An idea

While I have been pc less I have been thinking about how hard the forum is to navigate on a phone (I'm using a HTC Desire) and I was wondering how difficult it would be to create an unofficial (as in not put onto the android app market, just a .apk I can download and install) small android app that would show new topics or replies to current topics since last login (like the scroller on the left of the home page but just a non scrolling list). Doesn't even have to have the data, could just be a list of links, an easy way that people can keep up to date.

Buy a better phone. Or a better browser?

How would we install the script to farm the data from the forum database to the android app. Is it easy. If so now we have are own web space and full acces may be worth a try for shits and giggles.

And a iPhone app!


Tho I must say I have no issues with the forum and safari

And a BlackBerry app! (sry)

Have you tried the new forum on your phones. Its the latest forum program and may be easier on the phone browsers.

It is better, just it would be nice to have a very simple app which takes out steps I will be looking into it more when I get my pc back, its more of a is it possible thing rather than let's do it.

To be totally honest I don't know how easy/hard it would be, I know that android apps are developed largely using java and the iPhone OS apps use C++ or Objective-C.

I have no knowledge of any kind of programming/program development so was kinda seeing if anyone who did reckons how hard it would be.

Also while browsing I came across this http://www.appinventor.googlelabs.com/about which is a way of developing app's using a user interface rather than programming

In my opinion its not worth the effort of a programmer spending a lot of time working on such a thing.


Technical Point of View:

The main problem is actually just getting the program to retain you being logged into the forum into to present itself as logged into the server as to get the most recent topics for yourself, the html code for the main portal page could be parsed and links created a bit of work and a UI could show this.

However I believe something could easily be written in Java to retrieve the latest topics from a logged out point of view, UI would be the challenge, links touchable wouldnt be so hard.


I wouldn't even go near doing an iphone app, the syntax looks atrocious, and you have to pay £100 to even get the APIs/go ahead to make apps


A far better solution would be better for someone to create a php script and you bookmark that instead, the php script would just grab the plain info, as to not lag your phone?

Ok cheers snips, didn't know how difficult it would be, now know its not worth it, might have a look myself just for the hell of it.