LFGSS Mobile (Android app)

RCC have been crying out for a mobile app for years. I'm sure they'd be very pleased if you could port the app over to their forum too

Also, thanks to @cyclotron3k not just for the Android app, but for helping to find bugs that are really old.

Today's one is that logging out worked well in browsers but wasn't deleting server side tokens... meaning if a token got leaked and you logged out, the token could still be used in future. I've gone and purged from the database tokens that haven't been seen for a while, but also fixed the bug such that logging out now prunes tokens correctly from the database as well as the browser / client.

RCC have been crying out for a mobile app for years. I'm sure they'd be very pleased if you could port the app over to their forum too

You know, Rapha have never paid for Microcosm (LFGSS does, Brixton does, Islington does, etc all via "what you can afford" donations)... but Rapha, nothing... yet they sell membership of the forum.

They occasionally ask for some features, once in a blue moon, but then I now respond with the question as to whether they'll pay for the development. They're the only for-profit entity using the platform, yet they have never paid for the upkeep.

There is an exception to this, they did pay to get nested forums built... the reason nested forums exists is because Rapha did fund the development of that... but they've never paid for the operational costs.

Ah fuck em then! 😁

Notifications - the implementation is not ideal; I can only poll every 15 minutes, but I've been getting a steady stream of LFGSS notifications on my phone for the last few weeks now and it's really fun. One day I want to do push notifications, but that would require some changes on the back end.

Does that mean more background battery use (app waking up, checking, finding no updates, going back to sleep)? If I turn off all notifications in the app does it stop polling?

Good question.

It does indeed use more power than push notifications, but the difference should be negligible. My understanding is that Android will batch these events up from all apps, and run them all at the same time.

I've also noticed, on my phone at least, it doesn't bother running the scheduled task at night, and I suddenly get a flurry of notifications a few seconds after I pick up my phone for the first time in the morning. So evidently Android is very aggressively managing when the scheduled tasks actually run.

You can also go into settings have a look at which apps are using the battery, and how much time they spend running in the background. I just looked now, and I'm pleased to see the app is pretty easy on the battery and has clocked "less than a min" of background task time, over the last four hours.

Turning off all notifications does not disable the polling - only logging out does that. And that's a very good point you raise. I'll add it to the list of things to do.

When in a thread, can the Home etc. buttons remain at the bottom or have a back arrow at the top of the screen?

Hmm... shouldn't be too hard. I'll have to think about the impact on navigation though.

Btw development has slowed somewhat because I just started a new job 🎉 but I'm still working on it.

Thanks, I sometimes use it in a separate window and the window has no back button. That's how I noticed it. Congrats on the job :)

Sometimes swiping from the left to leave a thread just sets up a reply instead which can be a bit funky. My phone for some reason has swipe from the right to go back too though which I tend to use as it's less thumb movement. Annoyingly theres no setting to swipe from right to go forward on my phone which seems stupid but that's another conversation

Are you saying this app needs a lefthanded version?

Haha uh not intentionally.

Version 1.0.13 - just a variety of minor tweaks

• Fix issue with Following page initial load
  
• Tweak primary colour in dark mode
  
• Tri-spoke for Huddle notifications
  
• Show avatars on Huddle tiles
  
• Slightly better internal link parsing
  
• Show last update timestamp on Huddle tiles, instead of created date
  

That sounds pretty irritating. How often does it happen? Is it pretty random?

Not super often, just occasionally. I have to swipe left from the very left most 2-3mm of my screen to exit a thread, otherwise it does a comment reply

Clicking "replied to" to go to the original comment isn't working at the moment. It says invalid URL

Ah shit. Not sure how that's happened. I'll look into it

Version 1.0.14 - out now

• Fix link parsers (Thanks @PhilDAS )
  
• Improve profile bottom sheet
  

Thanks for that!

Hello all.

I’ve recently joined lfgss and thought I’d share thoughts as I’m a UX/UI designer by trade and have helped ship a number of digital tools and apps.

Just wondered are there any plans to have an iOS version and if so would it be something that could stand alone from Microcosm? Curios to hear whether there are a majority of either desktop/mobile or if it’s a fairly even split?

Happy to share any interface & experience design recommendations too.

You'd have to ask @velocio for stats on the mobile/desktop split of web traffic but I can tell you the traffic from the mobile app would barely register. Mostly because the app has only been available for 2 months while the web version has been running for 16 years or so.

Just to be clear: the mobile app is not an official app. It's just a fun project I wanted to do, and was able to do because Microcosm has a good API.

I built the app with Flutter, which is a cross-platform framework, so although I've only released an Android version, it wouldn't be too much work to get an iOS version published too.

You asked: would the app be able to stand alone from Microcosm? Not sure I fully understand the question, but the answer is almost certainly not. The app is just a very thin client, and the Microcosm back end does all the heavy lifting.

If you're interested in taking a look at the mobile app, I think the main pain-point right now is the "following" page. There's some distracting and useless clutter, and more importantly it's missing information that's available on the web version of the same page. I'd like to reorganise the information on the "following" page, but I'm somewhat constrained by the API for the moment.

All the code (for the mobile app, as well as microcosm) is open source, so you can download it all make any changes you like. Or if you just want to throw some ideas and figma designs around, that would be cool too.

I'm trying to adhere to material design guidelines and stock components as much as possible, mostly for capacity reasons.

Ah thanks for the insights @cyclotron3k

I hadn't realised that the android app was only a recent addition so I would imagine numbers would be pretty low compared to the main desktop site. I looked at microcosm so understand it a bit more.. was mainly out of interest in how the infrastructure works and what flexibility there could be on the front end to custoimse the UI for instance.

Yeah happy to take a look at the Follow page and make some high-level suggestions in Figma. Totally makes sense using Google Material for scaleability too. Would also be cool to try out Flutter at some point depending if it's viable for non-developers.. Framer is also on my list to try. I was previously looking at Bravo studio for a side project but would imagine has it's limitations.

You'd have to ask @velocio for stats on the mobile/desktop split of web traffic but I can tell you the traffic from the mobile app would barely register. Mostly because the app has only been available for 2 months while the web version has been running for 16 years or so.

I track little to nothing, I have no stats... but I am wondering whether I can track stats, it will require some crazy thing as I'd need to track the client for the OAuth, and then the access_tokens issued, and from that then correlate those access_tokens to requests and usage.

You asked: would the app be able to stand alone from Microcosm? Not sure I fully understand the question, but the answer is almost certainly not. The app is just a very thin client, and the Microcosm back end does all the heavy lifting.

I think the answer is yes... because Microcosm is implemented as two things... an API that does 95% of heavy lifting, and a web app that is merely an API client that does 5% of the heavy lifting... and there is nothing that this website can do that the mobile client couldn't do, because the website is just an API client.

Would also be cool to try out Flutter at some point depending if it's viable for non-developers.

Flutter might be the least friendly to non-coders - all the UI is defined by code - there's no GUI or interface designer (that I know of).

Brave Studio looks cool - I haven't heard of it before, but it looks like it's capable enough to produce a mobile app that can talk to the Microcosm API.

there is nothing that this website can do that the mobile client couldn't do,

Apart from authentication of course. I sent you some messages about that btw.