I was wondering - has any discussion gone into the possibility of making a Subetan mobile app? These days it seems like almost everything has its own app. I know there is a mobile version of the website, but it is pretty limited in my experience and probably outdated. It seems to me that fresh interest could be garnered in Subeta with an app, and I'm sure I'm not the only long time player who would enjoy the accessibility.

Anyway, I'm sure this subject has come up before, so if the idea was dismissed, could someone explain why it can't or won't be done? Costs? Expertise? Too time-consuming? Inquiring minds want to know. :)

Pretty sure it'd just be way too expensive to develop. I believe there is some interest in making the site easier to use on mobile devices, but not in the form of an app

It's been brought up continuously over the years and shot down because of cost. A well-done mobile app can cost well into the hundred of thousands once you factor in programming and testing costs and just wouldn't be feasible because of the built-up costs to build one

There's also no guarantee once the costs have gone through that subeta will break even cost wise either so...

I think it would be a good idea too!! Subeta could run more ads on the site to get more revenue coming in to afford the app. Look at snap chat...They could have filters or clothing on subeta where advertisers could post up their latest styles and trends and while people are putting clothes on their avatar they could maybe be interested in buying the actual clothes. I would love it if lisa frank wanted to create clothing for your avatars on this site!

I'm much more interested in a functional mobile version of this site than a separate smartphone app. It would be nice to experience good tablet functionality too.

No, on many, many levels.

Subeta isn't neopets which in its heyday was making revenue hand over fist. It's not backed by a big company so why would big investors care about a small site; there's no profit in large investors investing in a relatively small profit site. This isn't like neopets which was once owned by Viacom and therefore had the backing of a huge company for investors/ advertisers to consider.

Secondly, immersive advertising which is esssentially what you're suggesting is a feature I personally hated about neopets and I'd honestly hate if it became a feature on subeta. I like being able to play without being bombarded with advertisements just to play.

So, I'm still going to say no to a mobile app. I'd rather the site function well mobile than have the quality of the site affected simply to finance an app that logistically may not even make back its revenue costs to have it built.

I've actually used Subeta on my iPad (so it's just my iPad experience lol!) and it uses the desktop site. It functions fine for me, but I don't know what kind of tablet you have. Lately, the mobile site is back to it's "normal" working, with forums loading. Sometimes I might have to reload the page to get the posts to load but I have to do the same thing on desktop or face endless loading bars.

I don't really think there's anything an app could offer over a fully functional mobile friendly version of the site. I use the site on my phone A LOT in desktop mode without any real issues as it is. some things are small, but I can deal with that.

Yeah...no. No no no no no no. I would rather have the limited functionality of the mobile website than more ads. D: (I don't agree with that it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, but tbh I don't know much about app development, so even though that sounds steep to me, it could be right on the money.)

I typically do what does on my phone and request the desktop site. It isn't super easy to navigate but it's okayish. Heck, the way mobile browsers are these days, Subeta could essentially do away with the mobile version of the site altogether. It would save me an extra step, anyway. XD

Having Lisa Frank (or other brand) clothes for avatars may sound like a cute idea, but I think in actuality it would be kind of garish and seem cheap.

Desktop is working so much better on my mobile, whereas previously, it was crash and burn within a few minutes of tapping. My iPad automatically uses desktop, might be how the site interprets it (or something) because very few other websites will pull up the mobile version when using my iPad.

I can understand people wanting a mobile-specific version, just to have a streamlined Subeta. /shug

I'm not familiar with iOS but on my Android I use Chrome and there's a little box I can check that says "Request Desktop Site". Maybe you have one that is permanently checked for Subeta, or something like that?

I think a streamlined Subeta would be nice if it had the right functionality. One of the reasons that I switched to desktop in the first place was because the mobile website made it more difficult to navigate where I wanted to go. That's probably partly because with custom CSS, I already have the website set up the way I want it.

I wonder if there is a way to custom CSS yourself your own version of the mobile website? IDK.

Nope, I have to manually select it. It seems most sites detect the iPad as a laptop or otherwise a desktop capable machine rather than just a mobile device. Very rarely do I get a mobile site on iPad.

I wouldn't know, I never learned CSS in school (fml, heh) D:

There are ways to learn CSS outside of school, if you are interested. :) I didn't learn it in school either - just kind of picked it up playing a different pet site and messing around with other people's (freely given) code to see what happened. But there are all sorts of tutorials out there now.

Its just one of those things I can't quite wrap my brain around.XD Even though I should likely learn it, if simply to make things easier to use on Subeta lol

Fair enough. ^_^

It really depends on the size and scope of the app, but minimum assuming you use a fairly small third party company with a small amount of employees(1-3) is still at least 50k. The more well-known the app company being used for development the more expensive it gets which means it could cost at least a 100k or more depending on testing and how advanced the app is.

Apps aren't cheap and there's no guarantee subeta would make back their app costs long term which means the site would be at minimum

50k in the hole.

And for reference, here's the link I used.

app costs

There really is no point in creating a separate mobile app when there are ways to make websites more mobile friendly such as bootstrap. Though it would require a whole reworking of the site's aesthetic to make it even feasible to be legible on various screen sizes. I do think that the site is already trying to move things over to new coding that is more mobile friendly. The new wardrobe worked fine on my phone and the games from the last plot were also mobile friendly. Really in this day there isn't a point to having a mobile site when you can now code it to shift things around to accommodate a tiny screen. In the past there was but again I think subeta is trying to move in the right direction. It just takes time to essentially rewrite and rework things on both the user experience and back-end.

I pretty much exclusively use the site on my iPhone, using the desktop version of the site, and I'm pretty happy with that, no real complaints from me. I wouldn't use an app, since I prefer the accessibility of using a browser. The mobile version of the site is, imo, really ugly, all that brown is icky, as well as being buggy and just a general pain to use, so I'm definitely looking forward to improvements there :D

Are there plans for the new mobile layout to include at least the active Pet in a way? I think it's a little weird that I can currently see my avatar on every page while there's no hint about my Pets and/or my active Pet at all especially since the pets.php page doesn't work on mobile either.

Besides that I hope we will be able to remove events on the new mobile version.