Context for VanillaAPP (Phreak?)

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[12:08 PM] Joseph Fleming: Someone beat that summer student to it: https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/33730/vanillaapp-a-native-app-for-vanillaforums

[12:09 PM] Joseph Fleming: wow check the pricing structure: https://vanilla-app.com/

[12:12 PM] Lincoln Russell: That's phreak. Been up for a bit, I think.

[12:15 PM] Joseph Fleming: about a month - seems he's worked on it for a full year. Looks great on the surface.

[12:25 PM] Adrian Speyer: its been around for a while

[12:25 PM] Adrian Speyer: i wouldn't buy from him

[12:34 PM] Adrian Speyer: he always complained about us not offering all features in the open source, but when someone asks him why the app is not open source: "It is not Open Source. A lot of money and uncountable hours have gone into it and the SaaS model fee will go into the continuous development of the iOS version and the development of an upcoming Android version.....Apps are not a one time thing..." Ahhh he's so precious :D

[2:27 PM] Adam Charron: Have we reached out to this guy before? Just ran the demo and it seems pretty high quality.

[2:28 PM] Adam Charron: For a one man project the UI is pretty darn nice.

[2:28 PM] Adrian Speyer: I'll let linc fill you in on Phreak

[2:28 PM] Adam Charron: What's phreak?

[2:28 PM] Adrian Speyer: the name of the guy in the community who built this

[2:28 PM] Adam Charron: Ah ok.

[2:29 PM] Adrian Speyer: see comment above from Linc


Looking for some context from @Linc on this.

Comments

  • Alex Powell
    Alex Powell
    edited July 2018

    TL;DR version on Phreak is he was known to troll us early on, and was close to being banned quite a bit. Mostly for his attitude toward staff and others. Spends a lot time complaining and pointing fingers without contributing much.

    He was also very adamant about us open sourcing all our code, for all features, but not willing to do so on projects he builds on top of Vanilla. (he also owns vanillaskins)

    As far as I know, he does not code, but hired others on this project. I can't speak to the quality, but I can say his reputation precedes him.

  • Vanilla Forums
    Vanilla Forums

    It was launched a year ago: https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/33730/vanillaapp-a-native-app-for-vanillaforums#latest

    The discussion started in a more generic discussion about push notifications in March 2016: https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/31913/push-notifications-mobile-app-and-development/p1

  • Unknown
    Unknown
    edited July 2018

    I actually just got asked about push notifications today from AAT. Is a native Vanilla app something we'd ever consider at this point? Is it required for push notifications? I feel like @JoeF has mentioned a desire for push notifications quite a bit from prospects.

    What exactly is Vanilla' stance on an app or push notifications, is it something we would ever do?

  • Unknown
    Unknown

    What @BrendanParm says is true

  • Unknown
    Unknown
    edited July 2018

    Push notifications are possible from the web on:

    • Desktop browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)
    • Chrome for Android

    They notably are not available on iOS without a native application. With PWAs things are getting closer, but even with iOS 12 Mobile Safari does not support the web Push API. Hopefully this will change in the future.

    Native Apps

    True native application are great. I don't see us making one in the forseeable future. Why?

    • Vanilla does not currently employ and iOS or Android developers.
    • We would likely need to double our triple the size of our Dev team to properly maintain native iOS and Android applications.
    • Native apps would need to be submitted on a per client basis and would be much harder to brand. I'm also not sure what the App Store guidelines are for applications that are 99% copies of each other. Maintaining and updating the many permutations of this would be a nightmare. The alternative is offering little to no branding.

    PWAs

    PWAs are enhanced web applications with offline support, fast app-like experiences, served full-screen without browser UI and an icon on the home screen. https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web-apps/

    • Vanilla needs a top notch mobile experience first.
    • Maybe in the cards for the base theme (Aurora, not the one Isis has been working on)
    • Much faster to implement than native apps.
    • Easily updatable
    • Can maintain individual client styles and branding easily.

    Push Notifications

    I could see us adding support for this, but we would absolutely need to get the UI right for asking permissions from the user. You only get one chance. If a user requests that permission you can never ask for it again (unless they clear their browser cache/history).

    This is also kind of blocked until Apple decides what they are going to do with Mobile Safari. That represents a large portion of mobile browsers and currently has 0 support for notifications of any kind.

  • Vanilla Forums
    Vanilla Forums

    I could see us allowing push notifications via browser one day.

    We're not currently staffed to develop and maintain native apps.

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