what kind of quality of life improvements? always interested in hearing ideas to make astral better
Discussion
Sure! Here are some thoughts that I've had.
I think seeing which relays a note is posted to is important, but I probably don't need to see it on each and every single comment or reply. There's already a relays button in the top right corner. I don't think I need to also see it down below. It just takes up value screen real estate. I'd like to to be removed. If I want to see which relays the note successfully posted to, I can click the button.
I would like to see Lightning integrated on each note and on user profiles. I believe this is coming soon according to GitHub. I can't wait for this :)
I would like to see Lists integrated. When you follow a lot of pubkeys it becomes hard to find certain content. I have some RSS feeds and companies that I follow. If I'd like to find their latest posts or news, it's a bit tedious now. I'd like to be able to organize pubkeys into following Lists. Similar to Twitter's Lists.
Posting GIFs are important. It's become commonplace for reactions and for laughs. We can already do this now by opening up a separate browser tab, visiting tenor.com for example, finding the GIF link, and posting it back to our Astral post. It would be nice if we had an integrated GIF search and automatic URL posting once the GIF was found. It just makes things more simple and easier.
If I blow away my local storage, I have to go down through every single DM and mark them as read again. Is it possible for a client to track if a DM message was read? I have over 100+ DMs. This process is tedious.
If I can think of anything else, I'll let you know. You're doing a great job. Keep up the fantastic work!
wow what a great list!
for relay list-i've gotten this feedback before but am hesitant to comply bc I want to force the users to see the relays on the main event on the thread. in my experience with end users if you don't force them to notice technical details they will happily ignore it. I am open to making relay section a bit smaller..? would that help at all..?
yes lightning and lists are coming! just need more time 😩
localstorage workaround is wait for all posts to load before visiting message inbox page. by default all messages will be marked as read when you clear local storage and go to inbox. however if you only have a partial list of messages loaded it will only mark those as read. this is a bug I hadn't thought about and will fix this once I do some relay handling refactoring.
thank you for taking the time to write all that out! please keep the ideas coming!
hey .. If I may.. I'd also like an option in my feed to just see posts and not replies... sometimes I just want to scroll and see what's going on. It's yet hard to click for every comment especially since we don't see the original post 👍
I hadn't thought about this but I agree. will add this with feed customization.
😍
this will be a great addition
This is a great suggestion too. I like seeing comments in the feed for new users, so maybe it's the default, that way new users can easily find people to follow. As those we're following gets more robust, it's hard to find direct posts as most of the feed is filled with comments.
I would make the setting specific to the feed. so if you want replies in one feed and not the other you can do that.
Sounds perfect. Thank you! 
that's what I wanted. The problem with seeing replies is that you don't typically see the original note they are replying to. So my feed is full of 🤙 💯🎯 and other simple replies but I don't get to see all the context and it makes my feed confusing at times
Continuation from previous:
There are times where I like the replies, for instance when I follow the person who posted a note and the person who replied, so my feed tells me all the story and I like it
but when I don't follow the person who posted the note then I don't get to see the original comment.That's probably what's happening?
On mobile it is not obvious if I clicked on load unread. Is it possible to make it change colors when it is clicked or maybe add a load unread button to the navigation buttons?
yes. bc follows feed is really dumb and doesn't fetch any context. this is definitely on the todo list.
Excellent suggestion. Would love a checkbox to hide replies so I can just see the new OPs.
also about the gif thing... I have plans for this as well. but need to stabilize the UI first.
I really appreciate your work. Here's couple ideas and points:
- There are no progress bars indicating when something is loading (on slow connection this is super confusing, often seeing only "note1..." label while nothing is happening for seconds)
- Add text padding on the right, currently it goes all the way.
- Ability to like posts
- (Phone) Pulling down shouldn't refresh the whole app, but only refetch the content
- Long posts have black font on dark background - unreadable until expanded
- Integrate some way to upload & host pictures
- Bottom bar has too many too small icons (you could introduce title bar on top and have e.g. profile there)
- I don't need to see the "relays" section under each post and fully expanded - make it into an icon or something like that?
- Make avatars bigger - currently too small on mobile (especially the initial post should have bigger)
- Make font bigger on phone (or somehow default to phone settings)
- in general on phone tap targets should be bigger
- The little notification circle should have more visibile color
- Button to follow a person is super small on mobile, make it into a label button?
- When posting, the textbox somehow has my avatar as background? Confusing and hard to read what I'm writing... On phone this box should be taller. Also it confusing that the "x" button is below the post
Scratch the long posts comment - my Brave on mobile was doing it, because it automatically turns websites darkmode ( when the websites don't specify they are dark mode in meta tags - could you do that?). Also would it be potato have a theme with disabled colored borders?
yes darkmode fucks with astral. will def look into that meta tags suggestion, thanks!
would you just want to disable the main page borders and the border separating posts? if so I think this should be doable.
Yes, it would be great to not have the main page and post borders. I think that would be smooth out the UI.
But you could also ask folks here for feedback and mocks suggestions? (There are couple UX designers here afaik)
perhaps you are right. will play around with it and will def add an option to remove borders.
hey so I actually had looked into this previously (about the meta tags) and forgot. but it doesn't seem like the meta tags will stop dark mode from fucking with the colors, it will only allow sites to define light/dark colors that browser will selectively apply. is this understanding incorrect?
I haven't verified it, but I have noticed that Brave only does the "darkmode" in cases where it thinks it's needed. So my guess was the meta tags, or it has some smartness in checking pixels?
my guess is its checking pixels but could be wrong, i'm no expert. if you allowed websites to turn off dark mode by adding a meta tag it would allow websites to override users preference to see it in dark mode.
damn what a list hahah. tons of good suggestions, love that this is mobile focused.
definitely agree on adding some sort of visual loading cue.
see here on my resistance to removing relay list #[5]
ability for free likes will never be in astral. paid likes will be, however media comes first (another thing on your list :))
overall agree with all your suggestions for mobile, especially the pull to refresh. I've got them noted down.
I agree that it's improved quickly. I have 2 feature requests.
Top bar set to {position: fixed; top: 0;} so that it doesn't scroll (mobile).
Encrypt private key with a pin rather than stored in plain text. When unlocked store in a private class property with methods exposed.
agree with both of these, added to todos. thanks!
I'm fully supportive of showing relays, but only under a condition that it's very clear to majority of users what is happening and what you want them to do with it.
Currently there are no good headers/labels that would tell me what is it for, what does it mean to me, how can I use it, is what I'm seeing good or bad... There's a lot of power in good headers and labels - take advantage of that 😀
Think about the actions that user could initiate from the relays box, think about how to visualize better what happened and whether it's good or bad. Why is it important for user to see the relays? The UI should show them the answer clearly 😉
you make a great point. I will reflect on how I can make the relay list more intuitive to the average user.