Mumsnet, your app is crap

[dianettey]

It doesn't display the £ symbol. Instead I get &pounds78. It doesn't make for a pleasant reading experience.

Furthermore, the emoticon, which in its original form is a thing of beauty, just looks a bit sad. The emoticon just looks a bit shocked, the is just a bit tired, the looks like a tyre, and is no longer wine but a frigging cocktail glass.

You can't click through to the topic when reading a thread, the active convos go on forever and I hate the advert at the bottom making the amount of reading space available even tinier.

[SizzleSazz]

I use the mobile site on my iPhone and its fab. Have a back button and can scroll up whilst typing. As far as I can tell the only thing it doesn't have is the emoticon clickies, but I can easily type then in

[SizzleSazz]

And no adverts.....

[tiptapkeyboard]

I deleted the ap because it was shit!

[tiptapkeyboard]

Can't upload photos on asp

[NandH]

I've only ever used the mobile site, it's always worked and been fine. I don't think I'll even try the app now!!!

[TigerFeet]

1, 576, 299 sticky threads at the top if active convos

active convos jumps about all over the place

can't figure out how to access user profiles, photos etc

android, samsung galaxy s3

will be going back to the mobile site fir now :)

[DrinkFeckArseGirls]

Oh and can we pointlessly ask have Unanswered messages topic on the app?

[IfYoureHappyAndYouKnowIt]

No access to local mn pages on app.

The Just Giving thing is extremely irritating.

[Thistledew]

Has anyone else found that in the last week or so they have had trouble posting from their iPhone using the app?

I have had 3 or 4 posts that have told me "message sent" but my post never appears on the thread. On the other hand, on one occasion I managed to post the same message twice.

[Tee2072]

Use the Mobile site.

If less and less use the App, maybe they'll actually fix it.

[prettybird]

Because of this thread, I now have 62 apps needing updated on my iPod.

I can't do an "update all" as I'm still on an old version of the app which does work even if there are a few inconveniences (eg not being able to see the thread once you're in "add message")

[ProtegeMoi]

Agree with everyone else about the crappness of the app.

And I'm another willing to pay for an app if all the rubbish bits go.

Please please please sort it out.

[ElphabaTheGreen]

The reason I would like to be able to use the app without wanting to hurl my iPhone out the window rather than the mobile site is because the position of the 'Post Message' button is in a jolly awkward position on an otherwise excellent mobile site (most mobile sites are shitty mc crap pants, but MN is really rather good). Had I accidentally hit 'post message' by accident, instead of re-positioning the cursor as I had intended, just one more time mid-post on the mobile site, my phone probably would have ended up in the azaleas underneath my bedroom window. The number of my posts that the (cr)app has just inexplicably lost, eaten, mutilated, or otherwise pulverised, though, is starting to make me reconsider returning to the mobile site.

I have no requests other than:

1. Stop the bastard thing from eating my posts. It particularly relishes the extra long ones that I've put a lot of thought into and then I want to cry and scream when they inexplicably disappear, or fail to appear on the thread.
   
2. Sort the emoticons
   
   That is all.

[NetworkGuy]

Been a while since I tried the (Android) app, because of several of the problems highlighted by 50shadesofbrown but I can recommend the Dolphin web browser for Android users, but must warn against using 'user agent' = 'desktop' (because the web site will display with really wide pages and that's been made for a laptop or similar width screen, so you'd be scrolling left and right to read each line in posts).

I use 'desktop' mode for some other web sites like NewsNow.co.uk hence my note...

(NB The Android default browser seems to work fine as well, and also showed the MNHQ staff posts highlighted when I tried it just now on a Samsung Galaxy Ace {old-ish phone, with a 480x320 pixel screen, a bit bigger than the Galaxy Y or Galaxy Europa... OK, too, on the Europa})

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello. We're just going to re-post our earlier post about the app, with even more abject apologies...

We're aware of all-round crapness of the app - and we're sorry. Site Stuff is full of threads of us apologising for all the current glitches with the app and asking for your patience while we try to get them fixed.

We're afraid that we still need your patience. It's a complicated project that's not entirely within our control (yet) here at MNHQ but I can promise you that we are striding around waving big sticks and generally doing all we can to get the app de-crapped.

In the meantime, you may prefer to use the mobile version of the site (search for mumsnet.com) - which is pretty much glitch-free.

[NetworkGuy]

Perhaps best to withdraw the App(s) until further notice - every new user of a smartphone who has been using MN for a while could be tempted to download and try (and then find problems)... Each month will be new users finding old problems and posting, perhaps in different sections, and then feel underwhelmed if they come across a thread such as this, when it 'resurfaces' into the top 20 (and I doubt lots look at Site Stuff anyway, so are more likely to 'vent' on _chat or elsewhere).

One other thing which users should remember (and which MN staff should remind users about now and then) is that there are clearly at least 2 (Android and iPhone/iPad) Apps so when mentioning problems it helps clarify what you are using...

I saw mention a while back that text between < and > may be hidden on iPhones < but I don't have one to kno for sure > but it wasn't immediately clear that it was an iPhone user reporting it.

Same true for browsers - OK, Apple users mostly use Safari but can use Firefox and Chrome, while Windows / Android users can use perhaps a wider range of browsers, so technical problems are best reported with a bit more detail (or willingness to find out if some Tech staff asks)...


(Sorry, just that having spent some 10 years in an IT support department for students, academic, and non-academic staff, with a wide range of abilities, it was always worth stressing the benefits in problem solving of knowing plenty about the software in use and what was attempted, as well as what seemed to go wrong {especially as it was sometimes not wrong at all, but an assumption of what was meant to have happened that was in error})

[Selks]

I've raised issues about the app for months too (mainly about threads being repeated on a loop), and nothing is done apart from a message saying 'we're looking into it'.
Well it's clearly not a high priority for MNHQ.

[Selks]

The mobile version is always offered up as a reasonable alternative. Well the mobile version has issues of its own which is why I don't use it.

I find it hard to believe that MNHQ is actually bothered to try to sort the app out at all.

[HelenMumsnet]

@Selks

The mobile version is always offered up as a reasonable alternative. Well the mobile version has issues of its own which is why I don't use it.

I find it hard to believe that MNHQ is actually bothered to try to sort the app out at all.

Selks, do please let us know what irks you on the mobile version - and we'll try to fix up.

And believe me, we couldn't be bothering more about trying to fix the app but some aspects of being able to do the fix involve stuff we have no immediate control over.

We can promise you that this infuriates us about 10 quadrillion times more than it infuriates you!

[NetworkGuy]

I suspect it's a higher priority than you think, but I'd guess there are a number of design changes that may have been needed to provide for ('standard') web and (multiple) App access to the site content...

I'm looking at some of the challenges myself for a project which won't have thousands or hundreds of thousands of users adding content, but just searching content, and that's awkward enough for just Android and iPhone (and I'm waiting to see if Windows phones take off, let alone an alternative from Mozilla/Firefox!). My web content is already on it's Nth rethink and the cost of buying in technical expertise isn't cheap, either!

[NetworkGuy]

(my comment was also a reply to Selks)

[nancerama]

Please, please do something with the iPhone app, or just bin it.

I'm sick of threads crashing (date of your anniversary one seems to be booby trapped for me today). The random £ symbol and the unworkable PMs are just a pain.

[CelticPromise]

There are 79 stickies in Active Convos on the Android app I'm using. 79!!!

Just sayin...

[madamy]

celticpromise, I had this until I read on a thread that if you log out then back in, all but the most recent ones vanish. Much better now but a bit annoying as you need to keep doing it!

[CelticPromise]

Thanks madamy that's an improvement