Hi Z, My app is only a native iPhone app in the form of a shell. It's a shell that embeds my OSSN site. It uses whatever the default browser is on the user's iPhone and is aesthetically the same in appearance as the browser. The reason I did this was so I can perform push notifications via the app, which are great from making announcements without using SMS or filling up a members email inbox. So, with that being said, Apple puts that spinner on all of their apps. It activates when network activity is detected. For some reason, the spinner activates when the modal appears and won't go away until the OK button is pressed. The problem is that the spinner area (not the spinner itself) overlaps the OK button (as if it was a layer) and prevents the pressing of the OK button. On version 2.3, it was just a small modal/message and worked fine. Now, since the modal is 5x the size, here we are. I know this is not your problem.

Hey Phil, thank you. Yeah I remembered your domain from a prior post somewhere and know that you converted to GreenbyGreen. It looks great. I have not decided to switch it up quite yet but like what Z has done with it.

Either way... very cool.

@ ~Z~ Man ... that's pretty cool... if they can view the content after joining by using the action button, that would be awesome... but... maybe on top?

Phil

Understood, Phil.
Although I can't make friends with a topbar here.
1. It's not obvious to a new user that it is clickable
2. I'd prefer a top-down flow = read content first -> then decide to join or not
so 2.5 will look like that

Clicking "Join..." forwards to the startpage and a cookie with a pointer to the original page is saved.
After creating an account and logging in for the first time the new member is forwarded to that page

@William Shoap... off topic, but I know you'll see it here. How'd you find my test server!!! LOL! I'll be playing there the next few days with GxG. You may want to see the progress as I make changes. Will help with some things if I can.

~Z~ Man... and re-reading your comment... not to take them DIRECTLY to the video or article, but to the POST that contains it on the OSSN site, to be viewed from there.

Phil

@~Z~ Man
Well... was looking at it from the angle from the behavior of content shared from other networks do. Kind of the "norm" for shared content. I belong to several very active "alternative" social networks and watch what works for them, and what doesn't. A basic of hands on market research. I note their outstanding features, and their annoying ones.

If you are led to a page that doesn't allow the person clicking through to get to a point to directly view what interested them in the first place, they ARE going to get annoyed. It then becomes a bait and switch advertisement.

Now... whereas on the first time seeing content from your site, and being able to use it, they may not sign up, the content is either going to be shared with people on your friends list, or in a group you belong to, or something similar... so... over time they will become "aware" of your site by seeing the content they're interested in, AND the topbar with the name of the site, and may decide to join after seeing it a few times. A more "soft sell" approach by sample than hard sell by join or be left out. People don't like to be forced to do things, but love to choose to join things they see as interesting. It's a psychological thing, as most things are in marketing.

I am actually hoping, in my case, to get to a level where there will be original user generated content, if features are ever developed to a level that reasonably make it worthwhile, and this would be a SUPREME feature to have for that!

Regards,

Phil

Hi Z, the spinner is put there by iOS for an iOS app. Since the share_content pop is too big anyway, can you make is just large enough to show the message, like the popup you had in v2.3. That one worked well. I think this needs to be done anyway for aesthetic reasons and it would probably solve my problem.

@Phil
I'm feeling twisted. I understand your concerns on one hand, but wasn't the basic idea making people aware of YOUR site? I'm a little afraid - at least as long as we're talking about EXTERNAL content - that allowing people to really watch that video or being forwarded to that site would drift them over there - and that was that... People would 'land' on youtube.com, or theblaze.com in your example ... watch another video, read another article ... and 5 minutes later won't remember where they came from.