes, the $5/month that would come out of Patreon change is for everyone to have an ad-free experience in the app at no cost to the user.

The reaction is pretty negative so I'm probably not going to do it, but again, there were requests for more mobile options in the past, so I was just seeing if people still wanted it.