Originally Posted by jeffreyt

Unfortunately, I deleted the app from my iPhone after 2 days. Too much real estate used for ads. No other app I use has that many ads and it really makes the app unusable. Clearly, you deserve to get ad revenue on a free app, but the implementation is the worst I have seen. No offense intended.

Originally Posted by freelance

I agree with this. The app definitely feels it escape earlier than it should have. I have worked in this area for a few years, albeit with news sites, and mobile devices need a different approach - this still feels like it is using a big screen approach and crushing it down.

Some general thoughts:
- The content space is *much* smaller than it should be, and the workflow needs rethinking. You are selling ads but it shouldn't look like that is your primary intent (even if it is as we all have to make a living )
- The controls like the back button, pagination, etc. should get out of the way when it's not needed, look at the NYTimes app for an example of how this should be done.
- For me the ads turn up some distance before the content and that is just bad psychology at several levels and really should be fixed.
- The ads then just sit there taking up screen space. I would suggest they foldaway after the viewer has been on a page for a while but that might not be workable on a forum where the content isn't as dense so the reader moves faster.
- Lose the poster sidebar and move that information elsewhere.
- Likewise the topic header. Do people really need to know what the topic is once they start to read it? The sense of the original topic seldom survives beyond the first page anyway.

I understand that the app is a work in progress but purely from a usability point of view I think it has a long way to go (I am aware that this is all personal opinion). I suggest the designers go away and look at news content sites (ok - I'm biased ) to see what can be done to maximise the real estate while maintaining advertising space and usability. The underlying engine may work happily but as it stands most people are not going to get past the layout and design.

Originally Posted by Aisle Seat H

Absolutely.

While it is great to have an FT app. it is not very user friendly at the moment.

When one usually goes to FT many/most of us navigate there via a favorite saved in our browser, with one click being able to visit our forums.

You can't do this on the app, meaning that to get to the forums you have to go through the long and annoying process of clicking 'Home', then 'Forums', then the Category (e.g. Airline progs), and then finally the Forum itself.

This is far, far too clumsy and time consuming.

Also, don't know about the rest of you, but for me being able to access my favorite forums/pages is vastly more important to me than than accessing the Threads I subscribe to: yet on the app I have a button the latter but have no such option to do the former.

Please thus add a 'Favorites' feature cos, despite loving FT, I won't be using the app much until this happens - the app just isn't an enjoyable experience at present.

Allowing you to make one of the Forums your 'Homepage' on the app. would also be great (for all the same reasons).

And yes, too many ads. Far too many.
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Originally Posted by mattk

The page numbers for threads over 1000 pages are shown as 1...

I agree with the other poster here about being able to view threads backwards, perhaps this can be a setting that can be switched on and off.

Generally as an app it's a good first attempt but needs more work. There's a lot of good points here which if you can incorporate all of these would make it a worthy paid app as opposed to free.

Originally Posted by KIXman

Dunno if it's just me but if I reply to a post in a subscribed thread, my subscription to that thread is cancelled.