[UPDATED] Dragon+: An Official D&D iOS App

Dragon Magazine on iOS

apparently some folks are finding this in the iOS news stand app...I'm still investigating so in the meantime...I'm just going to put this here

View attachment 68157

 

[Bacon Bits]

You need to relax. The Android app is coming.

He has a point.

If you're going to release content on the web, do you design an app which can only be used by a small percentage of people, or by literally everybody on the web?

Why build an app? Why not make it content that's simply available on the web, which is automatically available to any device with a web browser? You don't need to deal with the iOS App Store or the Google Play store. You're putting your content into a silo when it's actually more difficult for you to do that --- remember, you've got a website already that displays content on the topic the app covers.

All you're doing is targeting people who are on iOS or Android, fire up their App store, and search for D&D. Because apparently people do that instead of searching the web now? You can't tell me you can't create rich web applications that work on mobile and desktop. That's just not accurate. It's not like it's video content, either. In the meantime, you're simultaneously excluding anybody who doesn't own an iOS device, and then excluding anybody who doesn't own an iOS or Android device. Is that a goal? Why? How does that help promote your products?

So... what's the point? Why is it an app? Is it about stopping us from saving the content? Offhand, that's the only advantage I can think of other than advertising from being in the App stores.

 

[Hussar]

By putting it in an app you control formatting. Trying to read websites on a phone can be quite difficult. By making it an app you control the layout much better which improves the reading experience.

This is why virtually every online magazine has an app. Whether it's huffington post or the NYT.

I wouldn't even bother trying to read the Wotc site on my iPhone. It's not formatted right. But now I can read Dragon while I'm ... Errrr.... Thinking.

 

[Bacon Bits]

By putting it in an app you control formatting. Trying to read websites on a phone can be quite difficult. By making it an app you control the layout much better which improves the reading experience.

This is why virtually every online magazine has an app. Whether it's huffington post or the NYT.

But those Apps basically just present pre-existing web content in a slightly different fashion, and they exist primarily because mobile web browsers are and presenting content appropriately is a pain in the ass because there's no standard resolution, not because HTML itself can't do what they want. Indeed, they're often just applets with browser controls; glorified RSS or Atom readers. They're apps that make delivering content easier, but they don't restrict you to app-only content.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, the Dragon+ content isn't available on the rest of the website, and the App can't access generic content from the site. Huh? Why would you do that? Why force your customers to browse on two devices to access your content?

 

[Ranes]

By putting it in an app you control formatting. Trying to read websites on a phone can be quite difficult. By making it an app you control the layout much better which improves the reading experience.

If you build an app for iOS there's a limited number of resolutions to consider but you still have to accommodate (or limit) landscape and portrait layouts, not to mention four or five different resolutions. Add in the much larger range of possible specifications on Android devices and there's a whole catalogue of layouts your app has to to support. The solution is responsive design. It's not always easy but it's do-able and the result is then as accessible to laptop and desktop users with web browsers, as it is to their fondleslab-wielding counterparts. Everybody wins.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-app. You can design experiences just for multi-touch or an accelerometer. But very often what appears in apps could also live in a web page and, when that's the case, I think the better approach is often responsive web design.

 

[Hussar]

But Ranes and Bacon Bits, none of those reasons make the decision to put it in an app a particularly bad one. There might be better options, maybe, I don't know. But, there may be a number of reasons they went this direction. That doesn't make this a bad idea. The content in the app isn't available on the website. That's true. Granted, there isn't a heck of a lot of content here anyway, but, it is specific to the app. Great. This is a magazine. It would be like bitching about how all of print Dragon wasn't available online because it was tied up in a magazine. What's the difference?

 

[MartyW]

By the way, the content is actually viewable on the web, but you have to use the "email to friend" function to be able to bring it up on a browser. Note also that they disable common browser functions like cut & paste and print. That's right... you can't print any articles. Oh, and there is no navigation to the rest of the issue - just the article you emailed (and there is no scroll bar so you need to use a scroll wheel or touch screen).

For instance, here are links to two of the articles that had [some] non-advertisiing content:

Know Your Enemy - http://app.genwi.com/5.0/article/45675/104086/99196101

Profile: Goliaths - http://app.genwi.com/5.0/article/45675/104086/99279646

The thing is, they could have totally done this through the website and made it cross-platform compatible. The only reason for an app is to enable micro-transactions (through Apple iTunes or Google Play) in the future.

If you haven't already, check out my full review of the entire issue here:
http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com/2015/05/dragon-issue-1-exactly-what-were-not.html

 

[MartyW]

What is with the blindspot people have for seeing PC/Mac in the announcement?

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/news/dragonplus

Where is the PC/Mac announcement? I've read the linked article above several times and it only calls out iOS and Android. Can you post the other link?

And even if they had not said that, guys, you can view Android apps on a PC/Mac with a free tool.

Not everyone know that. As a matter of fact, I'd hazard a guess that fewer than 1% of the public reading the above link knows you can run Andriod or iOS apps on anything other than the intended devices.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

The thing is, they could have totally done this through the website and made it cross-platform compatible. The only reason for an app is to enable micro-transactions (through Apple iTunes or Google Play) in the future.

l[/URL]

Which is probably the biggest reason why this is an app and not a web article. They want to create a new revenue stream. So, why not go this way? Doesn't seem terribly unreasonable. Dragon has, for a very long time, been an in-house advertising vehicle for D&D, articles were often published to coincide with newly released splat books. Or, at most, shortly after splatbook release. This is nothing different.

 

[MartyW]

Which is probably the biggest reason why this is an app and not a web article. They want to create a new revenue stream. So, why not go this way?

Agreed. And I don't really have a problem with WotC seeking out new streams of revenue. I just wish the content didn't suck.

 

[Hussar]

By the way, the content is actually viewable on the web, but you have to use the "email to friend" function to be able to bring it up on a browser. Note also that they disable common browser functions like cut & paste and print. That's right... you can't print any articles. Oh, and there is no navigation to the rest of the issue - just the article you emailed (and there is no scroll bar so you need to use a scroll wheel or touch screen).

For instance, here are links to two of the articles that had [some] non-advertisiing content:

Know Your Enemy - http://app.genwi.com/5.0/article/45675/104086/99196101

Profile: Goliaths - http://app.genwi.com/5.0/article/45675/104086/99279646

The thing is, they could have totally done this through the website and made it cross-platform compatible. The only reason for an app is to enable micro-transactions (through Apple iTunes or Google Play) in the future.

If you haven't already, check out my full review of the entire issue here:
http://ragingowlbear.blogspot.com/2015/05/dragon-issue-1-exactly-what-were-not.html

Oh, by the way, the article, at least on my Mac using Safari (IE has this as well, Chrome is a bit more complicated), has a Reader view. Meaning you can print it with no problem, straight from your browser.

So, if you want to print the articles, email it to yourself, open it in a browser, switch to Reader View, and you can print it directly from your browser.

Essentially, you can't print the art. Fair enough.

/edit

Oops, just checked. Yup, you can print the art that isn't just the clickable sidebars for buying other goodies. So the goliath article, complete with art, can be printed by just emailing it to yourself, and then clicking Reader View.

BTW, this took me all of ten seconds to figure out. Sheesh.