RE: USE OUR BETA | beta.steempeak.com

[jarvie]

@asgarth does have plans to make an app not sure if he knows of Vue Native or which he's thinking about using.

However my question for you is... what would an app do that more time working on the mobile website couldn't do?

Comments

[cryptosharon]

The general user has a small attention span and a big fear of effort and time spent. That's why many major web apps and stores have created mobile apps, which give much more freedom when providing features for their users. Among these features are notifications, local storage of credentials, home screen shortcuts and widgets, navigation gestures, etc.

Although Steempeak is doubtlessly the best web app at the moment, be it on mobile or desktop, especially talking about functionality, it has many issues that prevent it from becoming the users' choice as the main Steem mobile app. The main problem is that there's no Keychain, which makes it so that an experienced user has to take 1 to 2 minutes to log in, and a new user won't find their way for at least 5 minutes if they have to e-mail themselves their password each time Steempeak logs them out.

We're not talking about programmers here but average users. This means that adding accessible and familiar features is key to more than doubling the retention rate, especially given Steempeak's obvious superiority to other apps that are currently standing at death's door due to their slowness to adapt to user demand.

If Steempeak wants to retain newbies and compete before a new app takes the initiative, this is the moment to strike, when it's months away from the first mobile app that will probably even adopt communities and other curation features.

[jarvie]

First person to ever answer my question with some actual features. hahaha
OK let's go over them.

• Notifications ... I assume you mean Push notifications. Yep that's a benefit of mobile. (Or drawback if you're like some people who hate what push notifications have done to their life)
  As for non push notifications... we already have that.
• Local storage of credentials - I mean it's a different ballgame with blockchain and crypto. Credentials is complicated. Basically i think you can probably expect this solution is an additional thing to do... not something the mobile itself will solve. But yes a problem we'd like to solve regardless if it's in app form or mobile form alone.
• Home screen shortcut.... nope this isn't really an app thing. You can do this with mobile right now in litterally 2 seconds. Actually you can do it faster than using the app store perhaps... or equivelent. Just not as many people are as used to how to do it... so app store makes it more in line with what people know.
• What kind of widget is the question? That's not implied with mobile that's a whole other development process from what I know. That's an addition.
• Navigation gestures... not sure what you mean by that and what ones are available on app that can't be available on mobile?

NO KEYCHAIN... this is for sure one of the top two problems with the mobile experience. Steemconnect is not user friendly either.
The other main issue is that the editor and mobile keyboard don't play together well.

[cryptosharon]

• About the push notifications, you could always add an option to disable them selectively, I suppose.
• For local storage, I mean like a local keychain. It would obviously have to be encrypted, but I don't see it as something so hard to do? I have an AES-encrypted JSON that stores some stuff in a server, though I'm not sure if that's the standard for security. I think it's easier to do on mobile, too, where things are more contained and not risked by addons.
• Exactly, shortcuts can be easily set up to open the website quickly. However, you could have a small popup that recommends adding to desktop, for example. It would way more comfy to just have that done automatically by the playstore, especially for the newbies.
• Yeah, widgets are an addition. I was thinking of curation feeds, notification feeds, and optionally wallet monitor (SP Steem SBD etc.)
• Navigation gestures are like, pulling to the right to get a menu, or to go to home screen, to go to the next post, etc., basically navigating the app with gestures instead of pressing buttons. Many apps do this wonderfully and a lot of the competition lies on this point alone.
• Keychain can be temporarily solved by making an encrypted posting key container in client-side storage, possibly unlocked as a WIF with a cookie?
• The editor could be solved more easily on an app with a custom text box. You press it and a plain text box appears in focus where you can write, and once you close the keyboard, it switches back to web-version text box.

[jarvie]

If you have good examples of apps that do gestures well let us know. That sounds intriguing.
But yes in general using keys on mobile is solution #1 ... then mobile app. And if they're one in the same so be it.

Let's make sure @asgarth is following this conversation

[cryptosharon]

Many animations are explained in a video I found.

No need to watch it all.

• There is dragging down at minute 8:30, where you open a message and then drag to close it.
• A similar one is explained around 14:50 where things expand and contract by dragging.
• 16:42 there's zooming in and out to change the grid size and amount of grid items.
• 18:42, an not so Steem-compatible example on how to leverage content and comments in a space-efficient way by scrolling the comments above the media content.
• 26:48, long-press to collapse comment tree.
• 30:00, explanation of the problems regarding the mobile markdown editor and space management.
• 30:52 the solution to space management (markdown wysiwyg)
• 37:18 flick content to dismiss it
• 43:22 drag a comment to the right to reply to it (you could also implement other gestures for voting)

Other gestures not explained in the video are: If you click a post, you can drag left from the post to go back to the list of posts, or drag right to go to the next post in the list. If you drag up, you see a menu with a left button to go back to the list. Drag up and down and you simply see more of the content. Alternatively, if you drag from the left side of the screen, you can drag a menu into the screen where you find the app's menu (day/dark mode, replies, profile, communities, trending, etc.).

Etc. Gestures are basically the charm of mobile, but they're hard to implement sometimes. Not pleasurable if you're hurrying to implement more features for the desktop version of the app.

Here's a link to Reddit's introduction of their own app (not the same one as on the 1st video).

There are no gestures displayed in this video, but it gives insight about the challenges of making their app.

If you want to explore more gestures, download the app Joey and Reddit's official app. Both have different gesture combinations that give a nice experience, although they are fewer gestures than what were introduced in the first video.

[jarvie]

I'll watch it all this week. I like these types of videos. Keep em' coming if you find more.