JGO App

General Discussions Suggestions
#1

:-X

I know its not a simple thing but a huge part of why Discord is so capable of moving communities to its platform is that it is convenient. If some form of this forum is put in app form designed for mobile it might get a resurgence. I know it sounds kinda sad but I hate having to go to my browser on my phone to use a site. Even if it is designed for viewing in a browser, on mobile. I also don’t do much socializing on my desktop either. It is hobbies and games on my desktop, that is it and I can see alot of people being the same way.
It’s not why I left for 6 years, I blame that on my stop and go procrastination with trying to make a video game. If there was a way to interact with these forums through a custom built app for android and iphone I honestly think it could kick some life into JGO. People can socialize on the app in a general thread the “main thread” that you see when you open the app, there will need to be blocks and mods to limit ads cause it can get bad. Having a singular thing that everyone sees attracts alot of attention from people only wanting to post ads and controlling the ads will need to be at the very top of the list of priorities when designing the app since that will really drive a huge chunk of possible users away if it is not dealt with. Somewhere there will need to be access to the whole list of forum categories that are collapsible within one click of the first frame you see when you open the app.
Also needs to remember what you collapsed so that eliminates one section that you are not interested in to get you to what you want faster.
Such as collapsing games center to get to discussions or collapsing both to get to game development. The showcase is great and lets people be excited to see their work where others will see it, that will also need to be within one click from the first frame along with latest medals or seeing your own medals and also settings. Keeping the same color pallet as the forums would be risky but could probably be pulled off and possibly would make interchanging from the desktop forums to the app forums less jarring and nostalgic, if you keep alot of the same design elements aswell. Which is necessary for when people need to use the main site on their desktop to do most of there posting of code n what not. Nobody except maybe a small few will have their code on hand, on their phone when they need help with something, or are sharing something.
There is alot of features the
desktop version of the site has that can’t
be done on mobile so a mobile version will need to be the middle man
till you get home to use your main comp hence making the social aspect first, and still having access
to the full forum list to check up on answers, solutions and advice from the convenience of their phone in app form.
Voice chat could be a feature but probably not necessary.

Might not have been easy to read, I have a headache and didn’t re read through all of it but it should make sense. I thought of this after I saw someone on a thread I can’t remember… headache… that said the forums are slowly dying from people just going to the discord server of JGO instead. Really didn’t think too much of it, I haven’t been on here in a while, until I noticed that the topic I posted was the last one in 24 hours. That’s a long time with no posts in general discussions. Even though I haven’t had much activity on the site in general I have used it count
less times for help where answers where already available with my on and off head bashing trying to make video games. I don’t have the time nor the skills required to help in much of anyway towards a JGO app except for putting out the idea and possible design tips for layout and what not. If the app is made with libgdx the only thing I kinda know in coding a cellphone app can also be scaled to a desktop app as well without much extra effort. Making one click access from your desktop on your desktop to the same social focus of the phone app and with the power of having all your files on the main comp as well. The desktop app is optional cause at that point the browser site is dead and is nothing more than a husk to power the other

Edit: It also has to be made in Java for obvious reasons and there might be a whole community of people in one place that knows how to do things in that very same language… somewhere…

#2

The idea of having an app for interacting with JGO is not one I’ve seen brought up here before, but seems to me to be a good one. I think most of us have just been thinking in terms of making the html dynamic, viewable via a browser.

For pure Java, I think it can only run on desktops, laptops, and Chromebooks (now supporting Linux/Debian). But bringing in LibGDX/LWJGL–that would be the main route for phones and such, yes? For various reasons I’ve come close to tackling these libraries but never made the leap.

Yes, that was a dense paragraph. But lots of good ideas.
(@hobbles–Hope your headache is better. I go through that too.)

#3

If you want the forum to be mobile friendly, create a mobile friendly site layout, keep it a webpage.

If you do not want to view it from the browser, use something like Cordova to embed that page into its own app.

Creating an entire app from scratch for just a single forum simply because of some aversion against mobile browsers is IMHO a bit of an overkill.

It kind of annoys me when “we have an app” becomes the expected way to interact with every tiny service even though there is literally no functional advantage for the user over just doing the exact same thing in a browser.

#4

Yet this is exactly how “the yoof” interact with the web: they use apps, on phones. All that effort with HTML, Javascript, CSS, etc. was just like pissing into the wind.
Sort of amusing that a Google Play app is now effectively a Java applet. The world moves in mysterious ways.

Cas :slight_smile:

#5

It’s the way of things unfortunately.

The only other way would be an ad campaign which might be necessary anyway for an app but even then new users would be coming to a forum site designed from the early 2000s, nearly 20 years ago.

If it was overkill why would almost every company and site have a app.

I don’t know who owns the site but they can even set up crowd funding or patreon to help with ads and what not it’s easier for alot of people to spend 1-5 dollars instead of one person to put hundreds upfront. I don’t care too much either way but there’s people here that’s been active for over a decade maybe even for two. If you want to keep using the site you like and want to keep it going it’s probably time to try and step up and put some effort into it. Forums have been fading out for quite a while now. It would be interesting to see one get some traction again.

whispers am I doing it right?

#6

@hobbles: You might be interested in reading this thread.

(Also, please consider to use some line breaks in your posts…)

#7

Though I don’t like using apps for everything, I know the reason why many websites and companies try to advertise a lot about their apps. These are the reasons that come to my mind:

[]Advertisements
[]Reception Analytics
[*]Lessen the load on Servers

The first and foremost one is advertisements. There are a lot of people who are now installing ad blockers. They are even available for mobile and a lot of people that I know use apps like Brave browser or AdblockPlus browser. This hurts the earnings of the websites and they prefer these apps because then they can enforce the ads.

In this present era, almost every company knows that data is king, and they need data. Also getting analytics such as which OS they are on, which OS version, their mobile numbers, etc., can be tracked which can be used to fingerprint the device. This plays a major role in targeted advertising.

The third one, which is to lessen the load on servers is good. This helps when you are facing a large audience and deploying common assets via the app assets can lessen several requests to the server which rarely change.

Knowing all this, I generally want to use a very less number of apps. However, not all people know this fact, and hence they tend to oblige with the websites and download the apps.

Now I don’t think JGO is such a company. A better-looking mobile interface for the website itself will do the job here.

#8

It was interesting, guess its all worked out then. Just honestly thought an app made with Java on a site with a bunch people that know Java might make some sense. You’d need a library like Phil said, libGDX is a 2D/3D game library with alot of functionality. If it can handle games I’m sure it can handle what it might require to get a JGO app going. If you haven’t used it before its pretty easy, if I could get a basic app together on my phone you guys could probably transcribe peoples text by thought in the same amount of time. I’m not ~18 anymore when people might start looking into programming as a career but these young folk now days might look at forums like they would look at your cell phone from nearly 20 years ago. Sure it was probably nearly indestructible but why can’t you watch youtube vids or use emotes. Cellphone evolution, JGO looks to be created somewhere around 2002.

Also btw, do you have the time to check my grammar and spelling errors as well good sir, I miss that too. I’m sorry, my current occupation has been that of the construction sort for the last 8 years and it appears I’m lucky that I haven’t devolved to just basic grunts and pointing by now. Let me get my old laminated sheet of forum rules, etiquette and proper layout with the very very big, very very bold, GOOGLE FIRST ASK SECOND at the very top top. It’s sooooooooooooo far, sooooooooo high up on the page, that it couldn’t be any higher up on this, laminated sheet, made, of, the highest? quality stock that it is nearly glowing and hovering off the page and getting larger by the second, nah nano second… my god… It’s only one of 20 for every forum that I’ve ever joined or has yet to have joined, one which was dreamt. Kinda why I don’t use forums in the first place, you would get bombarded immediately for asking a simple question. Did I google it first? Of course why would I be throwing myself through the gauntlet of grammar/ spelling ****s if I thought I found it. Oh, it was in the first google result but I didn’t understand what I was looking for in the first place… wow learned my lesson to seek help on forums that offer it being 16 and new to programming.

[quote]Now I don’t think JGO is such a company. A better-looking mobile interface for the website itself will do the job here.
[/quote]
Ttttthhhhey also do it for convenience to their customers with a user/ client base expectation to have such features in the modern day? I think you missed the point, if you don’t want ads don’t put ads? Your site does have reception analytics its at the very bottom. If you don’t think an app is a good idea and want to make a whole new site from scratch which almost sounds like a similar load of work that’s fine.

Now I’m gonna go, do real life stuff things and go… again… Maybe in 20 years you will have made that app when everyone else’s thoughts are already known in some sort of hive mind with text and speech being a thing of the past. I’m honestly sorry for the harsh tones and thinking you guys where doing nothing but I guess I searched through the wrong place “suggestions” instead of the “general discussions”. Meh? Oh well. An oh so interesting thing I did come across in “suggestions” which is kind of ironic in a way is this from 7-8 years ago BEHOLD which inevitably leads us to Discord sucking up your user base. An app, a social first app.

hobbles with a lower case h waves Bye! Bye bye! Bye bye again, byeeee…

ps: Thanks for everything JGO.

#9

Ttttthhhhey also do it for convenience to their customers with a user/ client base expectation to have such features in the modern day? I think you missed the point, if you don’t want ads don’t put ads? Your site does have reception analytics its at the very bottom. If you don’t think an app is a good idea and want to make a whole new site from scratch which almost sounds like a similar load of work that’s fine.
[/quote]
I think you may have misunderstood here.
What he said is that companies do want you to see ads, but users sometimes do not want to see them.

If you provide a website, people can just use an adblocker.
But if you give them an app instead, they can not use an adblocker on that.

For an end user, there is no functional difference between an app and a website other than that you install one and view the other in a browser.
For the provider, there is a bit of a difference in what data they can gather from it.

Text can be difficult to read if there are no breakpoints. That is all I am saying. Take that advice or ignore it.
It looks like you tried to do the former. Thank you for that.

#10

Most of the people who come here are probably on a computer as they will be some sort of coder/ programmer / game maker. Not sure an app would be worth the effort