Issues with site- not apple friendly

[Castro]

I use mainly mobile devices to go online and stay In Touch, share..ect and wasn't sure if others had noticed but this site is not very apple friendly. Videos don't show up unless there's a link to follow. It really makes it tough to enjoy the site if it only utilizes flash video. I know there's very little chance but it would be very cool if some one made an apple iPad-iPhone app for 6x6 world. I would even pay for it! Any way we can make YouTube video links and such available when flash doesn't work? Do others have this problem with other mobile devices or is it just an apple thing?

[amphibious drew]

I use a macbook, an ipad, and my palm pre to follow the site. A while ago there was an app called my forum or something to that effect. It said you could search your favorite forum for free in a mobile friendly manner. It also stated something about how it was free for your forum moderator to use (not sure how that all works). I'm not sure if it would assist with the flash issue though.

I do run into an issue with not even being able to see a video that was posted utilizing flash. Its like there is nothing there at all sometimes, or i jest see a lego and it says something about format not supported. Any youtibe videos i have no trouble seeing on my mobile devices. I think the site works pretty good on mobile devices personally. I think the problems that you get are due to the mobile device. Switch to a droid and you'll be good if it really bothers you. I just snag the macbook when i get home and go back to see what i missed.

I have had an issue using the quick links tab. Ocasionally, it will tell me i have to wait 10 sec between searches when i use the todays post button. The odd thing is the fact that that button will continue to tell me that until i do an advanced search. Then i can use it again.

[Mike]

You guys both already stated it, but just to reiterate, the underlying problem isn't really with the site not being Apple friendly but rather an issue with Apple not being Flash friendly. I use Apple products for all of my personal computers (excluding my phone which is an evo 4g) and they, of course, display everything correctly in multiple browsers. The Evo displays everything fine as well like Drew mentioned. It just comes back to flash support. What I can do though, is look into using iframes to display the youtube links so that any HTML5 enabled browser that you use on your ipad / iphone / ipod touch, etc. should be able to display it. I thought that Youtube did that automatically but I will borrow my wife's ipod touch so I can see the same problem that you guys have and work on that over the next couple of weeks. I will post back here with a video to test it when I think I have a solution and you can tell me if it works on your end.

As a side note regarding an App for the site, I have been (slowly) working on customizing a 6x6 World app that can be uploaded to the Apple and Droid app stores. What it does is simplifies the site for mobile devices. It is something that the forum software supports but there are several downsides to it. The biggest one is that you would only be able to access the forums and not the photo gallery since they are completely different pieces of software. I have been trying to get them to work together but haven't been completely successful yet. Another downside is that there are fees for uploading apps. Droid is a one time fee but Apple is a yearly fee to keep the app in the store. I don't mind paying that and it is something that donations to the site would help support just like any other software cost, but I don't want to do that if only 2 or 3 people will use the app. On the other hand, it may be able to support itself with ads. The final downside to a 6x6 World app is that it is one more thing to have to update as we move forward. When we update the site, we would then have to update the app. When a new android device comes out, we may have to modify the app for that. When iOS gets an update, we may have to update the app for that, etc. It could become hard to manage.

I'm definitely not complaining about any of the downsides, just letting you know some of the things that are going into the decision behind making an App available to everyone. Unfortunately I haven't had a lot of free time to customize it yet but it is something that may be used one day down the road.

Thanks for bringing the Flash problem to my attention. I will let you know what I find.

Regards,

Mike

[Castro]

Props to best site admin I have ever heard of! Thanks

[Mike]

Castro, my wife left her ipod touch at work so I can't test it myself, but I think I may have a solution. Can you (or anyone else reading this thread) test this on your ipad or iphone and see if it displays properly. I'm posting a video below. I just hope you can see it:

If you can see that video above, I can quickly rebuild the rest of the site to do the same thing.

Edit: Actually, I just went back and rebuilt all of the videos so if you can see this one, try looking at past threads with videos in them and see if it works too.

[amphibious drew]

Mike,

Im on my ipad and only see a black box with "the video you have requested is not available" in it. It is my opinion that the problem is only with video that is posted to flip share and then the site. Hense why lewis's video's won't work from busco on my mobile devices. Unless there is a converter that will resave the file using a mobile player, it is something we have to work around for now. As much as i love my flip we all know no more cameras will be produced.

[Mike]

Thanks for the response. What browser are you using to browse the site? You will have to use an HTML5 capable browser for it to work. The video I posted above was not using flip share, it was something I edited and uploaded directly to youtube. What I'm attempting to do with the new code is display the youtube videos using iframes only if you are on iOS and display them using flash to everyone else.

I thought I had it figured out but it looks like I will have to wait until I can get an iOS device to test so I can see the results as I make changes. Thanks again for the quick reply. I think we can get it to work, it may just take several tries.

[amphibious drew]

I'm not sure what version of safari my ipad uses (my wifes holding it hostage to play that bird game), but its safari none the less. My Palm Pre uses google as the browser and I can see the video preview no problem.

[Mike]

Drew or Castro, see if this video works now. I can see it on an ipod touch but wanted to make sure you could too:

It looks like there are still a few bugs but if that one works, then most of the videos on the site should work for you now (hopefully). For some reason that first video I linked to in this thread just won't work but all of the others I have tested work fine. Also, the videos on the front page of the site are still embedded with flash only so those won't show up for now either but at least some of them are.

As a side note, I will have to manually update this everytime we upgrade the site's software so if you lost the ability to see the videos again just remind me and I will fix it.

[Castro]

Win!

[Mike]

Win!

Winning!

Thanks for the quick reply. I edited my last post but just to say it again, if you lose the ability to see the videos after we upgrade any software on the site, just let me know. I will have to manually update this every time so I may forget since I don't use iOS to access the site.

[Castro]

iPhone 4 and iPad2 compatibility confermed

[LarryW]

Hate to bring up an oldie but I was wondering if the android app ever worked out?

[Mike]

No, it didn't. I stopped working on it. There were a lot of headaches and compatibility issues which is fine but what made me stop even trying to get it to work was hearing that our forum software may be going through another major upgrade soon. We are on version 4 of vbulletin which I expected to go through a complete life cycle (4.1, 4.2....4.8, 4.9) but it was announced that version 5.0 was going to be released before we even get to 4.3 so I didn't want to put any more time into something that was going to be outdated. That release took longer than expected but it was just introduced this past month. The downside is that it has some pretty bad feedback right now.

We will have an app one day but it won't be until vbulletin 5 gets the bugs worked out enough that I am comfortable upgrading the forum software. Last time when we upgraded from 3 to 4, I made the mistake of upgrading to version 4 as soon as it was released, thinking that it would be great to have the latest software but that was a nightmare as it was full of bugs. I don't want to do that again.

Sorry for the long answer but I wanted to let you know the main reason behind the decision to stop working on it and why it hasn't happened yet. It will still be some time before we get to that point but I hope we will eventually get there.

[LarryW]

Wow, sounds like a mess. I don't t blame you for waiting. Thanks for quick response.