By Deborah Armstrong, 29 December, 2013
Forum
iOS and iPadOS
A while back, an app developer posted a request for ideas. He wanted to know what sort of apps blind users were desiring.
At the time, I had no ideas; I was still exploring the vast world of apps.
But today, I have one. If such an app exists already, please reply. If you like this idea, reply as well. If you know an app developer, please forward my post.
I struggle with the interfaces for both Google groups and Yahoo groups. Yet I am a member of many internet mailing lists on each.
And I hate clogging up my inbox with all the traffic they generate. The ViPhone group for example, is wonderful, but I had to stop reading it in my inbox, because it kept me from often responding quickly to important incoming mail.
So what I want is a readerfor groups that functions more like an old-style internet news reader. In bygone days, when modems were slow, a news reader was optimized to show you just what you needed, when you needed it. And because the universe was text-based in those days, there was no additional clutter, like their is with so many web forums today: excess verbage about each post you have to wade through using a screen reader.
Anyway, my ideal reader would ask me to supply my credentials once and save them. It would log in to my group, and show me a list of all the posts. The list would contain just the user name and subject, with a parenthesized number showing how many posts belonged to that thread. No dates, no avitars, no details about whether the poster was online -- in fact, no details that made the list harder to read with speech!
I could sort the list by date, or most popular thread, but all I'd see is the bare bones info I required to select messages for reading. The app would allow me to pick what I wanted. I would then tap Go, and it would download everything for offline reading, so I could get through all those posts while on the bus or train and not use cellular data unnecessarily. This would also permit it to work with an iPod Touch so I'd only need that wi-fi connection to grab messages to peruse offline. It would then remember what it had shown previously so when I next had some spare time and wanted to catch up with a group, it would show me new posts I had not yet seen.
There were programs for CompuServe that used to work this way, because it cost money to spend time online. Today it also costs to spend time online for some of us, but few apps are optimized to be frugal with data. There is also the problem that sometimes we are inareas that don't have cell coverage.
Advanced features could include the ability to save any post permanently, and the ability to skip to the next message with a single gesture. It could even filter out quoted messages on request, for example, only showing the first three lines that begin with an angle bracket, or the first three lines of the original message that many people append to their posts.
Anyway, I'd really like to see a GroupReader app developed. I'd happily pay for it especially if it supported other online forums. The Ubuntu forums come to mind, because I also find them extremely tedious to navigate.
And I could imagine such an app being useful for the sighted as well. Being able to read everything offline has got to be handy, and being able to select just what you need to read ahead of time should be useful for everyone too.
What are other members in this community's thoughts?
--Debee
Comments
seeking app for google groups
Seeking apps for google groups
I like the idea as well. But
Nice idea, but may I also suggest a forum reader?