17
votes
An app for tildes?
There doesn't appear to be an app for tildes unless I'm not looking using the right name, how would users here feel about an app similar to what reddit has like reddit is fun or Joey? I'm mainly on my phone and while it's still easy to navigate by browser would love a similarly structured app for tildes. What do you guys think?
There will almost certainly not be an official app for Tildes, as noted in the official documentation: "The site is the main mobile interface, not an app".
Other people may develop unofficial apps, but Deimos is not planning to make an official app.
Exactly this. Why bother with an app, when this newer option exists that gives you what is essentially the same thing, but without the risks of a third party app developer adding advertisements or bastardizing the interface? Plus, if it's part of the Tildes code rather than a Tildes.net-centric app, it can be used on any/all clones of Tildes when people start making their own sites.
I think mobile users are looking for three things from an app. I'd be interested to hear what other things besides these I'm overlooking here, too.
First, they just don't want to be bothered opening a web browser and using the mobile browser interfaces when an app would be so much more efficient in terms of workflow/interaction with the site. They want a Tildes icon, not a browser bookmark.
Second, they want push notifications when someone replies to their comments or sends them messages, that sort of thing. Can this be done with a PWA, I wonder?
Third, they want a submission page and perhaps some minor interface tweaks that are aimed at the restrictive touch interfaces of mobile devices. Try typing a ~ on mobile right now - go ahead and then tell me I'm wrong. :P Submitting things and participating in forums from a mobile browser is kinda a pain in the ass, and there are certainly ways the Tildes mobile interface can improve on this experience.
That's it, right?
My understanding is that if it can be done with Chrome notifications, it can be done with PWA.
Your three points are pretty much what I would look for in an app. Some fringe things like open images in their own space, offline caching of links and comments, open external links with Chrome, and something like Sync with all of it's sliders that would be difficult to emulate in HTML, but those three you stated cover my most desired wants.
For myself as an edge case, I'd find it fun as hell if the content of ~music could come up in some kind of raddit-like playlist, so I could use Tildes for music discovery. While radd.it is long gone, the concept remains tantalizing. It seems to me that radd.it got to where reddit is trying to go now years before they did.
PWAs can send push notifications, I think.
Today I learned thanks for the answer!
Currently the closest thing to an "app" on Android is using Hermit to turn the site into a pseudo-app. Something like Reddit is Fun won't be easy to make until there's an API (issue #335).
Some glorious user previously mentioned Hermit on here and I've been using it ever since. I know some people would think it's silly not to just view tildes in browser, but I really like the experience it provides.
Ah I figured as much but thanks for the info I'll check that app for now in the meanwhile thanks!
Thank you! This is all I've ever wanted; it's how I'd rather have my apps anyway.
I wonder if it's possible to get an "app" in the store that's literally just Hermit pre-configured for Tildes. I should look into that.
Edit: it looks like probably not (without getting special help from the actual Hermit devs, anyway), but maybe I could create the
.hermitfile it describes here and try to make that more well-known: https://hermit.chimbori.com/help/apkThat's a damn good idea.
I’m currently working on that for iOS. There’s a lot of potential for UX improvements with native apps (things like offline caching, comment/post drafts, etc.) that really can’t be done easily with a web page.
Nice now if only we could get the same deal for android I'd be happy as a note 9 user
Can't you just compose drafts in a note-taking app separately? It's just markdown, you can do it anywhere.
Please Testflight me when you put it up if anyway possible! I would love to have an app for Tildes.
@Deimos doesn't want one, and he did a good enough design that, unlike the broken mess that is Reddit mobile or app, works amazingly.
It's not so much that I don't want apps. Like, if there was some magic way to have apps that worked well and would stay updated along with the site, sure, I'd love to have them. But I think people don't realize how much work (and money) it takes to have good apps.
People that maintain the solid third-party reddit apps like @talklittle (Reddit is Fun) and the Apollo developer have been doing it (more than) full-time for years. @talklittle has been working on it for almost 10 years now. Reddit itself is probably spending $5M+ per year solely working on their apps, and they're not anywhere near feature-parity with the site, and constantly have issues.
There's a ton of extra overhead maintaining apps. If you have a site as well as iOS and Android apps, you effectively have to build the front-end of every new feature three times. Every change to interface behavior has to be done three times. You have to build the backend to be able to handle both before and after every change, because the mobile apps won't all update at once, and users might delay updating and stay on the old version indefinitely. You have to go through app-store review processes every time you have an update. That's annoying, so you can't just push tiny updates constantly, you need to start bundling a bunch of changes into "releases". It adds a lot of complexity that isn't there by having a single interface you can update freely.
In my eyes, apps improve the experience by... maybe 5-10% over using a browser, but increase the work by probably 400% and add significant risks and downsides. For large companies that have hundreds of millions of venture capital they can spend paying developers that can be a reasonable trade-off, but it's not very feasible for a one-person non-profit.
Depends on the site and the app. Reddit Mobile is so craptastic and Apollo is so amazing that there's a huge delta between the two experiences.
Tildes is a lot simpler, faster, and more straightforward, so the value proposition is murkier.
To reach profitability, why wouldn't reddit choose to trim the fat (mobile apps, etc.) to reduce operating costs rather than dump even more money into salaries/technology? The hope is that somehow it pays off more than what they put in, but isn't it much more likely that a low cost-of-operation business is profitable?
The closest I get with iPhone is opening it in Safar, clicking the Share link at the bottom, and using "Add to Home Screen," which turns it into a bookmark you can just click from the home screen.
Closest thing would be this app wrapper from a while back.
https://tild.es/53g
There are also websites that will create new ones, like this one:
https://appmaker.xyz/pwa-to-apk/
Works better with the latest Chrome than the old one.