Why?

Posted from my hands on the keyboard using Tapatalk

When we were recreating the VOGONS theme for phpBB3, I had a mobile theme on the test board, but Qbix didn't install it here. Besides the theme itself, it only required the addition of a "mobile.php" and a small edit of the "session.php" to enable auto detection.

Please, please, please don't put VOGONS on tapatalk. I fucking hate it when I'm browsing the web on my phone, and I click a random link and it wants me to install tapatalk just for some random forum I don't even frequent. I think tapatalk is a lazy way of avoiding coding an actual mobile site.

Granted, if there were an app for VOGONS, I might be tempted to use it, since I do actually frequent this forum.

Sure, please let us get tapatalk and everytime I open vogons I'll just love the popup asking me to install tapatalk or open the site in the app... Great!

Seriously, yes, the mobile test version looked useable 😉

tapatalk is a free app for quite some time, so please inform yourselfs before you start whining like little girlies 😁

No one doubts it is free. We just think it is an annoying app.
Please read what we write before bheaving like a little fan boy 😉

Imagine the rush of people complaining about some phone version of DOSBox not working on their phone from their phone.....

schlang wrote:

tapatalk is a free app for quite some time, so please inform yourselfs before you start whining like little girlies 😁

Like I said, it just annoys the hell out of me when I'm randomly googling and I come across some post on a forum I'm not even a member of, and it asks me to install tapatalk to view it. It's a lazy way out of coding an actual mobile site, and it makes it hard for people who are simply looking for information on their phones.

leileilol wrote:

Imagine the rush of people complaining about some phone version of DOSBox not working on their phone from their phone.....

The situation we have is already bad enough. 🤣 I seriously think there should be a big splashpage before entering the forums that says something along the lines of "if you're here for advice on abandonware, non-gaming applications, non-PC versions of DosBox, or running Win95 on DosBox, then GTFO!" 🤣

Dominus wrote:

Seriously, yes, the mobile test version looked useable 😉

I have been using that mobile style on SHP's forums for a while now and have only had positive reports from my mobile users.

well I like the app, and I believe I'm not the only one.
also I don't see the big issue here, omg you have to click once on a cancel button when you first enter a forum...

if there is a mobil version I would really appreciate it because I (and many others) must zoom and mess around on EVERY page to read the content properly.

please don't be offended but just because you don't need does not automatically mean it's useless for everyone 😀

schlang wrote:

well I like the app, and I believe I'm not the only one.
also I don't see the big issue here, omg you have to click once on a cancel button when you first enter a forum...

The issue is the same as it is for all those demo versions of games that bring up nag screens every five minutes: It interrupts your experience and makes you less inclined to continue using something.

Not everyone is going to like Tapatalk, regardless of how free it is, and those who don't like it are going to REALLY not like having to click a cancel button related to it every time they visit a site they love because it's constantly reminding them of software they don't care about like an advertisement. Said site would rapidly become a site they don't visit because of this.

Any time you try to "enhance" the experience of your program or service for your users, and said enhancement requires the user to agree to things they didn't have to before, or install things they don't want to use, many of them are going to turn away and never look back. Google recently did such a change by forcing everyone on YouTube to also be on Google+ in order to post comments on YouTube videos. Yes, Google+ is free, but it's a freaking headache for lots of people to use and led to several technical problems for me that no one had any answers to, forcing me to solve them myself. Heck, I'm STILL trying to wrap my head around some of what it does, and I'm only doing it for sake of the viewers of my web show who want to watch it on YouTube. Without them, that change would've driven me off of YouTube. :P

So yeah, interrupting the user's experience with your service or software is a very poor practice, and since Tapatalk does this you're not going to find any love for it from people who don't already use it.

You will only be asked the first time you enter a site - not every page you visit.

So all of you people who are afraid that their "experience" on their mobile devices will be ruined - please explain me HOW you actually use the Vogons forum on your mobile devices. Visiting a page, zoom in, zoom out, scroll down, zoom again etc. you call this "experience"??

If there is a vote, you can add me to the NO list. And I am OFTEN on this site on my mobile. Now if there was a way to auto detect resolution and scale accordingly, i'd be open to that.

The mobile style will do that.

You are right that it's not exactly a good experience on a smartphone but before integrating nagware like Tapatalk I'd rather have a working mobile style. It's a matter of principles, I've been angry at the tapatalk nagging so often that I hate it from deep down.
Everything that screems that much for attention must be very evil!

Oh and just googling tapatalk security is enough to not want it on my phone abd especially not on this site.

Also, aside from the security issue, if I understand correctly, so correct me if I'm wrong, the free tapatalk app shows ads? So an add free forum is seen through tapatalk with ads?

tapatalk is annoying, especialy with its 'Posted from ...' sigs.

I don't see the need for it. I navigate this forum just fine on a Windows Phone with a 3.8" inch screen. The forum is great as it is.

I too would prefer to see the forum include a mobile style natively rather than integrating with a third party app.