Ape Apps

Site owners are able to customize how their forum or website looks and behaves when accessed under Forum Fiend. This is an overview on the customization options available to site owners and developers.

Firstly, if absolutely no site owner action is taken at all, Forum Fiend will still attempt to derive your site's name, icon, and theme color from the meta data of your website. These items are taken from your site's title tag, it's favicon, and the theme-color meta tag.

High-Level Configuration

The easiest way to customize a site under Forum Fiend, one which requires no development experience whatsoever, is to upload a forumfiend.json file to the root directory of your site. Any site that is accessed by a fair number of users through Forum Fiend should take the time to include this simple file. The forumfiend.json file allows you to set high level parameters for your site, as well as branding logos and theme customizations. Creating the file should take no more than a couple of minutes, and you can see a complete guide in the following thread:

Complete forumfiend.json Reference

Access Methods

Forum Fiend can display a forum using either the Tapatalk API or through a custom WebView interface. Tapatalk access is based on the outdated open source version of the Tapatalk API and is no longer maintained. If your forum already uses Tapatalk, it may work just fine under Forum Fiend, and you are encouraged to test it out to be sure. Note that the Tapatalk interface has not been updated since 2014 and will not be receiving support or updates in the future, as newer versions of the API are no longer open source.

The Forum Fiend WebView

Forum developers or site owners with JavaScript experience can further customize their site under Forum Fiend using the custom WebView API interface methods. Site owners who have Tapatalk installed on their system but prefer to use the custom WebView under Forum Fiend can do so by setting the disable_api to "1" in their forumfiend.json file.

The Forum Fiend WebView has a user agent string of ForumViewerCore. Developers can check the user agent to determine if their site is being accessed under Forum Fiend. Some implementations may want to alter UI or Stylesheets based on the presence of Forum Fiend.

Forum Fiend will also add a global ForumViewerCoreInterface JavaScript object to your site for accessing WebView API methods. Thus, the presence of Forum Fiend can also be detected in JavaScript by checking for the existence of the window.ForumViewerCoreInterface object.

setProperty Interface

Forum Fiend will add a window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty(key,value) function to your website that will allow you to customize several aspects of the Forum Fiend interface. Below is a reference to things you can do with the setProperty function, as well as some code examples. All keys and values must be text strings.

User Account

To personalize your forum or site for your Forum Fiend users, you can display their logged account username and avatar on the main forum listing screen. Use the following two properties to set the user's details.

key	values
fvc-logged-username	username or "0" for not logged in
fvc-logged-avatar	full URL to avatar image file (png,jpg,gif supported) or "0" for no avatar

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-logged-username","little bobby");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-logged-avatar","https://mysite.com/avatar-bobby.png");

Pagination Bar

Forum Fiend can provide a pagination bar at the bottom of the screen with controls for first/last/next/previous page. The following table lists the pagination related properties, followed by a code example.

key	values
fvc-show-pagination	"true" or "false"
fvc-pagination-pagedisp	ex: "5 of 10"
fvc-pagination-first	url: "https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=1"
fvc-pagination-last	url: "https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=10"
fvc-pagination-next	url: "https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=6"
fvc-pagination-previous	url: "https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=4"

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-show-pagination","true");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-pagination-pagedisp","5 of 10");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-pagination-first","https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=1");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-pagination-last","https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=10");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-pagination-next","https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=6");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-pagination-previous","https://mysite.com/viewpage?p=1&pg=4");

Colors and Theme

There are several properties related to the appearance of the site under Forum Fiend.

key	values
fvc-theme	Title/Status Bar Colors, hex string
fvc-page-foreground	general foreground (text) color, hex string
fvc-page-background	general background color, hex string

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-theme","#2196F3");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-foreground","#212121");

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.setProperty("fvc-background","#CFD8DC");

Slide-Out Menu

The left-hand slide-out menu can be customized using the window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addMenuItem(name,icon,url,color) function. The following lists the parameter values expected for the function.

parameter	description
name	The name of the menu item. If set to "CLEARMENU" will reset all custom menu items.
icon	absolute url to a png icon for the menu item
url	absolute url to navigate to when the menu item is selected
color	optional hex color mask for the icon, or null

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addMenuItem("CLEARMENU",null,null,null);

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addMenuItem("Latest Posts","https://mysite.com/latest-icon.png","https://mysite.com/latest.php",null);

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addMenuItem("Exciting Section","https://mysite.com/exciting-icon.png","https://mysite.com/viewpage.php?p=50",null);

Application Toolbar

The top actionbar/toolbar of the Forum Fiend app can also be customized using the window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addToolbarItem(name,url,icon,secondary) function.

parameter	description
name	The name of the menu item. If set to "CLEARTOOLBAR" will reset all custom menu items.
url	absolute url to navigate to when the menu item is selected
icon	a named icon, reference below, ex "back" or "chat"
secondary	boolean value, if true will force the toolbar item into the drop down menu

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addToolbarItem("CLEARTOOLBAR",null,null,null);

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addToolbarItem("New Post","https://mysite.com/newpost.php","add",false);

window.ForumViewerCoreInterface.addToolbarItem("Sign Out","https://mysite.com/signout.php",null,true);

Named Icons

Here is a list of available named icons you can try out. These can be used for both Toolbar and Menu items, but toolbar items require a named icon (menu icons can be a URL).

selectall,stopwatch,sort,relationship,ruler,pdf,chat,build,search,feedback,merge,envelope,allapps,viewall,filter,threedotshoriz,calendar,system,yescheck,nocheck,font,record,location,nolocation,movie,notes,description,bookmark,notifications,gavel,home,person,unlock,directions,print,undo,rss,showresults,personalize,share,sponsor,fanmail,premium,achievements,scores,import,movetofolder,page,back,add,delete,export,new,save,open,send,clear,emoji2,play,rename,volume,info,contactinfo,important,library,zerobars,help,people,emoji,shop,money,audio,fourbars,sync,switch,like,refresh,list,calculator,map,savelocal,copy,camera,fullscreen,flag,highlight,color,preview,previewlink,settings,rotatecamera,crop,backtowindow,lock,skull,microphone,video