Thank you for making this app! It feels like an adequate alternative to liftoff, but I am having some (usability) problems. Could be a “me”-problem, though, since I am still getting the hang of the app and also the wall of settings it provides.
- I cannot subscribe to any community. The button does vanish for a split second but just reappears. Tried it on multiple, but never worked.
- I am using the left-handed setting. But the “preview” popup of a link has the buttons inconveniently on the right.
- I can’t find out to jump to “all” or “local” posts of a specific instance.
- Up/downvotes are on the left, but comment count on the right. Would be cool, if there was an option to have them together.
- default up/downvote color is inverted from my point of view (up is red, down is blue). Would be cool, if there was a simple switch button without having to pick the opposite colors manually.
- Drafts are saved but I can’t find them. A menu in the composing-post would be cool.
- Something else, I currently can’t remember.
Thank you!
Edit: oh, it would be cool, if “save post” could be pulled out from the submenu beneath a post or comment.
Edit2:
- the community-popup (button on top left) has a weird “back”-history. A popup should be always first to close. Also it should be modal since you interact with everything in the background and can’t close it tapping outside.
- settings are weirdly bugged if you return from a category back to main. If i use the button on top left, everything works. But when I use the system back button, I cannot click on any category anymore. Though, I can still scroll.
I cannot subscribe to any community. The button does vanish for a split second but just reappears. Tried it on multiple, but never worked.
I tested this on a few instances. It seems that there is a delay to subscribing. It takes a while on the server for the server to return that the user is subscribed to that community which can explain why it doesn’t work. From my tests it can take up to a minute before the server returns subscribed. If you want to test this out, I’d suggest subscribing and then swiping to refresh a few times to see if it works.
Ok, thank you! You are indeed correct, that it is subscribed at some point in the future. It would be cool if there was some kind of feedback for the user that something is happening. In liftoff, the button would change to “pending” to indicate that the app forwarded the request but it was still processing. In summit I am not even sure if I hit the button.
Good point. I’ll add this for the next release.
I am using the left-handed setting. But the “preview” popup of a link has the buttons inconveniently on the right.
Will be fixed in the next update.
I can’t find out to jump to “all” or “local” posts of a specific instance.
This is not currently supported. Once you are signed in, the app will use the current account’s instance for everything. I think a solution for this would be to have a special signed out account that can browse any instance but with no permission to perform any actions. I’ll add this to the user requests backlog.
Up/downvotes are on the left, but comment count on the right. Would be cool, if there was an option to have them together.
This is tough to design for. I played around with it for 5 minutes but couldn’t get anything that looks nice. Is there any particular reason you want them to be together? The reason they are separate is mostly for aesthetics. You can try compact view which does have them together if you want.
default up/downvote color is inverted from my point of view (up is red, down is blue). Would be cool, if there was a simple switch button without having to pick the opposite colors manually.
Will be added in the next update.
Drafts are saved but I can’t find them. A menu in the composing-post would be cool.
The next update will allow you to long tap any of the compose tool buttons to see a description. The drafts can be accessed by tapping on the icon button that looks like a page (2nd button from the left).
oh, it would be cool, if “save post” could be pulled out from the submenu beneath a post or comment.
For performance reasons the “submenu” is difficult to change/customize at the moment. If you use “save post/comment” a lot I would recommend changing one of the gestures to that. I will add configuring the “submenu” as a user request.
the community-popup (button on top left) has a weird “back”-history. A popup should be always first to close. Also it should be modal since you interact with everything in the background and can’t close it tapping outside.
I couldn’t reproduce any issues here. Tapping back always dismissed the community-popup for me. If you find a way to reproduce it 100% please let me know.
settings are weirdly bugged if you return from a category back to main. If i use the button on top left, everything works. But when I use the system back button, I cannot click on any category anymore. Though, I can still scroll.
I found that this is actually a weird state bug. This only happens if you tap on the summit community within settings first. After that, navigation will be bugged. I have a fix for this in the next update.
All of the changes mentioned will be available in the v1.21.3 release which should be live within the next couple of hours.
Thank you so much! I did not expect such speedy answer and fixes!
I can’t find out to jump to “all” or “local” posts of a specific instance.
This is not currently supported. Once you are signed in, the app will use the current account’s instance for everything. I think a solution for this would be to have a special signed out account that can browse any instance but with no permission to perform any actions. I’ll add this to the user requests backlog.
Ok. Yeah, makes sense that what would be hard to do if you currently expect only a single account at the same time. For me it would make sense to be able to switch to a dummy anonymous account, since I think that that (more or less) is the case when no account is logged in at all and you can still browse lemmy.world. (If I remember correctly that that was Summit but I have tried so many apps, I can’t tell.)
Another issue I stumbled upon just before is at least a bit adjacent to this one. I followed a http link in a post to lemmy.world but your app recognized that and opened it like every other post. However I cannot interact/upvote with it because, obviously, it is on the wrong instance:
Incompatible account instance There is a mismatch between the instance the account was created on (programming.dev) and the instance the action is taken on (lemmy.world). You can fix this by either signing in to an account on the instance lemmy.world or by loading this page from the lemmy.world instance.
That makes sense. (The last “lemmy.world” in this text should be “programming.dev” in this case). But I cannot find out how to do that. In liftoff I would go to the context menu and select “view on other instance” and select my account on programming.dev and it would continue working. However, I cannot find something similar in summit and I am not sure (as a user) how to apply the suggestion in the popup (maybe I am stupid).
Also, the handling of this case is not consistent. Trying to upvote triggers the message above. Trying to “Save” a comment/post results in:
Unable to save post Client error. code: 401. Message: Attempted to call an auth'd endpoint with the wrong account. Account instance: programming.dev Api instance: lemmy.world.
I think that the anonymous account would come in handy here too. In my imagination it would be cool, if the app could use a logged-in account for instances with logged-in in accounts (maybe for simplicity only one per instance?) and fall back to an anonymous account for instances without account. Trying to interact with stuff could trigger the instance/account selection and then open the post from the selected instance.
(I know, simply said in a couple of sentences and then it’s weeks of work…)
Up/downvotes are on the left, but comment count on the right. Would be cool, if there was an option to have them together.
This is tough to design for. I played around with it for 5 minutes but couldn’t get anything that looks nice. Is there any particular reason you want them to be together? The reason they are separate is mostly for aesthetics. You can try compact view which does have them together if you want.
Well, I think they belong together :D When scrolling through, I normally look at the votes and comments to judge how important or polarizing the topic is. I am on a 10" tablet (SM-T720) in landscape so both values are about 19 cm apart. All the content is on the left side, except for the comment count which is far off and alone on the right.
But I can live with the compact view if that makes it easier for you.
oh, it would be cool, if “save post” could be pulled out from the submenu beneath a post or comment.
For performance reasons the “submenu” is difficult to change/customize at the moment. If you use “save post/comment” a lot I would recommend changing one of the gestures to that. I will add configuring the “submenu” as a user request.
Thank you! Yeah, I pretty much never write comments but I do save. I have never liked using gestures so I won’t use them but looking for the button is not the end of the world. I mean I also do not save that much. Customization would be nice, though!
Drafts are saved but I can’t find them. A menu in the composing-post would be cool.
The next update will allow you to long tap any of the compose tool buttons to see a description. The drafts can be accessed by tapping on the icon button that looks like a page (2nd button from the left).
Ohhhhh! Well, I would not have looked there for them. Probably only after I would have stumbled upon it by accident while writing the text. More logical for me was in the top-right menu, but there you can only “save”, not “load”.
the community-popup (button on top left) has a weird “back”-history. A popup should be always first to close. Also it should be modal since you interact with everything in the background and can’t close it tapping outside.
I couldn’t reproduce any issues here. Tapping back always dismissed the community-popup for me. If you find a way to reproduce it 100% please let me know.
- $ Start app
- $ Open community popup
- $ Open a post (on the list in the background; not in the popup)
- $ Press the back button
- App navigates back
- $ Press the back button
- App closes the community popup
The most weird thing for me is that all outside the popup is interactable. Example Video (link self-destructs in a couple of days).
Though, that might all be a “me” problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you for all the stuff you fixed!
That makes sense. (The last “lemmy.world” in this text should be “programming.dev” in this case). But I cannot find out how to do that. In liftoff I would go to the context menu and select “view on other instance” and select my account on programming.dev and it would continue working. However, I cannot find something similar in summit and I am not sure (as a user) how to apply the suggestion in the popup (maybe I am stupid).
This is an edge case I didn’t handle. I’ll add it as a bug to fix for the next release.
The most weird thing for me is that all outside the popup is interactable. Example Video (link self-destructs in a couple of days).
Ah, tablet. That makes sense. The app doesn’t handle tablets very well at the moment mostly due to me lacking a physical tablet test device. I can’t really justify buying a tablet just for a fun side project at the moment. I can test on an emulator but I avoid it because the screen is really large and breaks my screen layout. I will get this bug fixed at least for the next release. Thanks for reporting!
Since you are on a tablet, you might be interested in an experimental feature I added to the app, which is navigation rails. It might improve the screen usage slightly. To enable it go to Settings > Misc > Navigation rail mode. Turning it to Auto should auto-detect that you are using a tablet and switch to it. I’ll enable it in the future by default after I work out all of the kinks :D.
Thank you!
The app doesn’t handle tablets very well at the moment
I am not really sure what you mean because I am pretty satisfied how everything works, actually. I am mostly just stumbling over weird things and just wrote them down :D It was just a bit annoying to reach to the back button instead of touching outside the popup.
I veeery shortly tried out the rail nav but I am not sure. I have not missed the vertical space to be completely honest. But I am testing it out some more, I think. Alsoooooo, after changing this setting, the navbar becomes unusable xD
Oh no. What do you mean by the nav bar becomes unusable? If the setting enables correctly the navbar should be hidden in favor of the nav rail. Do you mean the nav rail doesn’t respond to taps?
Sorry! So from a user perspective, the navbar just moves, sorry for the confusion. The switch between normal and rail mode works. And both modes work. But when I change the setting in a way that makes the bars switch, any of them stops working. Meaning, the buttons are interactable and theey switch their active state, but their action is not triggered. Restarting the app fixes it.
Example:
- Be on Home page
- Go to settings
- Set rail from off to on (or reversed)
- Tap on inbox (or saved, …)
- Active button changes (the highlight showing on what page we are) but the page is not changed (we stay on the home page and do not navigate to the inbox)
Also, I found out (I think) that when writing a comment, and in the middle switching to another app and then closing summit, does not save a draft. I assume, you only save drafts when navigating inside the app and do not check that. I mean I did not expect it to, just letting you know.
Thank you for reporting the bug with the nav rail setting. This will be fixed in the next update.
As for the draft issue, swiping an app away is generally considered “force quit” so the system doesn’t allow the app to handle this sort of event in any way. The upside to this is that you can kill any app even if they misbehave or are malicious however it also means apps cannot save their state if you kill them in this way.
This is just a long way of saying that this isn’t a bug with the app and the app behaves as expected.
Well shit, I didn’t know that. It has been a long time since I touched Android dev and also never needed that knowledge.
One app I rarely use, uses some event that is triggered when it goes to the background or whatever. As soon as the app leaves the foreground, it shows the “saved” toast. It works both with the home button for the “desktop” and also when using the “open apps” switch UI (whatever that is called). Of course that is a step before the force close and is more complex to to handle for you since the editor window is not closed.
Thank you for putting up with my shit xD