Alpha Release [v0.2.1+7]
Oh hey look, its another release around the corner! This release adds in OLED dark mode, initial inbox features, better accessibility, compact mode, and improvements to a whole bunch of things too long to post here.
Obligatory message: If there are any developers out there who want to contribute to this project, that would be greatly appreciated!
Update: A hotfix has been released to fix some initial issues with the release: https://github.com/hjiangsu/thunder/releases/tag/v0.2.1%2B7
To see the full details of this release, check out the GitHub release announcement: https://github.com/hjiangsu/thunder/releases/tag/v0.2.1%2B6
For those on TestFlight, the update should automatically install on your device. For those who obtained the app through IzzyOnDroid, that update should eventually reach your devices!
There is also a discussion page here for any general discussions about this release if anyone is interested: https://github.com/hjiangsu/thunder/discussions/67
It has been incredible to see all the community support and feedback from the last release! Let's continue this and make Thunder an even better experience :D
Compact mode is amazing! That was the one thing keeping me on Jerboa. Thank you for your efforts!
Does commenting on posts work? I'm having trouble seeing them show up after submitting
Edit: replying to comments seems to work, but replying to posts doesn't for me :(
Hmm, do you mean commenting on posts from the feed, or when you enter the actual post page and attempt to comment?
Commenting from the post in the feed is currently not implemented yet. However, you should be able to comment on the post when you’re in the post itself
When I'm in the post and I tap the floating action button to make a new top-level comment, pressing the submit button closes the comment modal but doesn't seem to do anything else.
When replying to a comment, it refreshes and shows the new comment correctly
Don’t mind this reply - I’m just doing some testing right now to get a fix for this out ASAP
Can you try the release I just published to see if its fixed? https://github.com/hjiangsu/thunder/releases/tag/v0.2.1%2B7
It works!! Thank you for the super speedy fix!
Phew okay, thats good to hear hahaha
Wait nevermind, I think I probably missed something when I was cleaning up the code for posting - I just tried to comment on a post and was not able to
Seeing as you edited your comment. How did you do that? I can't get an edit option to appear
Compact mode is so goooood. This is seriously one of the best looking Lemmy apps by far :)
Sorry for the wall of text, but hope there's some helpful/constructive stuff in there. Thanks for building such an awesome experience here!
EDIT: added some screenshots to explain a few points above. I'd also consider moving account view/account switcher into the side panel (some other reddit/lemmy apps do this as well), while keeping home/search/notifications/settings in the nav bar, since one may be less likely to need immediate access to that menu?
Oh wow, thanks for taking all the time to write the feedback! I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far. More feedback is always better than less 😄
It would be awesome if you could create these points into issues on GitHub, so that it can be tracked and discussed about within the community
I can do that! :)
Screenshot of the accent-colored community name in Jerboa's feed (I like that yours doesn't also show the community icon, much cleaner looking!):
And a screenshot of Boost's popup menu on community long-press:
Thunder is quickly becoming my favorite Lemmy app, absolutely great job so far.
A few suggestions/wishlist items for me:
Is it possible to make it so when you swipe to the right on the bottom bar, it can open the side menu? Right now, especially on large screen phones, having to click the top left corner is very difficult one handed.
I would also love to have an option to click to collapse the text in a main post (the one submitted by the original poster).
One more minor thing, the icon on Android looks pretty bad, at least on a Pixel. A Material You icon (that changes with the system theme) would be amazing, but I would be happy with an icon that used the circle system theme instead of a square icon inside a white circle. Material You theming for the entire app would be even better.
Overall this app is phenomenal, I'm super excited to see how it progresses. I'm also happy to buy a premium version/donate, so know there are people out here that will happily pay for you to continue development.
Hey, thanks for all the feedback! I’m glad you’re enjoying it 😁
Right now, you can swipe right from the feed view to open up the sidebar! No need to tap on the hamburger icon
I think that’s a good idea! If you don’t mind, feel free to create a issue on GitHub for it to be tracked! It’s a bit difficult for me to keep track of all the suggestions on here 😅
This is actually hopefully coming in the next release! Someone kindly contributed to fixing icons on Android as I don’t have a physical Android device to test on
Thankyou!! For now, I wont accept any donations because I want to make sure I can create and deliver something that is fully featured and good to use first! This initially started as a personal project of mine and it continues to be (although I have spent a lot more time over the past week organizing things and fixing things since Thunder blew up so much 😅)
Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but I can't figure out how to get the side menu to pop out unless I press the hamburger menu. If i slide from the center left edge, it upvotes a post in the feed. If I slide in from the edge of the left of the screen, it uses the back button gesture and exits the app. If I slide from the menu at the bottom, nothing happens at all. This is on a Pixel 7 with gesture navigation - maybe it works with button navigation, but it does not seem to work with gestures enabled.
Hmm, that may have just been an oversight on my part 😅 Thanks for giving me a more detailed description, I'll see what I can do!
When you mention slide right on the bottom, do you mean swiping right on top of the feed, search, account, inbox, settings part of it? Or was it something else? I'm just trying to get a visual in my head for how it would look like!
Update: I have added a gesture for the bottom nav bar to open and close the side menu when you swipe left/right!
Thank you so much!
Becoming my favorite lemmy app! Thank You
Thank you so much, the app looks great and works well with lemmy.ml
With Lemmy.world I have an 400 error, I guess because they are still running .17.4 instead of .18?
Oh no, do you have any more information about the 400 error? If you do, that might help me determine the root cause.
Thunder should be working for 0.17.x versions with initial support for 0.18.x versions!
Nevermind, it was me (changed password and forgot to update it).
This version looks great!
Phew, thats good to hear! 😅
It works for me on lemmy.world I did a fresh install. Love the app by the way, keep up the good work.
I love the app, but wish you would add a feature to save the images when opening them
This is currently in the works! There’s just some more testing that needs to happen to make sure it works as widely as possible (different permissions are required for iOS and Android, and perhaps even different permissions between different versions of Android)
That's great to hear, thanks a lot for all the time and effort you put to make the app (and the community) better!
This is a test reply to the main post from Thunder!
Is there a way to sort the feed by Top Hour/Day/Week/Month etc?
Also, would it be possible to have an option to open all non-image/video links externally? eg. articles and GitHub links would probably be best handled in the user's browser (I'm not sure how persistent the in-app browser's cookies are, so privacy-wise it feels like leaving a permanent trail behind)
Love the app, great work so far!
Edit: An extra thing; comments that you've upvoted in past viewings don't seem to be highlighted orange (especially noticeable for comments you've submitted, since they're automatically upvoted)
There’s no option to sort by top for now, but it should be fairly easy to add in. If you could create an issue on GitHub for this, that would be great!
Definitely possible to add in a setting to just open links in external browser automatically. Please create a issue for that one as well on GitHub!
Oh wow I am impressed, I've been contributing to the liftoff app but I'll take a look at your code, from a design side this looks much better to work with
Thanks, that would be amazing! This is still just a project that I work on the side to be able to learn more about Dart/Flutter, so if you have any suggestions about how to improve the codebase or how to make things more efficient, that would be incredible 😁
Also, I’m not the best at UI/UX so if there’s anyone out there who can contribute feeback about general UI/UX stuff, that would also be great!
Thanks! I’m just doing what I can 😅
I just figured out how to swipe for up/down vote. Can't say I care for it. Buttons?
Buttons for actions is definitively something I want to introduce for those who prefer that! It also enables better accessibility so it’s a double win-win there
This will hopefully come in the near future l
Yes me too I was long pressing for a while. Might just take a little bit of getting used to?
So far the best Lemmy app I could find :) Looking forward to contributing to the codebase
Thanks, I appreciate the feedback! Contributions to the codebase would be incredible as it’s still mainly just me working on Thunder 😅
Although, I would like to give a big shout out to those who have contributed PRs over the last few days!
Nice, it actually let's me log in! Jerboa for some reason still doesn't let me log in so i'll keep giving it a whirl.
Wow. Thanks for putting an inbox here. And for making buttons labeled for voiceover. This and Mlem are my favorites so far. Keep up the great work! 😊
Slowly getting there 😅There’s still a whole bunch of improvements to be made to the inbox feature!
For sure. But this update, especially, seems to be really great. :)
Thank you so much for your work !
Super glad to see the arrival of the inbox though it still need works. When I open the inbox it shows up empty even though I've had replies in the past. I have to tap twice the envelop icon in the top right to make those past replies appear. So I guess the state of the page is :
Not a fan of that enveloppe icon in general I think it's confusing. I'd rather have the unread messages appear in the same place but with a different/lighter background to show their state. This is personal preference as opposed to the previous point though.
Also not sure if it's the app or a mistake, but your first link in this post opens a 404 in Thunder. Opening the link in an external browser (nice new feature btw) shows that it tries to open "...tag/v0.2.1%252B6" as opposed to "...tag/v0.2.1%2B6".
Thanks so much for all the feedback and trying out Thunder - I appreciate it!
Yeah, definitely - I just wanted to bring in some initial inbox features so that it can then be the basis for improvements from the community
Oh hmm, I must've missed that - feel free to create a new issue on GitHub so that this issue can be tracked!
I do somewhat agree with that - I like your idea of making read messages with a lighter background, so I'll mess around with that when I have the time to see if I can implement it in a way that still feels functional!
Hmm, I'll take a look into that
Submitted the issue to GitHub !
For the lighter read background thing, we should try to find something that would also work for posts if that feature is on the roadmap and the best example I have for that is relay.
Also, love the inbox card shapes you made, maybe it should be the shape of the post cards as well !
The compact mode is fantastic and the accessibility is already top notch. This may very well be the most screen reader accessible lemmy app. If not its in the top 1% for sure.
Thanks, I really do want to make it as accessible as possible, so thats really good to hear!
Keep the accessibility issues coming!
Really loving Thunder so far! Truly a very smooth user experience.
I have been getting a few crashes though when scrolling through or navigating around a little too quickly. Is there any easy way to pull debug logs to help diagnose the problem?
Also it looks like when returning from a full-screen image the cached content in the feed tries to refresh, which is probably contributing to the above problem!
Still amazing work and I'm continuing to enjoy using it very much!
Unfortunately there’s not really a debug log at the moment - I would have to take a look to see how I could implement that if possible.
I think one main issue that might be causing the crashes is if there are too many images or media being loaded at a time in the background. This can cause lag spikes to occur, or it can just take up a lot of memory in the background which slows things down and cause a potential crash. This issue will take a bit of time to solve, but I’ll see if theres better ways to handle large amount of media/processing in the background
I just found this app and it's really good. My favourite so far!
I also like how the upvoting/replying works with the swiping. It took me a while to figure out I have to tap the bar the username is in to collapse the comment and its replies. However, one thing that I really like in these kinds of apps is being able to tap the contents of a comment to collapse it's children but not the comment itself (so basically the same kind of functionality except I'd still be able to see/read the parent comment).
I have a question. I found the app through that post that lists the known Lemmy apps, but I see it's currently only available on GitHub. When the app is finished (as I understand it this is a prerelease version, but correct me if I'm wrong!), will it be available on the Play store as well? I'm just asking because I'd love for the app to automatically update (or notify me when an update is available) when a new update is released. Or is that already possible from within the app itself?
Thanks for your hard work on this great app. I'm really enjoying it so far!
Hey, I'm glad you found your way here and I'm glad you're enjoying it so far!
The point about tapping the comment itself to hide the replies but not the comment itself is actually completed and will be coming in the next release!
As for releasing on the Play store, there are currently no plans to do that in near future since there's still a lot of work to be done 😅 However, there are actually in-app notifications when I push a new release on GitHub! You can also get it through IzzyOnDroid and it should update automatically (if I'm not mistaken)
Hopefully, that answers your questions! Have fun exploring the app, and feedback is always welcomed here :D
Thanks so much for your reply! It's great to hear that that feature is coming in the next release.
Understandable that there's still lots of work to be done. It's good to hear that there's an in-app notification when a new update is released. I was worried I might miss our on new updates if I forget to check the GitHub page. I also subscribed to this community to stay up to date. :)
test comment. test edit. More test edits.
Curious, how many posts are loaded in a single API call? Jerboa seems to only request 10 which makes scrolling lag as it constantly has to wait for more to load
It requests 15 post everytime at the moment! However, I think a bit more tweaking around there might be possible
For example, maybe loading 10 on the first call so that the initial posts load up faster, and then switch to 15 after the fact. Or, it could load x amount depending on the type of view (maybe less for larger views as it takes up much more of the screen size, and more for compact views so that you see less loading when you scroll down)
Best iOS app for Lemmy! I‘m testflighting Thunder, Liftoff, Memmy und Mlem and your app is working best for me. With the new version I can finally see most of my subscriptions on the side pane, thank you! Loving the community search and the option to subscribe immediately. The + next to a community should change after adding some community, but this is really minor stuff.
Do you have any plans to implement something like multi-communities/community groups or similar? That‘d be awesome!
Thanks for trying it out!
I’ve upped the limit on subscriptions on the sidebar to 50, so it’ll show you at most 50 subscriptions so far. I do want to eventually set it so that it’ll retrieve all your subscriptions!
For this, I think it would be cool to add in, but there’s no effective way to do this that I know of without having to fetch posts for each community that is added into a group. I would like to see if lemmy itself has a solution for this first before I implement this (e.g., just requiring one network call to fetch a custom list of communities)!