Is there m.voat or mobile app in progress ?
20 12 Jun 2015 09:42 by u/Zucch
Title. I'm not at home most of the time or I'm not near the computer so this would be great. If this is the wrong subverse to post just link me to the right one, I'm new here.
35 comments
8 u/squidjit 12 Jun 2015 21:44
The site is made in Bootstrap - it works well on mobile already. Responsive tastiness.
2 u/polymorphist 12 Jun 2015 22:44
Yup, I was just about to say this. It even sticks the sidebar in a hamburger menu.
0 u/dieyoung 14 Jun 2015 08:30
Is that what its really called? I always thought that too...
0 u/polymorphist 15 Jun 2015 12:54
Yup.
1 u/a_of_s_t 13 Jun 2015 02:27
Damn, this site really is better.
6 u/whiskey_cat 13 Jun 2015 02:47
More technically, the site loads Bootstrap Javascript, which is likely being used for interactive components like drop downs. However the site does not use Bootstrap CSS styles, so I would make the case that a limited amount of functionality of the website is aided by the Bootstrap's Javascript library.
This website includes other frontend coding tools, such as Modernizr, jQuery, jQuery-UI CSS, and appears to use the ASP.NET SignalR platform, which I know nothing about.
In my opinion, it's pretty clean but the responsive design code - which is engineered to transform the layout based on screen size - is quite lacking on the mobile front. My hunch is it was designed as a desktop application with the bonus that it's somewhat useable on mobile devices.
As a seasoned web app UIE, if the voat.co devs want to chat about this I'd be down.
2 u/squidjit 13 Jun 2015 10:58
Check out the GitHub repo if you're interested. Pretty sure it's using a bootstrap theme...
What you're describing in being 'designed as a desktop application with the bonus that it's somewhat useable on mobile devices' is exactly what bootstrap is great for. Looks fairly good on mobile to me!
About SingalR -- it's a really nice .NET lib for real time communications, from their site:
I imagine it might be used for the chat box on the right of a subverse. I've not got that far in the code yet though.
0 u/whiskey_cat 15 Jun 2015 07:37
It's just a light knock. I'd also tell you Reddit's responsive mobile & tablet UI are weak. For what's available today, so many sites are really behind. even hacker news....
Haven't checked GitHub yet, but it's quite possible to alias Bootstrap CSS with a preprocessor, which would be hard to see after compiled output.
You're comment about SignalR, I didn't dig in but I assume it's either a long ajax poll or websocket connection. Cool stuff for sure, just a platform I haven't seen, and won't judge.
3 u/Nurdoidz 14 Jun 2015 04:12
I am a front-end developer for Voat. The long-term plan is to completely remove bootstrap and rely on our own javascript and CSS. We're all working for free, so you'd imagine how slow things go in that regard. The 'mobile' interface is still preliminary and I'd really appreciate some pointers on how it can be improved. Send me a PM if you'd like to help! Thanks. :-)
1 u/whiskey_cat 15 Jun 2015 07:25
This is awesome. And killing off bootstrap is great, there's nothing special in their JS, perhaps besides upsetting Douglas Crockford. I'm moving over the next couple days here but I want to follow up on this. Thanks for the reply!
Also, no worries, building a big app isn't easy.
0 u/whiskey_cat 25 Jun 2015 01:26
Hey, I said I'd make it back, provided I'm on the only computer which has my auth credentials cached. For the life of me, it seems I [inexplicably] don't know what my password is, even though I've used a global PW pattern, for basically ever.
Can I change my password without knowing it? Will Voat hook me an email password reset? It's really weird... there's sites I don't visit for years and my password strategy works. Can't figure out what happened.
0 u/SemiNormal 13 Jun 2015 04:45
Since voat is using bootstrap, wouldn't it be a good idea for them to use a cdn copy and then just host the overridden css locally? Anything to save some precious bandwidth.
0 u/whiskey_cat 13 Jun 2015 05:58
Well, just because it's a cdn doesn't mean it can't also load slow from that location. They'll solve the lions share of problems by simply expanding and improving their server & load balancer network. The majority of browsers will cache the files after the first visit anyways, assume their web server is configured right.
0 u/thecid 13 Jun 2015 09:22
That doesn't give you mobile notifications though.
3 u/thesupergeek 12 Jun 2015 21:02
I am working on an application for IOS, but I will most likely only use it for personal use.
2 u/Nick_Burrill 13 Jun 2015 07:08
You should release it!
1 u/DatRoyce 14 Jun 2015 05:56
It takes money and a lot of effort for it to be released..
1 u/Nick_Burrill 15 Jun 2015 02:24
Perhaps release the source so someone else can finish/help. Just an idea :)
1 u/wagesj45 17 Jun 2015 04:50
Apple doesn't let you publish apps if the source is under GPLv3.
2 u/SpaceMonkey 19 Jun 2015 11:03
Interesting, I didn't know that before and I can't see why they care.
2 u/pondnetic 13 Jun 2015 22:50
I'm working on one!
Android/iOS and WP whenever Ionic supports that
https://voat.co/v/Goatherd/comments/123520
1 u/yotamN 12 Jun 2015 21:25
There are planing of creating an official app but for now you can use 3rd party apps.
1 u/VoatSimulator 14 Jun 2015 23:18
I am the dev for Vulcan, an Android client for Voat. The currently released version on Google Play version is very barebones and was knocked up in a couple of days, but gets the job done. My development branch is light years ahead - I've implemented login, subverse switching, and followed material design guidelines a lot more. It basically feels like a completely different app. The only problem is that I can't release any of this until the new API comes out, which is incredibly frustrating as I don't know when that will be, and obviously everyone wants to be able to login/comment right now.
Basically, if you want a completely full feature set, the mobile site is your best bet. But there are plenty of apps currently in development, and within a couple of months these are going to provide a much faster & cleaner experience than a web browser.
FYI /v/android might have been a better place for this submission if you're not subscribed already.
0 u/AntigravityHat 12 Jun 2015 21:37
The two main ones I've heard of so far are /v/versa and /v/vulcan. I don't use either, so I unfortunately can't comment on their quality.
0 u/redditfugitive 14 Jun 2015 08:28
I've tried both, and they don't seem quite finished to me. Vulcan doesn't allow me to log in as of the time of writing, and neither will let me view particular subs or manage subscriptions. On the plus side, the apps themselves seem to be quite fast and resource efficient (although the site being suddenly overrun has slowed everything down anyway), and I haven't had any freezing/force closes on either.
Luckily it looks like development on both is going strong, so I would keep watching for updates.
0 u/bukkits 13 Jun 2015 03:42
I'm not sure what similarities there are between Reddit and Voat that could be leveraged here, but there is an open source reddit app. Is Voat based on reddit's source code? https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader
1 u/Sticky 13 Jun 2015 07:11
No.
1 u/bukkits 13 Jun 2015 19:49
I did some research and I see now why that would not be a feasible option