Tapatalk?

I'm a member of several online forums, some using vBulletin, some Zetaboards, etc.

Today I got a "new topic" email notice on my Zetaboard forum, but the notice came from Tapatalk.

Tapatalk?

I checked, and found that Tapatalk has been adding support for various forum platforms, like phpBB3, vBulletin, xenForo, IPBoard, Simple Machines Forum, MyBB, bbPress, Kunena, Vanilla, ASP Playground, and Drupal. Last year Tapatalk added Zetaboards.

Tapatalk makes web forums more "usable" for smartphone users.

But when I clicked the link in my email notice from Tapatalk, it turns out the entire Zeta forum has been absorbed into Tapatalk.com. New screen appearance, etc. I have to log in to Tapatalk to access the Zeta forum contents.

Does this sound familiar to you modern guys who use smartphones? Is this "takeover" going to happen to BCF and vBulletin?

Thanks.
Tom M.

Hope not.

I have a hard time reading stuff on my smart phone.

David

I use the tapatalk app on my phone and on my ipad - I find it easy and good for those platforms. On my ipad (but not my iphone) if I click on a link it will sometimes kick me out of the app - which is obviously annoying - but, on the whole still much quicker than waiting for a page to load in safari or chrome. I have probably 8 forums on the app but only really read two or three.

On my laptop however I still use chrome for all the aforementioned forums.

Hi JP - I'm glad Tapatalk provides smartphone users smoother access to forums. Folks are using smartphones more, and laptops/desktops less.

My worry is that Tapatalk will actually "take over" the forums. In my Zetaboard example, if I get an email on my laptop, and click the link to my Mercedes forum (running on Zetaboard), I'm taken to Tapatalk's version of the Mercedes forum, not the original Zetaboard. It appears that the Mercedes forum is actually running on Tapatalk.com, and no longer on Zetaboard. The page layout is changed, and there are a *lot* more ads than were on the Zetaboard page.

The Tapatalk page layout may be better (?) for smartphone users (which I'm not), but it actually makes navigating the forum, viewing photos, etc. much more complex on the laptop.

Darn'd if you do. Darn'd if you don't.

TM

I use Opera on my laptop and desktop as it seems to block a lot of ads.

David

So far I have not run into Tapatalk on anything. I only use the iPad for internet much when I am away from home, and still mostly use the iMac.

I have been involved in other forums that use tapatalk. I don't really see any advantage, usually I like whatever I am used to, but most everything can do the same things, you just have to learn how to use it. Thing is I am kind of getting tired of learning how to use it. I could do everything I wanted to do with my word processing program in 95 or so, yet I have had to relearn doing the same things I already knew how to do a half a dozen times or more since then. Most of the time it isn't better, it is just different, seemingly for the sake of being different.

I used to use cars as a good example of something that improved but the controls don't change, then I got in friend's new Buick SUV. The automatic transmission lever was some joystick thing with a combination of buttons and motions to select drive, reverse etc. Our "new" cars are from the prior decade, before the mass change to screens and fobs. A/C and power windows and locks is still luxury to me.

Anyway, I use my smartphone for this forum, and it works fine. Every "app" works a little different and also eats up space on my phone, I use the web version of most things unless there is something I just can't do with it that the app can.

They re-arranged the aisles in the grocery store too! What was I talking about again?....