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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by kuro_neko@lemmy.ca to c/lemmyconnect@lemmy.ca

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Hi, I wanted to get more into theme and customization improvements but a lot of great feature requests came up and I ended up just implementing those instead. I might need a better system to compile release notes soon as in the past week there have been 11 beta releases and it's a bit tedious to go through each to compile the final release notes. Probably the biggest change in this release is the way back navigation works, hopefully it's now in a state that is more intuitive instead of back activating the drawer menu.

Thank you to everyone that has taken the time to provide feedback and suggestions, even if I haven't had the time to respond I've read them all. It's really appreciated!

Also Connect turns 2 months old on Tuesday. Kind of crazy how quickly that went and how much the app has changed in that short amount of time. Thank you again to everyone that has stuck with me these past 2 months, Connect is as much your app as it is mine.

Changes

Changed back button behaviour and a swipe gesture to show the menu.
NSFW blur is now a real blur
[Post card] Changed the comment icon to go to comments and added an optional 'reply' icon which preserves the older behaviour
Added Search bar to settings since they are now a lot of settings
Changing sort order in list views no longer changes your sort order setting
Long pressing a setting will now copy its name
Marking posts read on scroll should now be more reliable for long posts
Added 'Undo Hide post' action when hiding a post
Added some padding to user avatars
Added setting to autohide comment replies
Increased the hitbox for the comment button to include the number
Added undo for the 'Hide Above' action
Removed a small fade in for images so they now load immediately
Added 'Subscribe' to the post action menu
Added setting for sticky bottom bars or hiding on scroll
Fixed an issue with the 'Saved' page now combining posts and comments correctly
Added experimental option to remember scroll position in comment lists
Added setting to hide markdown images
Added "copy article url" to post action menu
Added volume controls to video and saving so changes persist to future videos
Added icon to flag bot accounts (robot)
Improved 'Experimental post swipe navigation' to include a swipe to previous and if swipe gestures are turned off the entire page is a swipe target
High refresh rate defaults to on
Improved the 'Block' page, list of communities to block now shows all results instead of 1 page of results
Fixed issue within the inbox where comments could sometimes be duplicated
Fixed table markdown when combined with images
Fixed an issue with .website instance names not loading correctly

More theme customization is coming!

Links:

-kuroneko

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[-] The_v@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Whatever the fuck you did, thank you.

I opened it up this morning and it loads faster, scrolls seamlessly, and is intuitive to navigate.

I think you hit the point where it is now mostly functional. From here on out the tweaks will be for added features and improved stability. All in 2 months. Truly a remarkable accomplishment.

The official reddit app has yet to reach the functional stage.

Thank you as well done.

[-] anowhere@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Connect is as much your app as it is mine."

And it is that user focus and can-do attitude that makes Connect my favorite Lemmy app and Kuro an exceptional developer. Thanks to Kuro for weaving the magic bits and to fellow Connecters for your suggestions and observations!

[-] Andre@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Great app, thank you!

I miss the old back button behaviour swipe left to open the menu/subscriptions 😥

[-] NightOwl@lemmy.one 1 points 1 year ago

I actually found out that behavior yesterday and loved it since it saved me having to swipe from the left haha.

[-] ijeff@lemdro.id 4 points 1 year ago

Nice! AFAIK Connect is the only app with support for community lists for other instances. Do you have anything published on how you accomplished this? It'd be great if it could be built into the Lemmy-UI and Photon web clients (https://p.lemdro.id).

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I don't but it's nothing complex. When you view the 'About Instance' page I call the ListCommunities API for that instance and get the top 50 communities then display it in a list. Here's the dart code that Connect uses:

  void _communityBrowse() async {
    // dont call this multiple times while waiting for a response
    if (isLoading) {
      return;
    }
    setState(() {
      isLoading = true; // turn on loading spinner
    });

    // Connect to the API of whichever instance is being viewed
    var lemmy = LemmyApiV3(widget.id);

    // 50 top communities from the relevant instance
    try {
      List communitiesTemp = await retry(
          2,
          () => lemmy.run(ListCommunities(
              type: PostListingType.local,
              sort: SortType.topAll,
              page: communitiesPage,
              limit: 50)));

      communities = communities + communitiesTemp;
    } on Exception catch (ex) {
      UtilError.errorMessage(this, ex);
    }

    setState(() {
      isLoading = false; // turn off loading spinner
    });

    // increment page for future invocations
    communitiesPage = communitiesPage + 1;
  }

[-] ijeff@lemdro.id 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thank you! @Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev - not sure if this is something you can implement for Photon. Connect provides a very useful list of communities on an instance, making it easy to browse through and subscribe from.

[-] Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Is that not just the explore page? (Globe icon)

[-] ijeff@lemdro.id 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Similar but it shows the list for other instances, not just your home instance.

For example, if you're visiting a lemdro.id community from your lemmy.xylight.dev account you could click to see a list of communities on lemdro.id.

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

After this update, the app has been freezing and crashing a lot. Ten minutes or so of casual scrolling, and it just dies.

I dunno if it's my device, or what, but it isn't launching the usual crash report dialogue when it happens, so I'm not sure how to give you anything useful.

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Hi! Is that when scrolling through the post feed only or throughout the app (e.g. comments and profiles). Does turning off swipe actions or mark post read on scroll have any effect? (Just calling out those two as they use a bit more power). Does changing post view between cards and list view have any effect?

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Just the post feed so far.

Swipe actions were on, I switched them off and will test. Mark post as read is off.

Changing view has not caused a change (I had changed that earlier today just to try the view out).

Getting ready to check to see if swipe actions being off changes anything.

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I've been trying off and on. Changing swipe actions on or off didn't change anything. None of the view options did eithet.

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Ok thank you. Do you see any improvements in the latest beta v138?

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

It's happening less, for sure. Maybe twice or three times a day rather than a steady stream of it

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Just switched to beta, I'll give it a good test and respond asap

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think I found the problem.

It took a bit for me to realize it, but the crashes were happening at the same time as my always-on VPN would drop out. Since that's usually only a second or two, I didn't see the notification flash for the VPN drop as I was paying attention to lemmy lol.

So far, turning off the alway-on setting has given no Connect crashes, even when the VPN glitches out. Not sure why it was impacting connect and not other apps, but that's what seems to have been the cause

Edit: correction. It happens when the VPN drops, regardless of the always-on setting.

[-] SnowMeowXP@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the app!

[-] Leax@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks, the horizontal swiping finally works as I think it should! I'm really enjoying the update :)

[-] harl3k1n@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the great work, again!

[-] Lem453@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Great update! any chance we can get a way to see all hidden posts?

[-] siipale@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Hi Kuro! Thanks for developing this great app. It has been very useful for former RiF user like me.

I would like to hear your opinion on the thing that has been requested for several times: function of long pressing a comment. In my opinion there should be either an option to disable long press entirely or an option to select which function it has. For example some people have requested a text selection functionality.

In addition to my initial post about this feature request I have seen two other people make posts about it, e.g. this and I've seen some mentions of it on other threads too so it seems I'm not the only one who needs this.

So please respond to this, Kuro. Have a nice day! :)

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Hi, thanks for the feedback and I'll see what I can do. Any actions you'd like to see beyond 'hide' and 'copy text'?

[-] OverfedRaccoon@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Very minor thing, but I have Frontpage as my default, but when I switch accounts or load the app, it defaults to All. I set Frontpage to default again, but still loads to All for each account. Seems to be with the new update, as it hasn't been an issue otherwise.

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the feedback, I'll take a look!

[-] OverfedRaccoon@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I switched default to All (just to switch it off of Frontpage), then back to Frontpage. That didn't seem to change it at the time. But then I closed and reloaded, and it looks like it might have fixed it this time? It seems to default to Frontpage again. 🫠

[-] SuperNinja@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Keep up the good work!

[-] El_Dorado@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the hard work. I really appreciated the implementation of autoplaying gifs.

Just wanted to give some feedback. I realized the other day that connect used very large amounts of data when playing gifs. Would it be possible to have a quality adjustment setting that could be switched on on mobile.

Many thanks and best regards

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Are these gifs through Imgur or another site? I can look into if there is an alternative format available like webm which uses less bandwidth.

[-] El_Dorado@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Redgifs.com actually. Thanks for your time 👍

[-] kuro_neko@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Ok I'll take a look, thanks!

[-] El_Dorado@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

If it helps I checked again. Looking at a handful of gifs over maximum 2 minutes, consumed more than 200mb of data

[-] NightOwl@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago

Awesome updates and so happy to see copy article url.

[-] ComradeBunnie@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago

Great work, thank you!

I have noticed that the new "undo" hide post is flakey - either it doesn't show, or more often, it won't go away even when jumping from Frontpage into a post's comment section.

"Refreshed" is also lingering around.

Otherwise, excellent job, keep it up!

[-] Humblyorganised88@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Just wanted to say thank you so much for all the work you've been doing, from one developer to another that's an impressive amount of changes for a release!

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Great!

[-] Pleonasm@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Increased the hitbox for the comment button to include the number

Thank you, it's so much better!

[-] HolyFriedFish@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I love Connect more with every update!

I'm not sure this is the place to put a question/request but I actually quite liked NSFW images being a single block of color. The blur is perfectly fine, but it would be nice to have an option for a color block over NSFW images. Part of the reason I switched to Connect from Jerboa is that Jerboa's blur was so bad, I could see explicit things through it. Connect's is much better, so it's not necessary to get a color block option.

Anyway there's my two cents. Thank you for all the work you've done on this app - it really is incredible to me how much has been done, and how well it works.

this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023

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