Bladeforums and Smartphones

zatch

zatch

Joined
Sep 6, 2008
Messages
460
This may not be the right place for this, but I figured here is best.

I work a lot during the day, attending classes full time and going to work when I am not in class. Doesn't leave a lot of time for bladeforums via computer (which I usually don't bring with me though I should) :mad:. This leaves me with my Blackberry. When I had a BB Storm 2, web content wasn't too bad on the phone, but I recently upgraded to a BB Bold 9650 and viewing websites is downright painful :grumpy:.

After some searching, I realized you can view many of the subforums via an RSS reader (which I already had installed on my phone). All you need is the feed and the forumid to set it up. For instance, if you wanted to set up a feed for General Knife Discussion, it would look like this...

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/external.php?type=rss2&forumids=715

For any other sub-forum, use the same link above but replace the "715" with whatever sub-forum you like. I'll include a short list of the ones I have below. Any of the sub-forums requiring membership do not work. Also, some like whine and cheese did not work for me. I haven't had any other problems though. This works really nicely for some of the selling/trading forums. No need to log in and wait for the browser when you can scan through your feed list quickly.

I use an application called XPRSS on my Bold - works very nicely. Used Viigo on the Storm when I had it. Worked pretty well too.

Forumid numbers

General - 715
Knife Reviews/Testing - 794
Tech Support - 679
Gadgets/Gear - 731
ESEE Subforum - 816
For Sale Production - 746
Knife Trading - 757

To find a forumid for a specific subforum, click on the link to that subforum and it should be in the URL. You can also combine them into one feed by separating each with commas (I have this set up for the sale/trading subforums).

It can be a pain to set up at first, but once it is, its much easier to read posts via RSS than through a slow browser.

Hopefully someone finds this useful! :thumbup:
 
Work like a charm on my iphone 4.. since there is no mobile skin that i knoow of or tapatalk.. and im a major RSS reader.. this is working very well.

Thanks!
 
Whoa, that rss stuff is way beyond my comp. knowledge. I've been visiting BF with my android incredible and it's almost as easy as my laptop or pc.
 
I do bf.c just fine using safari on my iPhone. Doing that right now, in fact. It works fine for me.

But, there's always room for improvement. Spark is well-aware of this too. He wants to offer better options for mobile users and is actively researching this. The prolbem is that the currently-popular approaches have security concerns.
 
After playing with the RSS and BF for a few hours, seem like it dosn't update like i expected. I read the posts that i got, refreshed, and saw no update on some forums, went to check in a normal browser and there was new posts the RSS didn't get..

im always in my RSS reader anyway but looks like the browser way is better so far. and with the potential problem/security of Tapatalk, i don't think we can hope better than a mobile skin. (BushcraftUSA did not seem to care about the security risk but i can understand a mod being carefull)

Back to safari for BF.
 
Don't know how it all works----but the Shotgun World shotgun forum is the absolute best forum on my Android phone---it defaults to big print that fits in the screen.

All the other forums(including this one) are so small I need my reading glasses --when I + them up then I'm sliding back and forth and I lose my place---sucks.
 
Safari/iPhone is working fine for me too. The more time you spend the more you get used to the quirks.
 
Thanks for the replies. Some of the newer androids and the iphones that I have used, the browser works quite nicely. I know there are some that use RSS readers throughout the day and thought it might be useful.
 
DocBurN said:
After playing with the RSS and BF for a few hours, seem like it dosn't update like i expected. I read the posts that i got, refreshed, and saw no update on some forums, went to check in a normal browser and there was new posts the RSS didn't get..

im always in my RSS reader anyway but looks like the browser way is better so far. and with the potential problem/security of Tapatalk, i don't think we can hope better than a mobile skin. (BushcraftUSA did not seem to care about the security risk but i can understand a mod being carefull)

Back to safari for BF.
Click to expand...

What subforums were you trying to get? What program were you using? I found that one or two feeds would just simply not work in some programs...For instance, in the Blackberry Reader, I could not get the trade/knives sub-forum to work, though it works on every other reader I encountered.

A mobile skin would be sweet!
 
Gollnick said:
I do bf.c just fine using safari on my iPhone.
Click to expand...
While its true that the standard version of BFC can be viewed on the standard iPhone web browser, its not what I consider an optimal solution. There's a reason for the existence of mobile skins or special apps for viewing webforums on smartphones. ;)

The prolbem is that the currently-popular approaches have security concerns.
Click to expand...
Not sure what security problems a mobile skin causes, but there was some talk of security issues with Tapatalk on the other thread. I thought it had been pretty well established that the know security issues with that app were either long ago fixed or unfounded rumor. :confused:

In any case, any webforum, no matter what the software involved, is suseptable to the pathetic losers who like to hack website for the perverted jollies of ruining things for other people. There is not and never will be a perfect defence against this so while the goal of providing the best security available is a laudable goal, it should not prevent us from doing anything about improving the smartphone experience on the forum.
 
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