My original plans were to put up this post after the last update was released which ended up being v0.1.17 due to a random bunch of bugs caught during tests.
However, since Google is taking over 21 hours to approve my changes I’ve decided to not wait and just put this post out now. I had a great title in mind for v0.1.17 too. It was going to be “Update You” because it contained a bunch of settings users can change plus gave users the option to use Material You, but oh well.
The current plan for this update is to finish up adding some settings I had in mind and wrap settings up for now (there will be a lot more settings to add later on). The main settings to add are options to configure the look of comments and posts on the post screen (note that the previous update which is still in review added configuring posts on the post list screen).
If anyone has some killer setting they want me to add before I wrap this up, let me know in the comments.
Changes so far:
- Lemmy servers are really struggling after the massive migration of users from Reddit. I’m bumping minimum wait times for some operations in the app for the time being in hopes of increasing usability. I may reduce these numbers later when/if the server performance is improved.
- Added the settings to adjust text size for both posts in the post screen (not the post list screen) and comments.
- Fix a bug where the communities pane will permanently show a spinner if no account is signed in
- Added the new sort orders for posts
- Improve experience. If comments fail to load but the post loads then the post will be shown, with an error in the comments section.
- Add more error messages for specific types of errors.
- Fixed a bug where the history tab UI will not refresh when history items are removed.
- Added account inboxes
Update
Normally I would do a release here to finish off the settings screen for now but since the app is still in review on Google’s side I literally cannot do a release. So I will move to the next item on the road map: Account/User stuff.
Update 2
A lot of low level changes being worked on. As more screens are added, UI patterns within the app is becoming more and more critical. It’s also critical these patterns are designed well at the beginning so that they do not need to be rewritten later on. This work is critical to the inbox screens I am working on as they will behave very similarly to the community page as you will see.
Update 3
Need to get better at providing updates.
The update is I’m still working on “Inboxes”. The feature just ended up being a lot more than originally assumed. It almost feels like I’m building another app due to how many sub features are involved in this. I will try to get a release out by the end of the day but understand that this is a stretch goal. There is a lot of work to be done here.
There are a lot of complexities with managing an inbox with the API that lemmy provides. These complexities result in hundreds of edge cases, each requiring special attention. My current strategy with inboxes is to deprioritize private message support. They will still be supported by inboxes, they just will… suck (lemmy’s website doesn’t do a great job either so that’s my excuse). This will allow me to get inboxes out faster.
Update 4
v0.1.20 is out to beta but there are some minor issues that I’m unhappy with. I will be doing a fast follow up release. Also thank you so much to everyone who gave super quick feedback on the release. The main changes are:
- Revert adding borders to all cards
- Increase title padding of compat layout
- I got carried away with how frequently to invalidate the inbox that now the cache is pretty much useless. Dialed that back a bit so inbox should feel less terrible to use. It will still start free on each app launch just to avoid the dreaded outdated inbox.
- Fixed some margin/padding issues
- Fixed a bug where content in the context card in the message screen in the inbox section (that’s a mouthful) will not load after the card is collapsed and expanded again.
I can’t guarantee you what Google is doing but I’m just using Firebase for crash reports & crash analytics. But blocking it is fair (I block it as well so I can’t say anything LOL).
I’ll consider your feedback for the next update. In the next update, most of the menus are being moved to be bottom sheets already. I do need to find a better home for the account button. I might just move it to be besides the menu button. As for the community selector, I like that it shows your current community. To make it easier to touch, I might just add some redundancy. Eg. Have it stay at the top left, but also have an option to change communities in the menu.
Well if you’re viewing just a single community, then you can see the name of it with every post anyway.
That’s just me. I’m used to Slide and Infinity which put everything in the sidebar.
You need the sidebar for community list, and I think it’s a natural place for account selector too.Although I see why you’d want to do something else than what everyone else is already doing…
Speaking of communities, please distinguish communities by their instance. I saw a post on an Android community, but couldn’t tell where it is until I copied the link. The instance info needs to be everywhere.
(Edited this in to my last post but didn’t see your reply.)
Next update is bringing in account alerts/inbox & the start of user profile pages so it’s going to be a huge update. I’m going to focus on that for now and revisit these ideas afterwards.
Sure. I’m curious how it goes.
Yeah it mainly only matters if you’re viewing All/Local for instance. For instance information, it is currently present in the header of every post. The issue is that it’s at the end and if the header is too long, it will be pushed off screen. The instance is kind of long. I’m going to have to think of a long term solution for this.