this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Connect for Lemmy App

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A community for the mobile app Connect for Lemmy.

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Connect 1.0.131 Released (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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 15 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.

[–] [email protected] 9 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 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Great app, thank you!

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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;
  }
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Thank you! @[email protected] - 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] SnowMeowXP 3 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the app!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the great work, again!

[–] Leax 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Awesome updates and so happy to see copy article url.

[–] SuperNinja 2 points 1 year ago

Keep up the good work!

[–] [email protected] 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!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 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. 🫠

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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! :)

[–] [email protected] 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'?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Great!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago
  • Increased the hitbox for the comment button to include the number

Thank you, it's so much better!

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the updates.

It seems deleting a comment immediately redirects me to all/frontpage instead of staying in the thread. Is that deliberate?

[–] [email protected] 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!