Awful

[Awful][App Store] is an iOS 15.0+ app that's Better Than Safari for browsing the [Something Awful Forums][forums]. Its story is told in [its thread][current thread] (and the [thread before that][fourth thread] (and [the thread before that][third thread] (and [the thread before that][second thread] (and [the thread before that][first thread])))).

Not sure what to work on? There's a list of issues, or just post in the thread and someone will share their pet peeves for your amusement!

Screenshot of Awful as it appears on an iPhone

[App Store]: https://itunes.apple.com/app/awful-unofficial-something/id567936609 [forums]: http://forums.somethingawful.com [current thread]: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4116244 [fourth thread]: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3837546 [third thread]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3510131 [second thread]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3381510 [first thread]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3483760 [project.log]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3564303

An unofficial app

This app is not endorsed by Something Awful.

Build

Please drop by [the thread][current thread] if you could use a hand with any of these steps!

You need Xcode 16 to build and run Awful. You can download Xcode for free from Apple. Then:

Clone the repository: git clone --recursive https://github.com/Awful/Awful.app Awful-app
Open the Xcode project and build away: xed Awful-app

You may see build warnings of the form "Unable to find included file '../Local.xcconfig'". You should still be able to build and run, just with a couple of features turned off. If you'd like to enable those features, or just make the warnings go away, please scroll on down to the "Local build settings" section below.

The only required dependencies for building Awful that are not included directly in this repository are those managed by Swift Package Manager. Files generated by other utilities are included in the repository. The only submodule is the [thread-tags][] repository, which is not strictly needed for building; if you don't need it, you can leave off the --recursive part from step one.

If you'd like to build to your device, set the DEVELOPMENT_TEAM build setting as mentioned in the Local build settings section below.

[thread-tags]: https://github.com/Awful/thread-tags

Local build settings

There are some local build settings that can be useful to include but should not be committed to a public repo. Store those in an Xcode configuration file at Local.xcconfig; see Local.sample.xcconfig for an example. You'll get a build warning until you put a file at that location; it can be an empty file if you just want Xcode to be quiet.

Awful uses an App Group to communicate and share data with the Smilie Keyboard. Unfortunately, App Group identifiers must be unique, so we can't simply set it up in this repository and have it work for everybody work. By default, Awful builds without an App Group configured, which means that the Smilie Keyboard won't be able to download new smilies, remember recent smilies, or store favourite smilies. If you like, you can:

Create an App Group in your iOS Developer account.
Copy Local.sample.entitlements to Local.entitlements.
Copy and paste your App Group identifier into Local.entitlements.
Set the CODE_SIGN_ENTITLEMENTS build setting in Local.xcconfig for the targets Awful and SmilieKeyboard (see Local.sample.xcconfig for a suggested setup).
After a build and run, full keyboard functionality should be yours.

Tests

There are unit tests, that don't cover much, running continuously via GitHub Actions.

Updating dependencies

Dependencies not managed via Swift Package Manager are placed in the Vendor folder and manually kept up-to-date. They include:

ARChromeActivity and TUSafariActivity assets. We've implemented our own UIActivity subclasses but continue to use the libraries' images.
JavaScript bits used in the web view for rendering: lottie-player.js.
MRProgress, PSMenuItem, and PullToRefresh, which do not have their own Package.swift. (If you know otherwise, let's move it over!)

See [Vendor/README.md]() for more detailed info about updating these dependencies.

Version scheme

Bump the major version when changing the minimum required iOS version (deployment target). Otherwise, bump the minor version.

Also, when changing the iOS deployment target, please tag the last commit that supports any no-longer-supported deployment target(s) and update the table in the section "iOS deployment targets" below.

Handy utilities

If you peek in the Scripts folder you'll find:

beta, a script that bumps the build number and then runs xcodebuild to create an archive suitable for uploading to App Store Connect. See beta --help for more, including how to set up automatic uploads to App Store Connect.

* If you've released to the App Store, it's time to bump at least the minor version number by passing the --minor parameter, e.g. beta --minor.

bump, a script that can increment the build, minor, or major version number throughtout the project. See bump --help for more.

And in the Xcode project itself you'll find:

SmilieExtractor, an iOS app that takes showsmilies.webarchive and extracts resources for Smilie Keyboard. To update smilies, first save a fresh showsmilies.webarchive from the Forums, then run SmilieExtractor.
CopyMarkdownApp, a macOS Safari App Extension that adds a "Copy Awful Markdown" context menu item to the Forums. The copied markdown is ready to be pasted into a GitHub issue.

Loading fixtures into the app and/or working offline

If you've stashed some .html files from the Forums, you can load those into a debug build of the app. And if you forgot to stash some, you're in luck: we've stashed some as test fixtures. See FixtureURLProtocol for more info.

Contribute

You can help! See our contribution guidelines and please come visit [the thread][current thread] to say hi.

Project Structure

Awful is broken down somewhat:

Awful is the iOS app.
AwfulCore is a Swift package that does the scraping and networking with the Forums. It's meant to be compatible with all Apple platforms, but nobody's really tried beyond iOS.
Smilies is a Swift package that downloads smilies and presents them as a keyboard. It's meant to be compatible with all Apple platforms, but nobody's really tried beyond iOS.

Theming

Awful's [posts view][] is fully customizable using CSS. There's a [default theme][], as well as themes for specific forums such as [YOSPOS][YOSPOS CSS theme] and [FYAD][FYAD CSS theme]. We use [Less][lesscss] to generate our stylesheets during Awful's build process, so you'll want to edit .less files but you'll see .css files in the build products and in the Web Inspector.

The rest of Awful is themed in a a [big plist][theme plist]. If you can't find a theme key you'd like to use, ask and we'll add it!

[posts view]: App/Posts/PostsView.swift [default theme]: AwfulTheming/Sources/AwfulTheming/Stylesheets/posts-view.less [YOSPOS CSS theme]: AwfulTheming/Sources/AwfulTheming/Stylesheets/posts-view-yospos.less [FYAD CSS theme]: AwfulTheming/Sources/AwfulTheming/Stylesheets/posts-view-fyad.less [lesscss]: https://lesscss.org/features/ [theme plist]: App/Theming/Themes.plist

Thread Tags

[Diabolik900][] and [The Dave][] have largely fashioned Awful with its own [set of thread tags][thread tags] that look great on the iPhone and the iPad. They're distributed with the app. New thread tags can also [appear in Awful][AwfulThreadTags] without us having to send an update through the App Store. This is done by hosting the icons via [GitHub Pages][awfulapp.com.git].

To add a new thread tag you just made:

Add it to the [thread tags repository][Thread Tags.git] and push.
Update the [awfulapp.com repository][awfulapp.com.git] repository per [its README][awfulapp.com.git README].
In this (Awful.app) repository, update the App/Resources/Thread Tags submodule and push:

cd path/to/awful-app/repo
    cd App/Resources/Thread\ Tags
    git pull origin master
    cd ..
    git commit -am "Updated thread tags."
    git push

[AwfulThreadTags]: App/Thread%20Tags/ThreadTagLoader.swift [awfulapp.com.git]: https://github.com/Awful/awful.github.io [awfulapp.com.git README]: https://github.com/Awful/awful.github.io/blob/master/README.md#thread-tags [Thread Tags.git]: https://github.com/Awful/thread-tags

Alternate App Icons

To add a new alternate app icon:

Make your icon in Icon Composer and save it in App/App Icons/ with an _appicon suffix (e.g. cool_appicon.icon).
Add the .icon file to the Awful target in Xcode.
Run Scripts/app-icons. This renders the _preview image sets (Any and Dark) in App Icons.xcassets from your .icon using Icon Composer's ictool, updates the relevant build settings, and makes the image names available in Swift. It needs Xcode 26 or later; set ICTOOL to point at a different ictool if needed.
Open App/Settings/SettingsViewController.swift.
Add your new app icon info to the appIcons array.

Re-run Scripts/app-icons whenever you change a .icon so its previews stay in sync.

The bookkeeping and generated previews are unfortunate, but there's no public API to list app icon sets or to load app icon images for display. Instead of hacking together something that could break later, we'll do it ourselves.

URL schemes

Awful answers to a couple URL schemes:

awful: opens Awful directly to various screens. This URL scheme is documented at http://handleopenurl.com and at Launch Center Pro.

* awful://forums opens the Forums tab. * awful://forums/:forumid opens the Forums tab to the identified forum. * awful://threads/:threadid opens the first page of the identified thread. For example, awful://threads/3510131 opens Awful's thread. * awful://threads/:threadid/pages/:page opens the given page of the identified thread. For example, awful://threads/3510131/pages/15 opens the fifteenth page of Awful's thread. * awful://posts/:postid opens the identified post's page of its thread and jumps to it. For example, awful://posts/408179339 opens the OP of Awful's thread. * awful://bookmarks opens the Bookmarks tab. * awful://messages opens the Messages tab. * awful://messages/:messageid opens the identified private message. (I guess the idea is to handle a link from one message to another?) * awful://settings opens the Settings tab. * awful://users/:userid opens the identified user's profile. For example, awful://users/106125 opens pokeyman's profile. * awful://banlist opens the Leper's Colony. * awful://banlist/:userid opens the identified user's rap sheet. For example, awful://banlist/106125 opens pokeyman's rap sheet.

awfulhttp: and awfulhttps: handle Forums website URLs by opening the corresponding screen when possible.

* The idea is you take your https://forums.somethingawful.com/… URL, put awful in front, and now it opens in Awful.

iOS deployment targets

For iOS | Check out tag/branch ------- | -------------------- 17 | main 16 | main 15 | main 14 | ios-14 13 | ios-13 12 | ios-12 11 | ios-11 10 | ios-10 9 | ios-9 8 | ios-8 7 | ios-7 6 | ios-6 5 | ios-5

License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License

Credit

Awful development is led by [pokeyman][] aka Nolan Waite.

Awful includes contributions from:

[Diabolik900]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=113215 [pokeyman]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=106125 [The Dave]: http://forums.somethingawful.com/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=41741

Awful/Awful.app: Something Awful Forums browser for iOS