Making the Best Sup Forums Mobile App

Elevator pitch: We're making the best Sup Forums mobile app.

Hey guys! I quit my development job in Seattle to take up an offer in LA. I have a bit over a full month of not being employed and decided to make one last mobile application.
(Previous jobs mostly included working on iOS apps -- I'm moving into distributed systems). I've convinced an ex-coworker to tag along. He specializes in Android mobile development.

I myself have ~5 years of development experience in Obj-C with the last two dabbling in Java, C/C++, C#, and JavaScript. He has 5+ years of Java experience, both in mobile apps
web servers (Spring).

We've decided to make the best Sup Forums mobile app. We're going to fully open source it and put it up for free on the App/Play Store. Anyone will be able to follow along in our
development. We plan to host the development of it on either Gitlab or Github. Before we do so we need a solid specsheet lined up. This is where we need help from you.

1. What Sup Forums mobile apps are you using now?
2. Why are you using those?
3. What could they do better?
4. What would you like to see in a Sup Forums mobile app?
5. What is important to you in a mobile app?
6. Anything else you would like to throw our way?

The languages we plan to use include Java and Obj-C for the frontend (we may include React-Native/JavaScript, but not likely due to performance related reasons). Any backend for
the app is likely to be trivial, so neither of us care too much what we use here. I'm leaning towards either Nim or Elixir for meme points. Really anything with a decent
bcrypt and jwt library is fine with me. Feel free to chime in here. We've both used .NET and Spring in our day jobs before and find both to be terribly boring.

Best,
user

Other urls found in this thread:

engadget.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-store/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>quit my jeb to make a Sup Forums app
my sides

Read the full post, user.

we already have imageboard apps with everything they need

1) only clover
2) only one that really works
3) add more functions, fix bugs
4) dark theme
5) gnu licence

Hm. I read posts on this board complaining about apps like Clover...Overchan... going months without updates, along with other complaints. You don't think there's a need out there for another Sup Forums app?

Apps with GPL/LGPL-licensed code are incompatible with the app store.

engadget.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-store/

Apache is a more preferable license IMO.

1. Clover
2. Works fine, comfy
3. A download button that changes colors or something so I know when I've actually downloaded the file
4. Functionality, aesthetics (themeing?)
5. Read 4
6. Why are you even doing this?

>gnu licence
I've done open source work under MIT licenses pretty frequently. If the only difference between the two licenses is that any other codebase that makes use of what we create has to open source their software, too, then I'm game. I'll have to read up more to be sure, though.

>6. Why are you even doing this?
>implying this is real

if you're really doing this, don't use sjwhub

1. clover
2. it works
3. i don't really care, i just use it to browse Sup Forums and find fap material
4. i'd like to see Sup Forums
5. that it works and doesn't look like shit. also i prefer BSD licence over GPL but it's nothing i'll switch apps over

>4) dark theme
>4. Functionality, aesthetics (themeing?)
We're definitely going to support theming. Custom font sizing. Choose your own background colors. Etc. If either of you want to expand on `functions`/`functionality` that would be greatly appreciated.

>6. Why are you even doing this?
Making mobile apps is fun. Having code scrutinized by the Sup Forums community sounds like a good challenge. There's no better feeling than making software that I myself will use in my free time.

>implying this is real
This is 100% real.

You sound like a nice and reasonable person, OP. That automatically makes me trust you less.
I wish you good luck and hope you have fun with this project while managing to deliver some quality software for us and yourself.

>functionality
It works and looks nice with no retarded features that nobody will ever use. Simple but effective.

I just browse Sup Forums in mobile Chrome because it just werks. Why should I install your app?

Thank you both. I'm sure I'll be making threads and uploading pics of where we're at from time to time.

>Implying Mercurial or Bitbucket are better.
Also, I've seen people shit over the BSD license. Claiming it's not real OSS, same goes for the Apache license. Once again, I'll have to reacquaint myself with the differences between GPL, MIT, BSD, Apache. Hm.

Trigger alarms when someone reply to your shitpost

>Trusting Big Browser
We don't gain anything from you being on our app. We plan to make this, first and foremost, for us, the average Sup Forums user.

Sounds interesting. I'll follow the next updates.

>There's no better feeling than making software that I myself will use in my free time.

I can understand that, but why not fork Clover and make your own changes instead? Or help with it's development?

Clover has a lot of Android specific things that will fall apart while making a sane app for both platforms. The way the project has been setup since day one makes for a... rough... dev experience. Something that isn't fixable without heavy rewrites.

I've been reading through the code. I don't believe much of it is salvageable. Not much is modular.

We already have clover. Don't waste your precious time and skills doing this. Go contribute to netrunner or some other shitty app that actually needs devs.

...

kill yourself op, Dashchan is all we need.

This, the thing on the download button would be great

I have used clover, which was my favorite no ads, and smooth. Sadly my old phone died, clover was not available, and now i use mimi. And its sub par at best, every now and then just force shuts and won't run.

And add all the stuff like news that there's on top of every page in the web-browser version...

Just download the apk or use fdroid.

That's quite the assumption. I just use mobile Chrome as I don't use my mobile phone too much. I'm actually looking for a decent Sup Forums app (none of the ones available appeal to me) but so far, you aren't exactly convincing me to install yours when it's "finished".

***READ THIS I HAVE A NEW IDEA***

1. Clover
2. It's simple and fast.


NEW IDEA

I like to read Sup Forums threads in my bed before sleeping, and wifi is off.
Clover already has a feature for pinning threads in cache memory. So I still can read pinned threads as long as the app is in cache. If I close it threads can't be read until connection is restored.

I want a "Save thread" feature that allows me to read the thread whenever I want inside the Sup Forums app, ( not saving the thread webpage as a pdf for example )
even after I close the app.

Kind of like the functionality of Pocket but built in the Sup Forums app.

Also, the app MUST have an Amoled black theme with changeable font size. An immersive mode which hides the status bar would be great too.

If you can fix the captcha it would be great. Clover is shit in this domain (yeah probably not their fault. )

I don't know whether someone else cares about saving threads though. Personally I want to save entertaining/informative ones for later.

Is Clover that good? Mind you, there's no iOS equivalent (besides Fortune on Cydia). I think we can do better.

Also, not familiar with Netrunner. I'm seeing a couple under that name on Github. Mind posting a link?

I'll give that app a spin, too.

100% this is in.

Hm. Adding this to the considered list. The downside with this is there are no open APIs to access this content. Scrapers are liable to break at any time.

This isn't the part of the project where we're user hunting. This is the part where we discuss ideas and put together a solid spec.

What do you think "finished" or "success" will look like, user?

We will have a save thread feature that persists to local cache. Images become a problem here as saving in full will fill up very quick. I'm considering persisting only thumbnails to local cache, but I'm not... stoked on that either. Of course we could upload all thread images to Imgur on thread save. We might do this.

Changeable font sizes and background/text colors are in. We will have a color picker. Etc.

An immersive mode would be interesting. We will have the header shrink on scroll similar to a lot of Google products. Adding this to the consider list.

One thing I think needs some discussion `Watched threads` vs. `Saved threads`. We definitely will have some type that will persist to local storage, but should we have a watched tag where you will get notified on response? Should these be the same? Should you always get notified when someone responds to you? Notifications might get spendy.

We're counting on you, user!

1. Clover
2. Because it works good enough for me.
3.Be able to select and quote text to make a reply. I hate having to copy all the text and erase the portions im not replying to.
4. Easy filtering and auto-hide nsfw boards.
5. Stability and unbloated.
6. Make it link to a sane board upon startup instead of Sup Forums or Sup Forums so you dont get taken down on the Play Store for porn. And add a TempleOS like theme for the keks.

do a fucking iphone app. chan4chan is the only one i know of on iphone and it is legitimately worse than just using a mobile browser

You'd never be able to put a Sup Forums app on the Play store because of its adult content

I have no useful input other than filtering is essential, and anything to make creating threads easier.

>there's no iOS equivalent
There's The Chan, made by a Russki, but I haven't been able to download it because I'm too lazy to add credit to my account.

Clover gets a lot right

1. Clover
2. There aren't really any other options and it's been working pretty good
3. Maybe some more options like 4chanX-tier amounts of options. Also the Captcha is pretty buggy but like someone else said it could just be Sup Forums's fault.
4. Something actually better than Clover enough for me to switch over. Maybe it would be cool if there was a desktop companion plugin where you have a unified pinned threads library.
5. Full theme customization with a black AMOLED theme. Also you only mentioned that it will be on the play store/app store, but I think F-Droid is also necessary for an open source app especially if you want to compete with Clover on there.

1) Clover
2) It werks
3) Put in an actual Index (last 3 replies)
4) Above, Yotsuba B style
5) Adapts to changing conditions (able to access the joke boards when they came up)

The perfect Sup Forums app already exists and it's called clover

>You sound like a nice and reasonable person, OP. That automatically makes me trust you less.
What the fuck did I just read?