Lampshade - new TVTropes app for iPhone/iPad

Hi all! I've been working on an iOS TV Tropes app for a while now, and I'm hoping to put out a beta early next month. I'm looking for beta testers, and input from any devs or admins (I've already P Med Fast Eddie).

Lampshade is quite different from Pocket Tropes, the currently existing app. Pocket Tropes is based on DB Tropes, a database created from a static dump of the site. Pages will never update. You won't see pages added after DB Tropes was created. There are no page images, no pages for works or examples, no WMG or Crowners.

Lampshade works on a different principle. It takes the regular desktop site and reformats it for mobile viewing. You can see page images, examples, etc., plus spoilers finally work on mobile. You can save pages for offline viewing or save them as bookmarks instead if you always want a fresh version. Right now the forums, YKTTW, and some other areas aren't rendered and open in an external Web View as you would see them in Safari (but without leaving the app), but eventually I plan to add forum browsing and posting, page editing, and more.

I've reached out to Fast Eddie to ask about integrating ads (sorry, I want to make them unobtrusive but app users shouldn't be taking up the site's bandwidth without contributing to ad revenue) and implementing a better search. Right now Lampshade supports iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad on iOS 5 and 6, with support for 7 to come. Anyone interested in beta testing?

Here are some pics of what it looks like now: http://imgur.com/a/paX8m

Just figured I'd let you know there's a TV Tropes app for Android under the same name

Darnit! I'm not associated with the Android Lampshade app, though it looks to have basically identical functionality. Looks like it was only released in May, which explains how I missed it - I started working on my app back in September 2012, and it was on hiatus when this came out. I did all my searching to make sure the name was unique probably around December or January.

Now I have to come up with a new name :(

It's actually from before then, I remember having used it sometime last year, May is just when the latest release was. And I realize you're not associated with it, which is why I wanted to point it out, so no one else gets confused :P

Yes, you're right, looks like it was first launched in May _2012_. No idea how I missed it then, I was aware of Android Tropes and Droid Tropes.

It's on my phone. I don't know why, though. It's aggravating to use.

What are the things that aggravate you about Lampshade (the existing Droid app, not the iOS-app-formerly-to-be-named-Lampshade)? The negatives I'm seeing in the reviews seem to be mostly that pages fail to load, updates break saved pages, and nothing works when the developer's site goes down. Though my app takes a similar path of formatting pages with custom javascript and CSS, none of that should really be an issue; saved pages are saved on disk as HTML with the custom formatting already applied, the custom scripts and styling files are also saved on disk and only updated when the app launches; if the update fails it falls back to the copies saved on disk. It's become my preferred way of browsing the wiki over the last few weeks.

I'm brainstorming new names, right now I'm thinking Crowning Moments or Wiki Words. Name aside, anyone interested in beta testing just say so here and I'll PM you when the time comes; I'm looking for users running iOS 5, 6, and the 7 beta (though the latter might get the app beta a little bit later as I work on iOS 7 support).

The biggest thing, other than crashing and general failure when saving pages, is that if I'm halfway down a page, for example, and I go to a new page, I'm halfway done that page.

It's unbelievably aggravating.

I'm 99% sure neither app is (currently) officially supported by the wiki. You use them at your own risk.

I don't use it. I let it sit because I'm too lazy to axe it.

Any possiblity of a non-Andoid/iphone app for luddites like me who have an 08 era phone.

Ok, new name! ThirdLaw. For sufficiently advanced troping.

edited 28th Aug '13 10:47:22 PM by dysfunction

When's it come out??????

Time stamps exist for a reason. If you looked at them, you'd reach the same conclusion I did; the whole project never went anywhere.

Yeah, this thread is dead. If someone writes a new app, make a new thread. I'm locking this one up.