Tapatalk for iOS, Android and Blackberry

[thomas]

To those of our members accessing the Japan Forum with a smartphone or another handheld device (iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android) we recommend to employ Tapatalk, an application that allows you to connect to a multitude of online forum systems such as vBulletin among many others.

Some key features are

• Photo upload
• Facebook integration
• Customisable signature
• Save images posted to the forum to your photo album
• Multiple forum systems support (one purchase gives you access to thousands of fora)
• Multiple account support
• Full screen image viewing support
• Private messaging (PM support)

You can download Tapatalk from the iTunes App Store (iOS), the Android Market and the Blackberry AppWorld.

I have been using it on iPhone 3G and 4 for over two years and I am quite content. Also, it's inexpensive at 250 Yen (iTunes Store Japan).

A few screen shots:

 

[Petaris]

Hi Thomas,

There appears to be an issue with Tapatalk and Japanese (Shift_JIS) in post titles. I posted about this in the Tapatalk forums and they asked that I have the JREF forum admin contact them. Mike Cash is also seeing this issue and I would think anyone else who uses Tapatalk with the JREF forum.

Here is the link to the thread on the Tapatalk forums: Japanese character display issue - Tapatalk Community Forum

Thanks,

 

[thomas]

Thanks, that's something I've been wanting to tackle for a long time. I have contacted the Tapatalk staff about the issue.

On our other vBulletin-based forum we use UTF-8 encoding and there are no problems whatsoever with Japanese characters on Tapatalk. Unfortunately, it is - at least according to my limited knowledge - close to impossible to change the encoding on JREF without turning most of our Japanese threads and posts into mojibake.

 

[Petaris]

Glad to know that you've already contacted them. Too bad switching over to UTF-8 isn't an option but maybe we can get Tapatalk to better support SHIFT_JIS. I hope so as its a really annoying bug.

 

[thomas]

Just a little update: allegedly Tapatalk does support Shift_JIS, the problem was on our side, so they say. Their staff will further investigate the issue.

 

[thomas]

Issue resolved!

 

[Petaris]

Cool! I'll give it a try a little later and check it out!

Thanks Thomas!

 

[thomas]

I would like to announce that in addition to Tapatalk we have also installed Forum Runner, as some people prefer their interface. I have been testing it on the iPad, and the GUI and handling are very intuitive and user-friendly.

Those on iPhone, iPad, iTouch or on Android-based devices will need to download the app from their App Stores or Market Places (I believe it is US$ 1.99 in the Apple App Store).

 

[FinancialWar]

what happened to Tapatalk, every time I tried to access Jref on tapatalk, it gives me error saying it can not connect to the server.

 

[Mike Cash]

It's fixed now. Give it a try.

 

[thomas]

Sorry about the interruption, as Mike stated, it's back and running.

 

[FinancialWar]

Thanks. .........(15 char)

 

[thomas]

We have just updated to the latest version of Tapatalk. It comes with the following updates relevant to users of the app:

1. display optimization for all native bbcode
2. push notification key in tapatalk option
3. alerts data for tapatalk user (need app support)
4. push notification for 'quote', new topic and tag

In brief: you can now receive push notifications on new posts in threads you have participated in. It works well on the iPhone.

 

[Mike Cash]

Been getting pushes a couple of days now. Really nice feature.

Now if they would eliminate that overlay at the bottom of the text input window!

 

[thomas]

I concur, Mike. I will post something to that effect to their support forum.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Mike Cash]

I already did that in a thread called "Japanese Text Input".

 

[thomas]

Just to reiterate: we have enabled Tapatalk on the Xenforo software, too.