- 14 Mar 2002
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Dear valued Members,
we have come to the conclusion that it is in the best interest of the Japan Forum and its members to remove Tapatalk support as soon as possible. This decision has not been taken lightly, but we - along with a growing number of other webmasters - feel that over the past years Tapatalk has become more and more intrusive, often blatantly disregarding member privacy.
What is Tapatalk?
Tapatalk is an application that allows members to browse and participate in online fora via mobile devices.
Why have we decided to drop the application?
Unfortunately, over the years the company's business practices and the direction development has taken have been to the disadvantage of not only webmasters and forum hosts, but also forum members.
So how can we access the forum via mobile devices?
The current style and the new style we are going to adopt in the very near future are fully responsive. That means that the forum display, in particular the navigation menu, automatically adapts to the screen size of the device used.
We do apologise to those who enjoy the functionality of Tapatalk, but beg you to consider the security and privacy concerns the application raises, not to mention its technical limitations and the company's dubious business practices. I invite you to try out the mobile version of our current (and shortly updated) mobile style.
Downside
The only potential downside of removing Tapatalk is the lack of instant push notifications. The forum does send out notification emails, however, they are not always instant. If this is a concern to some of our current Tapatalk users we shall be glad to look into the possibility of installing add-ons that allow us to send out push notifications.
Screen shots
The screenshots below have all been taken on an iPhone 6+. I also tested it on an old (and, in comparison, tiny) iPhone 4, with the same results.
The login screen on the new style
The forum index with forum groups and fora
Thread view
Thread post
Text editor
Personal experiences
I browse the forum via mobile devices (iPhone, iPad Mini, iPad) whenever I'm away from my home station and haven't used Tapatalk in over a year. Fortunately, we no longer need to rely on a cumbersome third-party application in order to provide for a mobile-friendly experience.
A few months ago, we dropped Tapatalk support on our sister site where in fact more members than on JREF had been using the application, and we received not a single complaint, just positive feedback.
Conclusion
We strongly advise anyone to remove Tapatalk from their devices, too.
we have come to the conclusion that it is in the best interest of the Japan Forum and its members to remove Tapatalk support as soon as possible. This decision has not been taken lightly, but we - along with a growing number of other webmasters - feel that over the past years Tapatalk has become more and more intrusive, often blatantly disregarding member privacy.
What is Tapatalk?
Tapatalk is an application that allows members to browse and participate in online fora via mobile devices.
Why have we decided to drop the application?
Unfortunately, over the years the company's business practices and the direction development has taken have been to the disadvantage of not only webmasters and forum hosts, but also forum members.
- Updates are inconvenient and infrequent.
- Tapatalk support is poor and slow. Critical threads on their own forum are frequently closed or deleted.
- Tapatalk has in the past opened several possible security holes without alerting webmasters of the vulnerability for months. This vulnerability could have allowed attackers to gain access to members' credentials.
- Tapatalk started to divert users to login through their own instead of the forum's login function.
- The Tapatalk search function is now diluted with results from other websites.
- Tapatalk keeps removing/disregarding usergroup permissions.
- By default, Tapatalk uploads images to their own servers; this has been turned off on JREF => shady business practice!
- Forum registration via Tapatalk is a potential gateway for spammers (and has therefore already been disabled on JREF).
- Tapatalk keeps adding annoying popups to the site which have to be taken care of after each upgrade => shady business practice!
- Tapatalk seems to be keeping a copy of each forum's content on their servers. They have not asked permission for this and we do not condone that.
- Last but not least, many site features (articles, blogs, reviews, and media) can not be accessed through Tapatalk.
So how can we access the forum via mobile devices?
The current style and the new style we are going to adopt in the very near future are fully responsive. That means that the forum display, in particular the navigation menu, automatically adapts to the screen size of the device used.
We do apologise to those who enjoy the functionality of Tapatalk, but beg you to consider the security and privacy concerns the application raises, not to mention its technical limitations and the company's dubious business practices. I invite you to try out the mobile version of our current (and shortly updated) mobile style.
Downside
The only potential downside of removing Tapatalk is the lack of instant push notifications. The forum does send out notification emails, however, they are not always instant. If this is a concern to some of our current Tapatalk users we shall be glad to look into the possibility of installing add-ons that allow us to send out push notifications.
Screen shots
The screenshots below have all been taken on an iPhone 6+. I also tested it on an old (and, in comparison, tiny) iPhone 4, with the same results.
The login screen on the new style
The forum index with forum groups and fora
Thread view
Thread post
Text editor
Personal experiences
I browse the forum via mobile devices (iPhone, iPad Mini, iPad) whenever I'm away from my home station and haven't used Tapatalk in over a year. Fortunately, we no longer need to rely on a cumbersome third-party application in order to provide for a mobile-friendly experience.
A few months ago, we dropped Tapatalk support on our sister site where in fact more members than on JREF had been using the application, and we received not a single complaint, just positive feedback.
Conclusion
We strongly advise anyone to remove Tapatalk from their devices, too.