General Discussion => Technology and Development => Web Programming and Design => Topic started by: Eeems on January 19, 2016, 10:07:15 pm
Title: SMF Mobile
Post by: Eeems on January 19, 2016, 10:07:15 pm
So I've been messing around with making an alternative mobile solution to tapatalk. It's completely web based and uses a bunch of web technologies that are fairly new or underused.
It's almost available for a closed alpha, but it's a long way to being ready for public use. I'm going to have to do some better penetration testing on my API server as well as some load testing on the application server before I make it open to an alpha audience.
Currently the only browser that fully supports the javascript features I'm using is Firefox Nightly (https://nightly.mozilla.org/). I'm expecting Chrome to catch up fairly quickly as the biggest stumbling block is just disabled by default in their beta builds (I haven't had any luck actually getting it enabled though).
A list of some of the technologies I'm using: Proxy (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Proxy), Object.defineProperty (https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/defineProperty), Websockets (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebSocket), Push API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API), Notifications API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Notifications_API), Service Worker API (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API), Juju (https://www.npmjs.com/package/lib-juju), and Node.js
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 19, 2016, 11:13:08 pm
I've seen you chatting with Sorunome recently and I remember you mentioning working on such a solution. This seems to have come together pretty quickly. Nice work! Hopefully it'll work on Chrome without too much fuss. That's what I use on my phone, and I'd like to test it and see how it works out. Though I normally browse the main site on my phone without issue.
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Eeems on January 19, 2016, 11:57:31 pm
I've seen you chatting with Sorunome recently and I remember you mentioning working on such a solution. This seems to have come together pretty quickly. Nice work! Hopefully it'll work on Chrome without too much fuss. That's what I use on my phone, and I'd like to test it and see how it works out. Though I normally browse the main site on my phone without issue.
Thanks! I'm hoping to have it support all the major browsers I can, but at the very least I'll be trying to get it to work in Chrome properly when it supports Proxy. Poke me some time on IRC and I can help you get setup to test it (If you are willing to test it in Firefox for now).
It's much faster then growing the site or using Tapatalk from my experience so far (although there is basically no load since I'm the only one using it). It will run into issues if you don't have enough bandwidth to maintain a websockets though since everything is handled via that. So if you are in a low network situation I'd suggest using wap mode on the main site. This app is only intended for devices that are medium to high end due to how current the technology is that I'm developing it with. This doesn't mean it won't work on an older smartphone or tablet, it just won't work as well.
I've also been working on an API for Omnimaga behind the scenes on this, I'll be publishing docs on it later so people can start working on their own ways to integrate into Omnimaga.
I'm really excited for this. Even if it doesn't really take off. its helped me round out a couple libraries that I've been working on in my spare time and that I use for most of my projects nowadays.
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: SpiroH on January 21, 2016, 10:41:16 am
So I've been messing around with making an alternative mobile solution to tapatalk. .....
This looks very promissing, indeed 8). I'm hoping you have the courage and the time to reach the beta stage testing. AND then it will be yet another project from Omnimaga ovens (and minds). I can't wait to have a go at it ;).
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Eeems on January 21, 2016, 11:09:11 am
So I've been messing around with making an alternative mobile solution to tapatalk. .....
This looks very promissing, indeed 8). I'm hoping you have the courage and the time to reach the beta stage testing. AND then it will be yet another project from Omnimaga ovens (and minds). I can't wait to have a go at it ;).
I'll add you to the list of potential testers :)
That said, I've made some progress in Chrome support. I've got it working with Chrome for desktop when its run with --js-flags="--harmony_proxies" I can't get it working on Chrome for android yet and I'm unable to get a remote debugger to open for some reason so I can't debug it quite yet.
I've been using it as my primary means for browsing the forums nowadays (still falling back to the desktop or Tapatalk to reply). When I get posting working I'll probably use it full time.
I've slowly been pecking away at performance etc, and I just recently added some gesture support. Swiping from the side now opens the menu! I've got to tweak it a little bit but it helps make the app feel a lot more native :)
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: SpiroH on January 22, 2016, 07:08:56 am
So I've been messing around with making an alternative mobile solution to tapatalk. .....
This looks very promissing, indeed 8). I'm hoping you have the courage and the time to reach the beta stage testing. AND then it will be yet another project from Omnimaga ovens (and minds). I can't wait to have a go at it ;).
I'll add you to the list of potential testers :)
Yes, please! :)
Quote
That said, I've made some progress in Chrome support. I've got it working with Chrome for desktop when its run with --js-flags="--harmony_proxies" I can't get it working on Chrome for android yet and I'm unable to get a remote debugger to open for some reason so I can't debug it quite yet.
I've been using it as my primary means for browsing the forums nowadays (still falling back to the desktop or Tapatalk to reply). When I get posting working I'll probably use it full time.
I've slowly been pecking away at performance etc, and I just recently added some gesture support. Swiping from the side now opens the menu! I've got to tweak it a little bit but it helps make the app feel a lot more native :)
Yep, I know it takes a long time to make things behave the way we would like. But then again, that's the challenge thrill, IMO. Please do keep it up.
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Digital on January 22, 2016, 11:48:13 am
Yes, that is great! Sign me up for testing :) Since I'm mainly using opera I'd like it to work with it, but I can fall back to Firefox.
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Sorunome on January 22, 2016, 01:24:25 pm
Having played around with it briefly, I must say that this is looking very promising indeed, I can't wait until it gets production-ready! :D
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Eeems on January 22, 2016, 06:53:17 pm
Getting close :) Just posted this from the app. Getting Geekboy to test it for me as well.
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: TIfanx1999 on January 22, 2016, 09:18:19 pm
Great work Eeems! Have something for your hard work: :blah: !peanuts
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Eeems on January 27, 2016, 03:31:42 pm
I've been making a bunch of stability fixes to the server side of this, as well as setting up proper ssl encryption (Yay for Letsencrypt (https://letsencrypt.org)!). I've still only handed out keys to @Geekboy1011 and @Sorunome for testing but I'm fairly close to handing out a couple more.
Any issues found by people doing alpha testing should be logged in the issue tracker (https://bitbucket.org/Eeems/smf-mobile/issues?status=new&status=open).
Here is the current list of issues that are blocking me from handing out a couple more alpha keys: https://bitbucket.org/Eeems/smf-mobile/issues?milestone=Alpha
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Sorunome on January 27, 2016, 04:01:14 pm
Posting from the thing now ^.^ Seems like the textarea is too wide causing a horizontal scrollbar.... Also the number of posts per page is different than on the forums........And page numbers starting with zero, lol :P
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: SpiroH on June 04, 2017, 09:59:44 am
I know this is a bit of a necro, but it's just a shame that such a lot of good work seems to have gone down the drain. Any news?
Title: Re: SMF Mobile
Post by: Eeems on June 04, 2017, 10:42:22 pm
I know this is a bit of a necro, but it's just a shame that such a lot of good work seems to have gone down the drain. Any news?
It's on haiatus until certain features I was relying on are either added back to Firefox for Android or a good replacement is in place. @Sorunome has also made some enhancements to Omnimaga since I started working on this to help properly size the site page when viewed on a mobile device, thus making is a lot more usable on mobile.