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So Summit for Lemmy already supports "advanced screenshots" letting you take screenshots of posts and comments with ease, allowing you to include any and as many comments as you want. However this doesn't work as well if the post or comments have animated GIFs in them. I'm working on a feature that will allow you to take an "advanced screenshot" but as a GIF so you can capture any video or GIF as well.

Changes so far

• Added a feature to "record" a screenshot as a video or GIF.
• Fixed a bug where links are invisible in conversations.
• Changed long tap on the header, expand button or the side to expand actions as well.
• Added option to mark a post as read/unread in the post option's menu.

Making this post to track progress on the next release. Will decide on a title later.

Changes so far:

• Fixed a bug where the navigation bar does not highlight the correct item in certain cases.
• Fixed a bug where the open link button is visible when no image is shown in the post list.
• Changed messages in the inbox. Messages sent by you will no longer show up in inbox.
• Fixed some bugs that occur when viewing a link to a Lemmy post of another instance.
• Make it more obvious when loading in the inbox screen(s)
• Changed the "Mark as read" gesture to toggle the read state of the post. Eg. if a post is read and the gesture "Mark as read" is performed, the post will be marked as unread.
• Added a fade effect to the bottom screen when screens are stacked together. Eg. when viewing a post from the community feed.
• Fixed some minor bugs with people search.
• When viewing a reply message in the inbox, added a button in the context section to make it easier to see the post of the reply.
• Redesigned the DM system in the app completely.

Update

With how the release is going it's seeming very likely this release will focus on cleaning up the DM experience.

The current DM experience is pretty bad. Messages are littered everywhere and it's very difficult to follow a message chain. This wasn't high priority since it was assumed most users are not using DMs. However as other parts of the app becomes polished, DMs are suddenly the weakest part of the app.

The current minimum plan is to group DMs with individuals together into chains at the very least. Other improvements are still up in the air.

Unfortunately, designs of the DMs will probably be limited to what the Lemmy API can provide. For instance, I was exploring an email like approach where one item is shown per message thread however there is currently no API that returns only top level message threads. Instead you can only get individual messages. Of course we can still implement this on the client however it can lead to an excessive amount of network calls.

As an example, imagine a scenario where user A and B exchange a lot of message. Let's say they exchanged 1000 messages. Let's say the client is configured to fetch 50 messages at a time. Given this, if the user navigates to the messages screen the client will fetch 50 messages. The client will then group all 50 messages as a conversation between A and B. However since this is just one conversation, the client will need to fetch more messages to make sure there aren't any other conversations. This will repeat until all 1000 messages have been fetched. At this point the client is finally sure there are no other conversations and it will stop. This means that the client will need to make 20 network calls in order to load the messages screen which is pretty costly.

There are some solutions but they all vary in effort or usability. The easiest solution is to not collapse conversations in the messages screen. The downside here is usability as it would be difficult to look for specific conversations. The highest effort solution would be to group all messages on the messages screen and build a database on the client side that tracks all messages. By doing so, the first time messages are loaded might still be costly but subsequent refreshes should be relatively fast.

I'm still mulling over what to do here.

Update 2

I love you guys so I'm going to implement the best possible DM experience with no cut corners. It's going to take some time though.

Update 3

I think I can wrap this update up sometime this weekend. I think a release is possible by Monday (Aug, 19) if not earlier.

Changes so far:

• Improved styling on collapsed comments. Voting on a collapsed comment will update the score and cause the score color to change.
• Fixed many bugs with the layout "list with cards". Specifically it was missing the voting buttons and the comments counter. This has been added. Several other fixes has also been applied for this layout.
• Fixed a bug where the header text of a post would be cut off when using certain layouts.
• Fixed a bug where the link icon would appear on a post even if the post does not contain a link.
• Fixed a bug where paragraphs within a spoiler block may not be correctly formatted.
• Support subscripts in markdown (for_example)
• Fixed a bug where opening. closing and opening the same post will cause the post to not be highlighted when the post is closed.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes you can drag a blank window from the right side of the screen.
• Fixed a bug where the progress bar when loading videos does not conform to the app theme.
• Added new image loading animation.

Edit

I must have been really tired last night because I accidentally posted this as a release when it's a WIP release. Fixed.

Update

I'm moving the fixes here into 1.38.1 instead.

Hello! I haven't posted in a while so I wanted to give a quick update on what is going on with the app.

The next feature I'm working on is quite large. Its offline support which aims to make the app usable offline... to a degree. This feature is going to be made up of several different parts including features to download certain content in advance and have the app respond to network changes.

In addition to this feature I am also working on some physical projects since it is summer where I am. I had a lot of yard work planned for this year so I'm also spending a lot of my free time with that. Due to this and the size of the next update, the next update will likely take a little longer.

Changes so far:

• Changed bookmark button to reflect the current state. Eg. if the post is already bookmarked then the bookmark icon is filled.
• When opening a link to a post on a different instance, added a banner to explaining the instance mismatch and also have an option to switch instances. Also added a loading spinner when switching instances in this way.
• Added a "Make available offline" button to make a feed available offline.

The next big feature on the menu is "Offline mode". This feature is difficult to tackle so I'm going to be implementing some other features that should make it easier.

The first is pre-fetching. Prefetching can also improve the base user experience so I will be looking at possible things that can be pre-fetched.

Changes so far:

• Added prefetching to the post feed. This should make loading more items in the post feed happen instantly as long as there is a good internet connection.
• Added support for community icons in the post feed.
• Added a setting to enable/disable post feed prefetching. The default is on.
• Added a setting to enable/disable community icons in the post feed. The default is on.
• Change post view to show the community icon if the post list also shows the community icon.
• Fixed a bug where tapping in certain areas of the post will not register the tap.

Update

I'm changing the default on community icons to "on" since a good portion of you want it on by default. This will be configurable on a per-layout basis so you can always turn it off.

This release fixes some minor bugs with the app and also adds NSFW mode. When NSFW mode is enabled, both blur and the NSFW filter will be ignored. Instead NSFW posts will always be shown and are never blurred. This mode is excellent if you want a quick way to switch between browsing SFW content and NSFW content.

Changes so far:

• Added an image info screen to the image viewer.
• Fixed a minor bug where the background of the inbox screen does not take up the entire height of the screen.
• Fixed a bug when using the screenshot feature to take a screenshot of a comment without the post. Remove the divider at the top of the screenshot that serves no purpose.
• Fixed a bug where sending an image to the app would show a bottom sheet but the bottom sheet would not be expanded.
• Changed delete post action to update the post deleted automatically. Also deleting a post will show a snackbar allowing the user to undo the action.
• Added a undo button to restore a deleted post.
• Added NSFW mode. The option to toggle this mode is in the home screen's overflow menu.

Changes so far

• Moved the setting to make the notification bar completely transparent from Misc settings to Theme
• Moved the about and summit community setting options under a new category: About
• Renamed the existing "Post and comments" settings page to "Post and comments appearance".
• Removed the settings page for Comment list and added a new settings page for Post and comments settings.
• Moved the "Post appearance" settings page to be under the "Posts feed" settings screen.
• Moved the "Post and comments appearance" settings page to be under the "Post and comments" settings screen.
• Added a new setting to hide the UI in the image view by default.
• Fixed a bug where performing certain actions in the settings screen will cause all switch based settings to reset to off.
• Fixed a bug where the app mistakes certain links as Lemmy links.

Update

Haven't posted an update in a while so here it is. I've been working on adding general cross-account support for the past week and it's a big feature so I didn't really have much to update other than it's WIP. If I can't get the feature into a shippable state by this weekend I will do a release without it since there's plenty in this release already.

Note that by cross-account support I mean the supporting acting on a different account without switching the current account. This is a requirement for things like "cross account feeds" eg. multi-account subscribed feed.

I'm going back to implementing more user requests.

Changes so far:

• Updated the design of the user profile screen slightly.
• Fixed a bug when viewing information about moderated communities/subscribed communities.
• Added a setting to choose a "quick action" for the post feed floatiing action button (FAB) (button at the bottom). When set, this action will trigger when the FAB is long pressed.
• Improve options menus even further.
• Handle Lemmy links to custom frontends.
• Added setting to show edited times in post/comment headers.
• Fixed a crash when trying to preview an extremely high resolution image.
• Fixed a crash when interacting with spoiler tags.
• Fixed a rare crash.

I'm going against my original plans which was to implement user suggestions and instead jumping into polishing and fine tuning of the app. Enough stuff in the app bother me that I just want to clean it all up sooner rather than later.

v1.33.5

This will be the last v1.33.x release. This release should add the rest of the tweaks I had in mind.

Changes so far:

• Auto-clear notifications if user looks at inbox screen.
• Updated the UI of the community info screen.
• Fixed a bug where the FAB button would be in the wrong spot if the keyboard is opened and closed.
• Fixed some minor bugs when searching for communities.
• Fixed a bug where image previews are blurry.
• Fixed some image viewer bugs.

v1.33.4

Changes so far:

• Mention suggestions. When creating a post or comment, mentions (starting with ! or @) will show suggestions based what is typed.
• Fixed a bug where tapping "Share image" will cause the share sheet to show up constantly.
• Changed long tap on an image in the post list to open the image options menu. Previously it would preview the image full screen. This change was made to make long tapping more consistent (long tapping things usually opens a context menu).
• Image preview redesign. Move buttons to the bottom of the screen for easier access. Translucent UI. UI auto hides on zoom.
• Fixed a bug with the layout "Large list" where images would be clipped on the sides.

v1.33.3

Changes so far:

• Rework the community options menu. Organized and updated the options shown.
• Added subscribe/unsubscribe as an action to the community options menu & link menu (for communities).
• Added a solid background color to community and profile icons so they don't look odd when placed in front of a banner.
• Added undo button to save post/comment snackbar.
• Fixed some snack bar layout issues.

Old (v1.33.1)

Changes so far:

• Fixed two rare-ish crashes.
• Overhauled the community navigation logic. This should hopefully eliminate more navigation bugs.

Old (v1.33.0)

Changes so far:

• Update message layout on the inbox screen to clearly indicate the sender and receiver.
• Link menu enhancements. Long tapping "links" (eg. user name) will show more rich options that are specific to the link type. For instance long tapping a community link will show community options as well as link options.
• Removed setting "sharing images directly". Due to the link menu enhancements, the setting for "sharing images directly" is now obsolete because both options are always present for images.
• Fixed a bug where WEBM videos will not play.
• Fixed some weird navigation bugs.

Update

Going to keep this post alive even though v1.33.0's release is imminent. This is because I will be implementing many more changes as point releases (eg. v1.33.1, v1.33.2, etc) and I will update this post accordingly.

Writing this down so I don't forget but to also give the community some insight as well.

My immediate plans for Summit is to support creating and editing communities from within the app. After that I will look at the user requests and try to finish those off again. Once all of that is done I'm going to be doing some fine tuning of the app.

As a daily user of the app, I think the app currently offers a decent base experience for browsing Lemmy but it's not polished; the user experience is a little bare. A lot of features can use some small adjustments to make them nicer to use.

I've been gathering ideas on how certain features can be made better over the past few weeks but this is also a great time to ask the community to bring up any slight annoyances they've had with the app.

Anyways that's all from me for now.

Changes so far:

• Update back behavior. Tapping back while on a community that is not the home community will take you back to the home community instead of exiting the app.
• Added an option to the Import & Export settings page to backup and reset your current settings.
• Added support for editing communities.
• Added support for creating communities.
• Added option to delete a community.

Update

Some of the minor changes noted here have been released as v1.31.1 so they have been moved to the v1.31.1 release post instead.

Changes so far:

• Remove post & comment score from the profile page. These stats used to be reported by the Lemmy API but they were removed in v0.19. To keep with the spirit of the Lemmy devs I am removing these scores.
• Improve performance of the user actions screen.
• Automatically dismiss notification if user reads inbox item.
• Fixed some text formatting bugs.
• Added screen to give translators credit.

Update

Working on a big project on the side that's sort of related with the app so development will be a bit slower for a bit (like a week).

Not 100% what to do about translations just yet. For now I've set up a website to allow for crowd source translations here: https://translate.idunnololz.com/projects/summit/summit/

Changes so far:

• Fixed a bug where comments in the saved and search screens do not show vote counts and their voting buttons do nothing.
• Fixed a rare bug where videos supported by the app are unable to be played.
• Added a new layout, "list with cards", which is essentially list layout but with cards as it's name suggests.
• Fixed a bug where the save post button in the quick action menu will do the opposite of what it's supposed to (eg. when it's supposed to save the post it removes it and when its supposed to remove the post from saved, it saves it).
• Fixed a bug where anything wrapped in angle brackets (<like_this>) would be removed from a post/comment.
• Changed the timestamp of posts/comments to show the time when it was published instead of the time it was updated.
• Fixed a bug where refreshing on the inbox screen will not auto-scroll to the top of the list.
• Changed hide post to show a snackbar with an undo button.
• Fixed a rare crash that can occur when downloading videos.
• Improve link/image menus and make them more consistent. Long tapping an image will show a more specific image actions menu. Long tapping on embedded images will show the same menu. The overflow button in the image viewer brings up the same menu.

Update

I will make a more proper announcement about translations later. For now, the translation thing is just something I wanted to share since this is a [WIP] post and it is very much work in progress. I'll update the community via edits to this post but once I have more concrete plans I will make an official post.

Update 2

Been a busy week so not too many updates on the translations just yet. I have more time now and I think this is my current plan for it:

1. I will set up continuous integration with Weblate (the localization website). This means that changes to strings within the project are auto-updated on the localization website.
2. I will comb through all strings in the app and add comments/context to them as necessary and delete unused ones.
3. I will push the update to the localization website.
4. I will make an announcement that the localization website is ready for use. From this point on, any volunteers can freely add translations and they will be included in future releases.

This is my current plan of attack. I'll post updates as I check off things in the list.

Update: Done step 1.

Update: Done step 2. That took a very long time.

Update: Done step 3.

NOTIFICATIONS!

Welcome to the notifications update where I will attempt to add notifications support to the app.

But first, this coming release will add support for RedGifs. This means that any RedGif links will play within the app and not error out. In addition, the built-in video player is getting many more options in the overflow menu to match the options of images.

Changes so far:

• Added support for RedGifs.
• Added more options in the built-in video player.
• Changed the comment screen to auto focus the input field when first shown.
• Fixed an issue where custom comment gesture actions where not being applied.
• Fixed a regression with screenshot mode where post actions are not hidden when in screenshot mode.
• Fixed some inconsistent scrolling behavior throughout the app.

Will write more here later.

Changes so far:

• Added settings to set the default sort order on a per community/feed level.
• Fixed a rare bug where expanding the content of a post within the community feed will cause the text of another expanded post to disappear.
• Changed how hide scores works. Enabling hide scores will hide the score regardless of action. You can still check scores in the detailed views.
• Added a setting to show all inline media in comments as links. Eg. if a comment has an image in the body, it will appear as a link instead.
• Added a setting to customize the post quick actions menu.

This release adds comment filters.

Changes so far

• Fixed a bug where the inbox screen can end up in a weird state and the bottom navigation bar would hide when it shouldn't.
• Added comment filters.
• Limit the app to only one (1) task per profile (eg. work profile). This addresses some edge cases.
• Fixed a bug where UI shows old comment when a comment is updated.
• Added Controversial and Hot (scaled) to the list of possible sort orders for account defaults.
• Fixed some inset bugs on wide screens (eg. landscape mode on a phone).

Update

Due to the number of bugs found, I'm going to release all of the bug fixes as v1.26.5.

This update features a rewrite of the comment quick actions bar. Comment quick actions are the actions shown below a comment when a comment is expanded (ie. tapped). With this coming release, comment quick actions will become fully customizable. Allowing users to choose which actions they want to see and which actions they want to hide. Of course all actions will still be available within the more actions menu of a comment.

Changes so far:

• Fully rewrite of the comment quick actions bar, allowing the actions bar to be customized.
• Updated the quote button in the text field editor to insert quotes on every selected line.
• Added the create post button on all community feeds. Previously the create post button would only appear in the overflow menu if you are viewing a single community. With this change, the create post button will appear no matter which community feed you are viewing. However the community field will not be auto-populated if the create post button is not tapped from a single community feed.
• Added a button in the drafts browser to toggle between filtered view and unfiltered view. When filtering is turned off, all drafts are shown regardless of whether they are posts or comment drafts. If a incompatible draft is selected (eg. you're composing a post but choose a comment draft) then the app will do it's best to convert the draft into the correct type.
• Fixed a bug where tapping (or gesturing) "Hide post" will not hide the post. This may occur if the app is backgrounded and then restored from the background.
• Added support for tablets. Tablet mode will be enabled by default on this release. If the device screen is deemed wide enough, certain screens will present their content as multiple panes, utilizing the full width of the tablet.
• Updated some UI to be more consistent with the Android OS.
• Fixed more edge case bugs with the floating rich text toolbar.
• Improved performance for both post views and comment views.
• Added a setting to show filtered posts as collapsed posts in the community post list. This setting is available in the Post list settings page. It is under the Filters section.

Update

The original contents of this release had too few changes. In addition, the next feature coming up is going to take some time to implement. Thus instead of implementing the next feature and bundling the bug fixes with that release, the changes made originally for v1.26.0 will be released as v1.25.1. This way, bug fixes that will improve the overall user experience will roll out much sooner. You can see the original changes for this release here: https://lemmy.world/post/11357283.

Update 2

v1.25.1 is stuck in review on the Google Playstore and has been for the last 3 days. Normally this process is only supposed to take ~1-2 hours but it seems that occasionally the review period is much much longer, sometimes taking a week. I think this happens when an app is selected to be manually reviewed but I'm not entirely sure. In any case, this review will not/cannot be released until v1.25.1 is reviewed and published on the Google Playstore.

Update 3

Since v1.25.1 is still stuck in review, I'm going to take a stab at implementing something I've been putting off for a while: tablet support. Stay tuned!

!

Update 4

Made an insane amount of progress on support for larger screen sizes. v1.26.0 release is going to be dope for tablet users.

!

I'll give this release a proper-er title in the release post. This post is just to track the random stuff I did during the business trip. I'll work on more stuff for Summit once I'm home.

Changes so far:

• Fixed a bug where switching communities may not apply your preferred settings. Eg. sort order.
• Added a new screenshot mode: Title and image only. This one is great if the title and image already tell the full story and the body of the post isn't necessary. Eg. when a post has a text description for accessibility but you're already giving all that up anyways since you're saving it as an image.
• Added the option to browse as "guest". This allows you to browse instances outside of the instance of your account without needing an account on the other instance.
• Added some fancy logic to the post creator/editor screen. The post body formatting toolbar will now detect if the keyboard is open and switch between being docked to the bottom of the screen or being docked below the post text field. Preview here.
• Fixed a bug where not all elements will be visible in the account switcher dialog if the user is signed into too many accounts.
• Added a settings button to the rich text field toolbar. This allows users to change the order of the options in the rich text field toolbar.

This update adds a feature I wanted: Save image for later! It allows you to send an image to Summit and have Summit hold on to it. You can then later use the image on a post or comment like you would any other image.

The main use case is that I find the system image picker to be lackluster for finding images. Sometimes it's way easier to find the image you want from an app directly. Now with save for later you will be able to find an image you want to send, send it to Summit, switch to the Summit app and then send the image.

To start with Summit with be able to hold on to up to 3 images. I don't really see a reason why you would need the app to hold on to any more than that but additional "slots" can be added in the future should users request for it.

Changes so far:

• Added "save image for later" feature.
• Fixed a bug where the "more" button in a post does not show all options when "relay mode" is enabled.
• Fixed a bug where unchecking an item in screenshot mode will not remove it from the screenshot.

Just going to implement as many of the user requests as I can until I have a good amount done and go for a release.

Changes so far:

• Added "reason" to mod logs.
• Changed the following admin/mod actions to open a dialog which allows you to provide a reason: remove post, undo remove post, remove comment, undo remove comment, purge comment, purge community, purge post, purge user, ban user from community, ban user from site, remove community, hide community.
• Added two new admin actions: remove community and hide community.
• Fixed a bug where changing accounts while browsing a community will not load the correct community.
• Fixed a bug where mods/admins listed on the community/instance information screen do not have instance information.
• Added indicators on the community info screen for the hidden &amp; removed state.

There were a lot of small changes proposed during the break, so many that I will gather them all up and implement them together for a single release.

Changes so far:

• Added a warning dialog if hit send when there is an in-progress image upload
• Fixed an issue where comment view layout is really tall if both show avatar and show up/downvote is enabled.
• Added the option to add a date and a watermark to the "take screenshot" feature. These are now enabled by default.
• Added a setting to change between single line comment headers and multiline comment headers.
• Added a "saved" icon to posts and comments that are saved.
• Fixed a bug where switching the navigation bar to rail/bottom bar will cause the bottom bar to become unusable until the app is either restarted or an orientation change is made.
• Moved the setting to change between navigation rail vs bottom bar to the navigation settings page. Previously it was in misc.
• Fixed a bug where the highlighted icon in the nav bar is not visible when using the light theme.
• Added a "change instance" button if a lemmy link is tapped but the instance does not match that of the current account.
• Improve the UI of bottom sheets.
• Modified "back to the beginning" button in the overflow menu of the post list screen to take you back to the top without refreshing.