Loomio
Tue 23 Dec 2014 1:53PM

Diaspora* Official apps?

M MrmappyINOF Public Seen by 414

I know that there is a web app for Diaspora*, but web apps (in my opinion) aren't well optimized for phones and they just aren't that great. What I was thinking, we could come together to develop official Diaspora* apps for iOS and Android. The only issue with this is that pods have their own websites.

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goob Tue 23 Dec 2014 2:21PM

The decision a few years ago was to make a mobile version of the site which works really well on all mobile devices, rather than putting a lot of effort into creating a separate app for each type of mobile device.

Since then, the official approach has been to work on creating a mobile version of the site which is designed for mobile first and is optimised for all mobile devices. There is still much work to do on this, but this is what is happening from the 'official' end.

Any community member can of course create an app if they choose to do so. The most recent I know about is Pusteblume. But I doubt the official approach to this will change.

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Flaburgan Tue 23 Dec 2014 3:13PM

Yeah, we're not going to spend time to work on something for a specific platform when we have a nice standard: HTML5. Plus, we don't have an API yet. So really, it's not worth the effort.

DU

Tue 23 Dec 2014 8:05PM

I just finished to develop some kind of file manager for Android. Nope, native apps are just a pain in the ass...

See that iOS apps are currently developped in Objective-C, a language used by basically nobody but iOS devs, and Apple is going to drop it for a home-made language.
Android support Java. And shit I like to avoid touching Java as much as I can.

So, basically, thing is : with each new version of the web site, we have to develop again at least two apps (who still uses Blaberries ? Who uses yet Sailfish ?). Loss of time...

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y.semin Thu 1 Jan 2015 8:34AM

I heard about the D* application on Firefox OS. Whereas I never saw or test it, I heard it was quite more efficient and eye-candy than Android's one.
And it seems to me FFOS doesn't use Java, nor Objective-C, but HTML5.

Whatever it's interesting or not, I use the Android application, but I admit the mobile version of D* is fully working, and obviously much more up to date !

DU

Rich Fri 2 Jan 2015 6:44AM

One HUGE issue I have with apps, you never know if your user login credentials are being passed through something before hitting your D* pod.

Wasn't there an iPhone app recently that didn't work? Maybe it didn't work because all it was doing was harvesting login details...

DU

Sun 4 Jan 2015 2:54PM

@y.semin : yes, there is an FFOS app that is just a web explorer based on FF. It can run on Android and FFOS as long as FF mobile is intalled on Android.

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D351 Sun 25 Jan 2015 4:19PM

One thing I'd like is an app that simply gives my phone push notifications for my diaspora alerts. No need to be official, but that is the only notable difference between having the FB app on my iphone and keeping a link to D* on my home screen.

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vanitasvitae Fri 19 Aug 2016 2:39PM

Hey everybody! I know, this thread is somewhat old, but nevertheless I want to add my thoughts here.
We are currently developing DiasporaForAndroid, a FOSS android client for diaspora (Github, FDroid). Unfortunately the lack of an API makes it nearly impossible to implement stuff like a proper notification system, but nevertheless we are adding some useful things like proxy support and functional, beautiful toolbars to diaspora's mobile experience.
Does anyone know, if there will be a useful API some day, respectively who we can reach out to and bug about this?

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Flaburgan Fri 19 Aug 2016 4:10PM

Hi @vanitasvitae and thank you for your interest. The API is on its way. The authentication part will be shipped with our new major version coming very soon, see the changelog. The two other issues to follow are 6182 and 6289

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vanitasvitae Fri 19 Aug 2016 5:09PM

@flaburgan That's great news! Can you give like an estimate on when the API will be fully implemented?

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