Hi,
is this the right category for the Android app? I didn’t see one …
I know working on the Android app is quite unpopular but there are some UI issues I’d like to report. Nothing serious – I guess everything’s working as intended.
- When reading an article in the app and I want to share it I have to scroll all the way up to the headline to tap the sharing button. I’d like to suggest two things:
- Add the sharing option in the three-dot-menu
- Change the “open in browser” button to “share”. Why? When the feed does not include the article’s full text I am still at the top and can tap the headline to open the article in a brwoser. When the full text is present and I have scrolled all the way down there’s no need anymore to open it in a browser.
- The headline is part of the article view. I’d like to suggest to make it hover at the top when scrolling a little bit upwards again, similar to make the button in the bottom right appear. Why? It contains information that might be important during reading (timestamp, author).
Messing with the “open in browser” button might not be the favourite of many users as they might need it for one-handed use. I would really appreciate an option to select the action for this button but I know fox’s stance on making things configurable so this might be out of the question.
Most the time I use the Android app on my 10" tablet so one-handed use is not my top priority. Even on my phone I tend to tap the headline for opening the article. But others might have a different workflow.
Thanks in advance for at least considering these changes 
MasinAD
fox
2
that would be duplicating it which is bad in my opinion
this isn’t the worst idea i’ve heard and it makes some amount of sense but nevertheless i predict gnashing of teeth from people if this is changed.
making fab open article was more or less a random decision (i needed to put something in there but couldn’t think of anything else) so i’m not against changing it to share.
it’s a terrible idea to keep the entire header on top at all times, imagine how much space would that waste on phones. so, that would likely mean making and supporting yet another additional layout or some kind of other special handling, designed specifically for large android tablets - a type of device which statistically doesn’t exist because everyone uses ipads instead.
now let’s couple that with the fact that dealing with android and google is a colossal pain in the ass on such level that i’ve already removed everything from play store except for tt-rss already (and have zero plans whatsoever to publish anything on any fucking “storefront” ever again) and it should be easy enough to figure out why wasting time to add bespoke UI touches for perennially flopping android tablets (look it up if you don’t believe me) is not a very enticing idea.
(e: FWIW i personally have a large android tablet (a huawei one, with no google services) and i have a lot of uses for it which largely involve tmux but it’s a very niche kind of device nevertheless with almost zero software support in form of tablet-designed apps).
the sharing though is a small change and actually makes sense, so i’ll make a note to take a look at it. it would still require some UI changes but it should be nothing particularly painful. everything else is in maintenance mode as far as i’m concerned.
also,
there’s a certain difference between making things configurable and adding an option for every little thing. i’ve seen too many horrorshow-tier UIs designed by people following the second approach.
Thanks for not shredding the suggestions into pieces 
Totally agree. That’s why I suggested to make it only appear when scrolling backwards. But I can imagine that this would require much more changes to the codebase, so it’s only a suggestion for the sake of completeness. But from a UX perspective it would work on both kind of devices while improving UX on both.
My favourite is still to just change the button to “share”. Well, actually, to have a selection of actions I can configure where “share” is just one. I’d set it to “share” immediately.
Well, I for sure wouldn’t complain if you decide making this configurable would be worthwile. Maybe we’ll just wait unti someone chimes in here complaining about Totally Wrecking™ their workflow with changing the action button.
fox
4
ah i missed that part. i think this could be done with coordinator layout but idk how painful the migration would be.
that rarely leads to new options appearing though 
fox
5
the pain i go through for you guys. the concentrated suffering.
anyway,
fox
7
i’m trying to upload a beta with this (and a few other) changes but google managed to change their entire development console entirely, yes, again, so i’m not sure where things are yet.
luckily there’s even more white space than before, truly modern web design is a marvel.
e:
simply amazing UI imo, took me a while to notice the create new release button which is right over there where you don’t expect anything to be
i’m not saying that people responsible for this should be retroactively aborted, but
e2:
this sure is an interesting way of saying “you haven’t given us your private key (yet) which we are definitely only going to use for Your Own Good”
e3:
i’m absolutely sure there was no way to somehow fit this vast incomprehensible ocean of information into one 80x25 text screen without 50 pages of fucking scrolling goddamnit
anyway, i’ve uploaded the beta. it is “being reviewed” so expect this to appear in a few months.
or, hopefully, google is going to ban my developer account instead, thus freeing me from this hell.
Fox, they only need your key so that they can add in their advertising and data collection sdks to improve your user experience with relevant targeted advertising which will delight your users.
imgx64
9
The bit about uploading your private key, it gets even worse: Uncomfortable Questions About App Signing
fox
10
yeah i’m sadly aware of this post.
for the time being i think its for new apps only but i’m sure eventually they will extend it to everyone else.
i read somewhere that if you publish an apk on amazon store they literally do just that, wrap it with their shitware. idk if its true or not but its believable.
e: beta is up (520).
fox
11
i’ve uploaded new beta (521) with fixed fab.
Here’s how it looks on my tablet:
And here on my smartphone:
I don’t notice any problems. I’d say you did great work, fox. Thanks for bothering once again with Google App Store stuff. 
Found a problem!
When in list view, the header bar disappears and only appears after scrolling back.
fox
14
isn’t this how it always worked?
e: ah right on tablets action bar was not previously hidden, now it works like phones.
should be fixed in 523
MasinAD
15
Ah, I remember having read something like you wanting to deprecate the tablet layout mode. I’ll get used to it. But for the record: I liked the tablet mode.
fox
16
that got fixed though? it works just like before.
MasinAD
17
Didn’t notice. And I thought, I already got used to it. Yeah, I have 523 already (thanks, auto update). I should have read your previous comment till the end.
Once again, thanks for your work.
