Beam 2 - iOS app for Reddit (beamreddit.com)
almost 8 years ago from Ruben Bos, Creative Director. Formerly at Mangrove
almost 8 years ago from Ruben Bos, Creative Director. Formerly at Mangrove
Thanks for sharing this Ruben! We're excited to hear what everyone thinks :-)
I've been looking for an app to replace AlienBlue for a while and this looks like it might be it.
A few thoughts:
1 - Wondered that as well. Would definitely be nice to tap on a post title to get into the comments.
Hi Alex! Thanks for checking Beam out and glad you like it.
You're not the only one who feels that tapping on a post title should "go somewhere" so we're going to take that with us for an update in the very near future.
Could you explain what you mean by subscribing to subreddits from the subscriptions page?
We've spent quite a few hours figuring out how we wanted to get the hot/recent/all-time tabs in the app without overloading the UI with stuff, so we're going to have to figure out how we can expand those options.
The app has 3D touch integration! We are looking into getting more gestures (ie swipe to go back on comments). Suggestions are always welcome :)
Thanks!
Thank the heavens I can finally stop using Alien Blue.
What, you don't like that weird diagonal menu thing?
Just downloaded it. This is by far and away the best-looking Reddit app I've seen. I haven't had a chance to use it too heavily yet, but I'll take it for a longer test drive on the train ride home. Great stuff!
Excellent. A breath of fresh air after the travesty that is Alien Blue.
A+. finally enjoying using Reddit on my phone now.
best Reddit app on the mobile. Love it. @Ruber Bos, dit you made it at Mangrove?
Nope! I wish. Just posted it here. It is made in Rotterdam though!
Gnagna, awesome app and promoting you hometown is always a good thing. Goed bezig.
Hey Patrick, thanks! We (Awkward) made it --> http://madeawkward.com
Well this is brilliant, thanks for sharing. Alien Blue is such a buggy, complicated mess.
This is such a polished, easy-to-use experience. Really keen to see how this evolves.
Pretty neat. I still prefer the Narwhal app over this but it's probably because I haven't tried night mode or the media view.
It's a really beautiful app, been using the first version for a while. There are quite some little bugs that annoyed me in V1. Hoping those are fixed in the V2!
Pretty sweet landing page, I dig how the animations pause until you hover.
Orange, grey, green, whatever color you choose... you definitely have one of the best avatars on DN.
Thanks! I was eager for 100 reputation to take the orb grey :)
Please allow title to be clickable. Also I would like to see the initial description on self posts above the comments, instead of having the comments and description in two different areas.
I'd also like the option to hide all images/snippets from feed and just show titles. This would allow users to scroll through more stories faster. Thanks!
Hi Julian,
Thanks for your feedback! We are taking your feedback into consideration. Stay tuned for future updates!
Wow, big update. I'm a long-time Beam fan so happy to see it getting so much work.
A few comments..
the "subscriptions" based home screen is a little backward to me. I would consider the "Frontpage" view as the best home/default experience... and subscriptions list of favourites and subreddits as a secondary view. It looks like the product design is steering a little more towards power users (who would do things like set up "Multireddits") than casual reddit users, I hope that doesn't limit your app market.
having the full thumbnails in the main feed is a majorly awesome feature and really what separated Beam from other apps. Seems risky to hide that in a paid add-on that I had to hunt for.
I see you've reverted to showing web views for YouTube videos, they were better when they played natively in the app. Any reason why? Hope the old behaviour comes back soon.
when tapping through on a web link, the view no longer supports swiping to close it... I hate having to reach up to the "Done" button. is this a limitation of Safari View controllers? Would love to have the swipe to close back.
Well done though ... keep up the good work!
Hi Bruce, glad you like it! We still have full thumbnails in the main feed! This is not a paid feature!
In the Display Pack we do have a view where you can see a grid overview of all embedded pictures for that subreddit or multireddit.
I'm afraid the YouTube implementation in Beam 1 was a bit of an API hack that wasn't quite in line with what YouTube would like us to do. :) So we've settled for this option for now. We are working to see if we can improve the video experience in a future update.
Not sure what you mean here, swiping back from web views is in the app and works for us. Could you check again?
Thanks for the response Daniel. Yes, I was confused about the full thumbnails not being visible in the stock app, sorry.
The swiping back from web views works nicely now... from the latest update release notes in the app store it looks like you just added that.
One other question... I used to like tapping on comments to collapse the comment thread, but this doesn't seem to work now. Is that something that will be in the roadmap? (the nice new comment design definitely makes it easier to scroll to the next top level comment, but I still miss the tap to collapse)
We're going to take a look at comments. Our current design aims to improve the reading experience for mobile by moving away from the traditional collapsible model, however some users are understandably a little jarred about this departure from the default pattern. So we're going to keep tabs on how people experience this and proceed from there. Thanks for using Beam!
Finally a good replacement for AlienBlue!
Thanks Nick! We've taken both feature requests into consideration
Any way to view comments you've made? I see posts, but clicking on karma links doesn't do anything.
Hi Shane! No we don't offer that feature. Is that something you expected when tapping on Comment karma?
That's exactly what I expected.
Nice app, great for browsing, but where's the front page? Arguably the most important feature and it's missing.
Hey James thanks! You can find the Frontpage bookmarked at the top of the Subscriptions view!
I've worked that out now, but it didn't appear there until I added some subscriptions - otherwise that whole screen was just one big empty state telling me to add subscriptions, with no way of getting to the front page without adding any, hence why I thought it wasn't there. Spent a while looking before I worked it out too.
Did you log in using your reddit account or create a reddit account while using the app?
Logged in with it, but I didn't have any subscriptions at that point as I haven't really used them before now. They're much more intuitive in Beam than in Alien Blue though, so I will be using them from now on.
Would love to see this coming to iPad as well.
I like it a lot, only qualm is the grouped comments view. Not sure how I feel about it, definitely different than all the other reddit apps out there but not sure I like it
Hey Zac. Thanks for trying Beam, glad you like it :)
We decided to try something new when it came to comments, because we noticed that a lot of comment threads on reddit could get pretty huge and displaying that in the traditional manner like reddit does often impaired readability on mobile.
So for long read comments, we feel this is the best mobile experience. The trade off is that quick comment browsing is perhaps less intuitive. We are listening to feedback and will do our best to adapt the interface to peoples needs in the coming updates.
Have you guys tried Narwhal? Best designed Reddit client IMO. On mobile, otherwise I'd give a link...
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