tildes on mobile
hey all,
if you're like me, or like most folks nowadays, you'd rather browse the web on your phone over dragging around an entire desk, tower, and monitor everywhere (that's the other alternative right???). but!! tildes doesn't have a mobile app, and probably won't until APIs happen and some kind soul builds a third party one.
tildes, if you haven't noticed, is pretty minimal and runs like greased lightning on mobile browsers. but if you go that route you don't get full screen or home screen shortcuts or any of that stuff!
this is where i tried using Hermit to decent results. it's basically a wrapper for webpages that turns it into more of an app-like experience. if tildes ever adds RSS feeds for comment notifications, it'll support that too. unfortunately it's only on android but i'm sure iOS has something similar.
maybe one day tildes will be a PWA and we won't have to worry about any of that! but for now, I think hermit works nicely. hopefully it helps someone else too!
are you doing something else that works just as well? better? on iOS? please share!
I woud love to get started with the API/Android app creation in an open source environment.
Me too! I thought I replied to this but it has appeared further down, oh well!
I don't think tildes uses PHP, it's mostly python afaik.
Interesting! Well that's a good excuse for me to learn Python!
As soon as the API goes live, I'll be starting up on a project. It'll be open source, but probably move slowly.
Please let me know when you do (if you remember and if you're allowing other collaborators)
https://trello.com/b/PGvzamJe/squiggly-reader
Putting thoughts down here.
FRs, bugs etc will be captured here: https://github.com/dinosaurwithakatana/squiggly-reader and triaged into the board.
Squiggly reader...
Good name
This will be the roadmap: https://trello.com/b/PGvzamJe/squiggly-reader
FRs, bugs etc will be captured here: https://github.com/dinosaurwithakatana/squiggly-reader and triaged into the board.
My carpal tunnel does not agree.
oh, okay. what's it like using your desktop while waiting in line?
My internal thoughts have had to get a lot more creative.
I don't like the idea of tailoring a link aggregater for mobile; it seems unnecessary (unless you want to push ads easier, track users, etc.). You can make your own shortcuts to web-pages on most mobile devices, and as you said, Tildes already runs quite well on the mobile browsers.
I use hacker news on my phone daily and I never have any problems with usability. I think tildes should remain simple enough that we don't have to create native apps and all of the developer-hours can go into improving the overall experience.
Besides notifications, which aren't currently available anyway, I'm not sure I see the advantage of using this instead of a Home screen shortcut... Am I missing something?
mostly it was I didn't like having tildes in with all my other random chrome tabs, which is what the home screen shortcut does. i like having a discrete app
I see, makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
Home screen shortcut opens a new tab in chrome everytime. Mobile apps have logical user experience that matches the system, push notifications (via polling most likely), offline syncing, easy sharing to other apps and built in accessibility support.
What phone/OS? Just tested in multiple ways on my Pixel 2/Android P and it reopened the tab I already had open every time
Pixel 2xl
Application version Chrome 66.0.3359.82
Operating system Android 8.1.99; Build/PPP2.180412.013
I have 32 open tabs in chrome, 31 are tildes.
Did you just 1up my phone?
But yeah I see what you're saying, I was unconsciously hitting the chrome button rather than the tildes shortcut. I can see how this could get obnoxious quickly for some users
Yeah, it's super frustrating. I was at the
:Damount of tabs before clearing last, almost all were tildes.I would also love to get started on the API (in PHP mainly). I would even do it for free just to get ~ going even faster and to help a mobile app being built.
@Flashynuff Have you published the lite version for ~ on Hermit? I can't seem to find one and I dont see much point in recreating what you have already done (also I have never used Hermit)
i'm not really sure how to publish the lite version, but all you need to do to create your own right now is go to 'create your own' or whatever it's called and then put in https://tildes.net
Oh wow, I didn't notice that sneaky sidebar button at the top! Thanks Flashynuff. I totally made one and didn't see the difference, silly me!
I'm totally going to use this from now on until there is an official app.
I don't know how to publish either. It appears that upon further inspection, they are 'ready made apps' by the app developers for popular sites which allows you to search, I thought users could post theirs and you could search them.
Thanks man! This is a wonderful solution.
iOS user here. Is there anything similar to Hermit for an iPhone?
Sorta, but it's on the devs end, not the user's end, and I doubt it's as robust as Hermit. But, were they so inclined, the devs here could have Tildes do the following things when an iOS user adds Tildes to their home screen:
It's not much but it would cause Tildes to generally act more like an app than a webpage on iOS.
Which they seen to have already done. Which was quick.