Hello! Thanks for the invite to test, I’m looking for a new app to replace the soon-to-die Liftoff and Raccoon looks like it might be going places.

I’ve written up a long list of notes here but honestly, overall I really like it and it seems like it has most of the features I need. Just wanted to be thorough with my testing so it’s a long list. Also I’m currently recovering from covid so if any of them are gibberish, blame that.

Again, just to stress, I really like the app and feel bad about how long this snag list is. Keep up the great work!

Bugs / confusions

  • No way to see which account you’re commenting from <– putting this first because it’s a biggie
  • Multicommunities seem a bit broken. I set one up, it took ages to load the feed, and now sorting by “hot” is putting 3yr old posts at the top 🤷‍♀️
  • Trying to click through to old posts from the multicommunity feed, they also take a long time to load. Not sure if that’s due to coming from the multicommunity feed or just the age of the post, but it needs some kind of loading indicator rather than a blank screen
  • I somehow got into a commenting UI while still logged out but couldn’t figure out how to recreate, it was while trying to click through to a post from search results
  • Swipe to vote “works” on search results while logged out
  • Vote and bookmark icons are shown when logged out even though they don’t do anything. Admittedly I am not at full brain capacity right now but it made me forget I was logged out and I thought it was just broken 😅
  • The “plus” button to reply / scroll to top is also visible when logged out but does nothing when pressed
  • Unable to scroll right to the bottom of some threads - I think this might be if the last reply contains an embedded image but will test some more and report back
  • Scaled sort is an option regardless of instance version, unclear what it’s actually doing on instances that don’t have it
  • Not very clear how to switch between feeds, looks like it should be the hamburger icon to the left but isn’t
  • Can’t click through to comments by tapping comment icon, have to tap headline instead, feels a bit weird
  • Unclear exactly what situation results in the “load more comments” button but most threads have it every couple of comments and it’s quite intrusive
  • No indicator in inbox to show where the notifications are (e.g. messages, mentions)
  • Having the link to your profile labeled as an instance is odd
  • Swiping back from inbox or settings should not close app
  • Swiping back from feed should at least have an optional confirmation before closing app
  • Yes I accidentally close apps a lot

Readability

  • Body text is very big by default, but changing it makes headlines weirdly small. They really need two different text sizes.
  • Similarly, having all text everywhere be the exact same shade isn’t great in terms of visual hierarchy
  • Comment indenting isn’t very clear especially since all the marker lines are the same colour

Misc

  • App’s default feed is lemmy.world Local. Given how many users get confused and think “lemmy” is only their local server’s content, I think All would be the better choice there for onboarding purposes.
  • Explore tab also defaults to Local which makes even less sense in the context of searching. Has the hilarious result of showing knitting posts top of a search for “crochet”, you’ll have the yarn crafts crowd after you for that one! 😉
  • Zombie mode is interesting, but the default speed is incredibly slow and makes me wonder whether it’s actually supposed to be used or is just a joke feature

Questions

  • NSFW is turned on by default in the app settings. But this is also an account setting in Lemmy itself, so I assume the account setting overrides the app one? That could confuse people, not sure it needs a separate app setting.
  • What is “use dynamic colours” setting? I genuinely have no idea lol
  • Is there a way to access account settings yet?
  • Dieguito 🦝@feddit.itM
    2·
    7 months ago

    Hi and thank you! 🙇‍♀️ All comments are on point (you’re right on everything!) and very well explained, I wish I had clients like this when I worked as a consultant…

    I’ll track everything in the project’s issue tracker on GitHub, prioritize them and start there answering and implementing the changes, so keep an eye on that in the next days if you want to monitor my progress. 🦝

    I really thank you for the time you took to test the app and I hope it fills a niche, I liked Liftoff too but I am not a Flutter dev and had not the skills to help out the maintainers 😅

    • thegiddystitcherOP
      2·
      7 months ago

      Happy to help! It was a good distraction from the whole illness thing for an hour or so. If more come up is it better to add them straight to the Github issues or report in here first?

      (Feel free to not answer this until you have time, don’t go burning out on us!)

      • Dieguito 🦝@feddit.itM
        1·
        7 months ago

        If you are not scared by GitHub go ahead, otherwise don’t worry I’ll do it!

        Btw, the only question I can address now while I’m on the train back home is the one about “dynamic colors”: it’s a feature of Android 12+ which allows you to use a palette consistent with your launcher background image.

        I have also a small question: how would you use different text shades/weights to differentiate contents? I’m a real dumb goat while designing user interfaces as most programmers are! (no offense to anyone but tech guys care more of what things are supposed to do than what they are supposed to look like and I’m no exception)

        • thegiddystitcherOP
          2·
          7 months ago

          Hey, sorry for the slow reply to this, your comment actually didn’t federate to lemm.ee and I just happened to see it while browsing on my other account from .world. I had to pull it in manually to reply 😅

          Anyway, thank you for the answer on dynamic colours, I am not particularly up on Android features these days and all I could see it doing was “some things turned blue” lol.

          In terms of visuals, honestly the core of it is already there, definitely doesn’t look like your typical programmer art! But there are certain “rules” to the hierarchy that just sort of help our eyes make quick sense of what we’re seeing by telling us what’s most important. A good test is if you zoom out to the point where you can’t actually read the text, where does your eye go first? Can you still tell the order of importance of the different elements?

          I spent five minutes mucking about in Photoshop, not saying my version is perfect but just to give you an idea what I’m talking about:

          • Faded out the author and other bits of meta info as they’re not so important at first glance
          • Brightened and bolded the headline as that’s the most important part
          • Moved the author name up a tad towards the community name so they’re a bit more clearly grouped together. This also gives a bit more whitespace to the headline which again marks it out as important when you’re scanning quickly down the feed.

          Obviously there’s lots more ways this could go and to a certain extent it’s going to be whatever is your personal preference as the developer. Like I said was just a quick mess around to illustrate.

          Hope this doesn’t come across as nitpicky, that is absolutely not my intention!

          • Dieguito 🦝@feddit.itMEnglish
            2·
            7 months ago

            Absolutely not nitpicky… it’s awesome 🤩🤩🤩 (“programmer art” ROTFL). I hope you didn’t lose too much time, I got the idea, I’ll have it done in the next release. I am trying to integrate as many feedback as possible (in as little time as possible): for example, I hope you’ll be glad to know that in the next release there will be the possibility to choose a theme for comments among other things.

            • thegiddystitcherOP
              2·
              7 months ago

              Woop! Rainbow all the things 🌈

              Are you still looking for more testers, btw? I can probably convince a couple friends to give it a go, but it might be worth having a pinned thread in here with the details of how to sign up. Unless there is one and it also hasn’t federated in which case ignore me 😅

              • Dieguito 🦝@feddit.itM
                2·
                7 months ago

                Yes I still need a couple of people, I’ll make another release soon and a pinned thread with instructions to sign up. Thank you for the idea! 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️