After many long nights, iNS, Newschoolers for the iPhone is finally done. Apple doesn't provide a nice format to talk about the details of an app. As an alternative, below is a list of everything I can recall about iNS, even some of the nitty gritty. You're welcome to shoot me a PM if you still have a question. I'll throw it up on this blog post.What iNS DoesiNS currently supports the basic functionality of the main forums. The main forums are, at minimum, Ski Gabber, Non-Ski Gabber, Site Discussion, Gear Talk, Media & Arts, Buy/Sell/Trade, The Ski Show, and Movie Trailers. Regionals and cult forums are currently not yet implemented. The cult forums should be available in the next release.When you first login, iNS can save your login and password. You will only have to click Login the next time iNS starts. To change your login information, enter that information and hit login. iNS will check to see if the login or password matches what was stored previously. iNS will ask to save the new information if the login or password do not match.The picture below shows the Ski Gabber forum.
The Ski Gabber image shows a list of threads. Thread titles that appear in orange, such as "The Ski Show - BRAND NEW Tuesday NIGHT 9-11 pm", are stickied threads. Thread titles in white are normal threads. Each thread listing tells how long ago the last reply was, who made the reply, and how many pages are in that thread.The Create Thread button at the bottom of the window allows you to start a new thread. More on that below. The Main Forums button at the top allows you go to back to the list of main forums (Ski Gabber, Non-Ski Gabber, etc.)
The picture above shows an individual post. The post contains the user name, user bling, number of posts, number of posts rank, and the date of the post. For users with a gold coin, I haven't added that graphic yet. The color of the strip behind the name, in this case red, is the user's rank. The red strip means a mod. Check the Official n00b Guide to NS for more info on that.The threads also show quoted text with information on who is quoting and when the quoted text was posted. Quoted text can have images in it. Likewise, posts can also have images in them. Links will show up in a highlighted color. Currently, user's are unable to click on links to follow them into Safari and are unable to zoom in on images. That should be added in a future version of 1.x.In the thread image above, Replies Page 1 is shown. Scrolling to the very top of the thread shows the thread title. A user is automatically scrolled to the last page of a thread when a post has multiple pages. For instance, selecting a 10 page thread will take the user directly to the 10th page. This was done because of the smaller space issues on the iPhone vs. a full size browser. However, this operates just like Newschoolers.com. The first post on every reply page is the original post.To go to another page, scroll up or down to the page you'd like and tap it. The selected page will be loaded, all the threads on that page will appear, and iNS will scroll to the top of that page.When hitting the back button, "Site Discussion" in the above image, the list of threads in the forum will not reload. This was done because I originally did a great deal of work over the edge network. I hope to put in an option to reload the thread listing automatically when the back button is tapped. The list of threads will reload anytime a user creates a thread or replies to a thread.There are two ways to reply to a thread; by hitting the reply button in the above image or quoting a user. To quote a user, tap anywhere in the user information center (the area in red on the image above). This will bring up an image similar to the one below.
There are only two options on this window at the moment. The user may either quote a reply or cancel the reply. In the future, more options, such as karma rating, PMing, and viewing a member's full profile, will be in this section. Clicking quote reply brings up a keyboard with the quoted information in a bubble. At the present time, users are not able to edit the text they are quoting. I don't expect to be able to add functionality to pick which text is quoted for v1.x.FAQ1. Does iNS come with ads?No.2. How much will upgrades be?They're free until the new NS site is out. The new site is usually out every late October/early November.3. iNS crashes/doesn't work. What now?PM me. I'm more than happy to help.4. I have a suggestion.PM me.5. What will be in the next release and when will it be?I hope to add cult forums and my threads next. I'm shooting for late February/early March, but that's based on how much time my real job takes up. You can follow @allgreyarea on Twitter if you get antsy. That's all. If you have any questions, PM them or put them in the comments section. I'll keep updating this blog post to keep as much as possible in one location.