[bbmtna]

Hi everyone.

I've been a member to crackberry for a little over a year now. Typically I've always viewed the site and forums via my PlayBook. Heck for most of the time I usually only ever pressed 'Like' or 'thanks'.
Enter my z10. Since I've purchased my new phone I found myself using the phone to view the posts and forums on this site. Heck it was so much faster then the PlayBook and I found it to be more comfortable (not to mention, I can't put this thing down).
Then comes along this app, and wow! Well done and kudos to you all for this first version. You've just added to my crackberry addiction and between this app and the z10 I've become more active in the forums, something like 15 posts in a week. I know that doesn't compare to others but when I've only done maybe 30ish in over a year I can safely call that progress. I do know that the app has only been release since this morning but it hasn't left my active frames since I downloaded it.
This is a great app and u should be proud of it.

Thank you for turning this casual reader into something more.

Ps. Sorry for the rambling, I tend to get off topic, I just can't contain my excitement.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[tbkfan]

Beautiful! Just needs a few minor tweaks. Would be nice to see shortcuts to first and last posts for example. But killer app. My new favorite.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[wilson1137]

great app, very smooth and fast and now i can take crackberry wherever i go thanks CB team

[pmccartney]

Are you guys counting the number of downloads the CB App is getting?


Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[Marcus Adolfsson]

Are you guys counting the number of downloads the CB App is getting?


Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

Sure blackberry world provides full reporting. When we hit a benchmark we will write a blog post.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[askzeke]

Great example of how to program for the Z10. This app is super fast, fluid and the graphic layout is excellent. A couple of minor tweaks and it will be perfect. Well done guys!

[stickyiki]

Great Cascades app!

Is there any way to search through the Forums?

[Zach Gilbert]

I've noticed that when you login to your CB account with the the actual user name and password it hangs and doesn't go further. Logging in via Facebook and the other login options work without a hitch.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[stevejb]

Hey, one of the slickest apps I've downloaded so far.

One thing either missing or I can't find is the ability to edit my own posts.

Currently adding a new reply each time I need to add or correct something.

S

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[thatplaybookguy]

is there a way to comment on post directly from the app. Steve, If you hit the edit button, scroll down and then you can edit your post.

[pmccartney]

I've noticed that when you login to your CB account with the the actual user name and password it hangs and doesn't go further. Logging in via Facebook and the other login options work without a hitch.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

Odd - This is how I logged in, on the Beta and ver 1.0, without any problem.

[drcrane]

One thing a little buggy to me was that when I tried logging in with an invalid username it sat infinitely with the login button saying please wait.

It worked fine though once I used my correct username.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[BBThemes]

hey, so i figured id weigh in with my feedback, wanted to use it all day first so i wasnt just going off first impressions.
What i will say is a few things might be simply my choice, but a few other things are either MIA or not clear to me at least, however i love the app, so in no way take the things i list negatively, simply as constructive feedback

ok, so firstly i`ll echo the posting on blogs and viewing PM`s and other bits of the profile section such as likes and thanks, but i wont dwell on it as theyve already been covered by others.

1) The highlight colour for the UI elements seems to be the standard blue, naturally theyd `flow` alot better if they were the CB orange.
2) the comments on the blog section doesnt work right. it shows the total comments when viewing the article, however when you view the actual comments there are entries missing. from looking it seems only the main comments show, and replies to other comments do not.
3) It seems odd to have refresh as an ancilliary option in the blogs view (home view), i think it would make more sense from a user standpoint if it was in the actionbar as an option, not an extra option hidden on the side.
4) Sometimes when stuff is loading, theres no loading spinner, or in the case of the shop (which i presume is a webpage loaded in) theres no loading bar. this gives the user no feedback and can leave the impression of either non-responsiveness or lag, when actually all is fine its just loading. some user feedback such as a loading circle/bar would let the user know their action has been recognised, rather than maybe the person tapping the icon again wondering why nothing is happening. again this is more in the inital loading and the shop, however can happen in the forums too from time to time.
5) theres no `sticky` sections in the forums, so the main items people post to they need to scroll through pages to find.
6) moving from one page in the forums to the next and back seems counter inutiative, the scrolling down to go forwards is a great idea, but then is killed by scrolling up not sending you back a page but refreshing the current page instead. personally id love to see the fwd/back option i the action bar, or maybe even a page picker, as if it loaded me into page1 of the wallpaper thread for example, i hardly feel like hitting forward a thousand times to get to the latest pages. yes i realise you can set the forum to open to the last unread, but some options there would be most handy.
7) replying in the forum, it only writes a new reply at the end of the thread, theres no way to reply and quote, which is often needed to givencontext to what your saying.
8) likes dont show correctly. take for example The 'I got my Z10' thread post 2 in this thread, i have 12 likes, it shows on the desktop as 3 named people and 9 others. on the app it shows as 3 likes. im guessing this is to do with how it parses the `9 others` statement somehow.
9) some of the forum icons dont match up. for example in the BB10 hub forum view, for BB10 apps i have a canadian flag, for games i have a globe icon for side loading i have an android phone icon, whereas they are different on the desktop view, this seems slightly odd to me.
10). id love the ability to subscribe to threads from within the app also

Thats about all i can see wrong at the moment, as i say thats just from my view, and hopefully this`ll all be added so we get some full forums functionality.

hope this feedback helps

[raremage]

Love the functionality but I've had several times where the app has crashed while in the forums. It still happens after a reboot.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[Steelerstitch]

What has hurt BlackBerry the most is the drop in perceived brand value in what is one of the most lucrative smartphone markets in the world, the U.S., where the company has now lost its 3rd position to Windows Phone. According to Strategy Analytics, Q4 2012 saw Windows Phone make good market share gains on some high-profile smartphone launches to overtake BB for the first time ever. BlackBerry will he hoping to reverse the losses now that BB10 is out but delays in launching the first BB10 smartphones on U.S. soil is going to make it much tougher. According to the company, the first BB10 device won’t be launched in the U.S. until mid-March at least.

In such a scenario, where BlackBerry will be looking to push its latest smartphones is to its installed subscriber base. Despite falling market share, BlackBerry has been able to retain most of its 80 million subscriber base. It is on the back of its huge subscriber base that the company has been able to sustain cash flow through steady high-margin carrier fees despite reporting net losses for three quarters straight. And with BB nowhere near its peaks of customer appeal, RIM will be primarily looking to get this installed base to upgrade to BB10 initially.

[CJH_]

Now my pic isn't showing in my posts. Also, how would I PM a forum member or view their posts when I click on their account?

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[pmccartney]

What has hurt BlackBerry the most is the drop in perceived brand value in what is one of the most lucrative smartphone markets in the world, the U.S., where the company has now lost its 3rd position to Windows Phone. According to Strategy Analytics, Q4 2012 saw Windows Phone make good market share gains on some high-profile smartphone launches to overtake BB for the first time ever. BlackBerry will he hoping to reverse the losses now that BB10 is out but delays in launching the first BB10 smartphones on U.S. soil is going to make it much tougher. According to the company, the first BB10 device won’t be launched in the U.S. until mid-March at least.

In such a scenario, where BlackBerry will be looking to push its latest smartphones is to its installed subscriber base. Despite falling market share, BlackBerry has been able to retain most of its 80 million subscriber base. It is on the back of its huge subscriber base that the company has been able to sustain cash flow through steady high-margin carrier fees despite reporting net losses for three quarters straight. And with BB nowhere near its peaks of customer appeal, RIM will be primarily looking to get this installed base to upgrade to BB10 initially.

What does this have to do with the new CB App?




Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[term101]

Excellent app! Incredibly smooth and fast!

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[tw_]

Great how the application makes use of cascades!

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

[Marcus Adolfsson]

I'd love to know more about the implementation under the hood.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

Yes all the articles (except for article images) are locally downloaded to the device. A tiny SQLite database stores an article index and the content.

Upon launching the app, or every five minutes while the app is opened, it pings our servers and downloads a small gzipped index of the latest articles as well as the count of any unread forum threads. For each new or modified article it then downloads the article content in the background.

[Marcus Adolfsson]

ok guys...what took you so long to get this app up? The CB app was the first app I looked for when I bought my Z10 on Tuesday morning. I downloaded N4BB app because there wasn't any CB app. Many thanks for the app, and very happy it's finally here.

We could have pushed a basic RSS reader out pretty quickly, but getting forums support built in was the #1 priority for us and took two weeks longer then planned. Very happy to v1.0 shipping now though.

[Marcus Adolfsson]

I've noticed that when you login to your CB account with the the actual user name and password it hangs and doesn't go further. Logging in via Facebook and the other login options work without a hitch.

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

If it hangs, it may still you login after you hit the cancel button. If you enter the forums section and see "My Threads" you are logged in.

[Marcus Adolfsson]

Hey, one of the slickest apps I've downloaded so far.

One thing either missing or I can't find is the ability to edit my own posts.

Thanks! Editing posts coming in the next release.

[Marcus Adolfsson]

Now my pic isn't showing in my posts. Also, how would I PM a forum member or view their posts when I click on their account?

Posted using CrackBerry App on BB10

PM coming. We want that fully integrated to the Hub (like Facebook and Twiiter) and that API isn't available yet). Expanded user profiles are on the roadmap as well.

[Marcus Adolfsson]

Thanks for the detailed write-up! Will try to respond to each feedback below.

1) The highlight colour for the UI elements seems to be the standard blue, naturally theyd `flow` alot better if they were the CB orange.

Will give that a try, easy to change. Cascades has no default highlight mechanism, so I custom wrote one that matches the highlights in the Hub (border first, followed by fill a few hundred milliseconds later). Only concern is that I can't change the "selected" color above the tabs and in the menus, so it is good to keep some blue around for consistency.

2) the comments on the blog section doesnt work right. it shows the total comments when viewing the article, however when you view the actual comments there are entries missing. from looking it seems only the main comments show, and replies to other comments do not.

Fixed. The next release will have proper nested comments.

3) It seems odd to have refresh as an ancilliary option in the blogs view (home view), i think it would make more sense from a user standpoint if it was in the actionbar as an option, not an extra option hidden on the side.

I don't like to clutter up the action bar with features that "should just work". Ideally you should never have to refresh, as the content is pulled down every 5 minutes. In the future we will move to a full push system. You can always pull to refresh, which works pretty well.

4) Sometimes when stuff is loading, theres no loading spinner, or in the case of the shop (which i presume is a webpage loaded in) theres no loading bar. this gives the user no feedback and can leave the impression of either non-responsiveness or lag, when actually all is fine its just loading. some user feedback such as a loading circle/bar would let the user know their action has been recognised, rather than maybe the person tapping the icon again wondering why nothing is happening. again this is more in the inital loading and the shop, however can happen in the forums too from time to time.

Agreed. I am having issues with webview reporting properly that the load has completed, it seems to fire completed as soon as the load is initiated so the spinner just flashes briefly. Exploring options.

5) theres no `sticky` sections in the forums, so the main items people post to they need to scroll through pages to find.

When you load a Forums Category, you can pull down gently from the top of the list (if you pull down to far it changes into a refresh action) or use the action overflow menu to toggle between Threads/Stickies/Announcements. The Tapatalk API (which the app uses to interact with the forum servers) separates the section out like that. Will explore options of making the stickies area more prominent.

6) moving from one page in the forums to the next and back seems counter inutiative, the scrolling down to go forwards is a great idea, but then is killed by scrolling up not sending you back a page but refreshing the current page instead. personally id love to see the fwd/back option i the action bar, or maybe even a page picker, as if it loaded me into page1 of the wallpaper thread for example, i hardly feel like hitting forward a thousand times to get to the latest pages. yes i realise you can set the forum to open to the last unread, but some options there would be most handy.

The thought there was that you generally don't go backwards in a thread as much as going forward, and I wanted to the pull down to be "universal" for refresh rather than changing its functionality.

On a thread with multiple pages, if you pull down gently there is a dropdown that lets you go directly to any page, including the "Last Page". I think I can expose this control to the action bar as well, so it is more prominent

7) replying in the forum, it only writes a new reply at the end of the thread, theres no way to reply and quote, which is often needed to givencontext to what your saying.

To reply and quote, hold and press on the post you wish to quote. In the context menu click "Reply with Quote"

8) likes dont show correctly. take for example The 'I got my Z10' thread post 2 in this thread, i have 12 likes, it shows on the desktop as 3 named people and 9 others. on the app it shows as 3 likes. im guessing this is to do with how it parses the `9 others` statement somehow.

Thanks for finding this bug, looking into it.

9) some of the forum icons dont match up. for example in the BB10 hub forum view, for BB10 apps i have a canadian flag, for games i have a globe icon for side loading i have an android phone icon, whereas they are different on the desktop view, this seems slightly odd to me.

We fixed this yesterday, but the app caches those images agressivly so it may not clear for a while. One workaround is to delete and reinstall.

10). id love the ability to subscribe to threads from within the app also

Will add that functionality, as well as page to view subscribed threads.

Love the feedback, keep it coming!