Bean

Build 2023.07.20.22.51 is currently rolling out to TestFlight users.

Changelog

• Added font size options to the Display settings.
• Added OpenDyslexic as a font choice.
• Added a setting to turn off haptic feedback.
• Added the ability to upvote and downvote comments.
• Added the ability to reply to a comment.
• Added the ability to pull to refresh on an individual post.
• Added options to show avatar and OP / Admin badges on comments.
• Fixed keyboard not showing automatically when adding a new comment.

Hi again, your app is getting better and better on each release, thanks! Today I would like to report:

Incredible work on the app.

Here are a few things I noticed:

• swiping media away is sticky and doesn’t carry momentum.
• collapsing comments doesn’t seem to work (apologies if this hasn’t been implemented yet)

Changelog August 2nd

Build 2023.08.02.01.29

• Added Toebean icon pack designed by my friend Noah (Instagram)
• Improved GIF -> JPEG representation rendering to only do it on animated GIFs.
• Fixed cut off text on Markdown lists.
• Fixed bookmarking.
• Added a loading indicator when navigating to a federated community.
• A toast is now show if a community cannot be loaded.
• Added a basic empty state to the inbox.
• Added the ability to block or unblock a community.
• Added a notice when a community is blocked and the ability to view it anyway.
• The image viewer can now be dismissed by swiping up.
• Added loading indicators for images.
• Fixed post title not showing on comments in the user profile.

Changes: July 25th

build 2023.07.26.00.32

• Added the ability to create a post from community screens. This will be improved in upcoming builds with the ability to upload images and also select which community you wish to post to. Please test it in the meantime though.
• Switched to using the large title style for the nav bar and added an option to the Display settings toggle it off.
• Pulled out comments on user profiles.
• Added an option for Full Screen Swipe to Go Back to Actions settings.
• Added options to the Actions settings to hide floating action buttons.
• Added an option for the comment line width.
• Added an option to the Filtering settings to unbar NSFW images. For science.
• Fixed the incorrect background colour on the Search screen.
• Fixed some visual issues with the image gallery.
• Fixed visual issue with long community names.
• Fixed issue where sometimes the large title would not collapse correctly.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the wrong account to load on the Account tab.
• Fixed an issue that caused the count and vote not to show correctly on the single post view.
• Fixed an issue that allowed you to tap through to your own profile from your profile screen.

The hacker theme looks so amazing. Thank you so much. Let me know if there is a link to donate. Would be more than happy to do so

I am seeing the time stamp on some comments and the posts when sorting all by new as into the future 4 hours from now.

A couple more fixes are incoming:

1. The weird layout issue caused when tapping a username in the comments.
2. GIFs will no longer be automatically rendered as animated images anywhere in the app, except when opening the image viewer.

I want to give a bit more context about 2.

GIFs (and animated WebP images) have been the most common cause of crashes and UI freezes in Bean. The last couple of days have been particularly bad as this image of the Lemmy version of r/place has been shared.

This image is 12.4MB, animates for over 2 minutes, and (most importantly) is almost 3,000 frames. I can't even tell you exactly how many frames as both Preview and Photoshop froze on my Mac when trying to open the image.

The reason the number of frames is important, because a GIF is just a container for multiple images. Each frame is an individual image that needs to be decoded and rendered on the screen, and it turns out when there are a lot of them at 1000 x 1000px it is impossible to decode performantly.

Bean uses SDWebImage to download, cache, and render images behind the scenes. It's a fantastic library that is the de facto standard when working with remote images on iOS or macOS. Even with the progressiveLoad and scaleDownLargeImages options enabled, SDWebImage just cannot render certain images without iOS sounding the alarm and firing an OOM exception — especially when that image is 12.4MB and 3,000 frames.

At the moment, Bean will crash if you attempt to open this image. I have even tried working around this and rendering it in a web view, or using another library — FLAnimatedImage. Neither of these solutions worked and believe me, I'm not happy about that (seriously, I really hate GIFs now).

In the coming days, I'll be pushing another update that will check for the size of the image before deciding whether to animate it or not. When not animated, SDWebImage only decodes the first frame of a GIF which is no issue at all.

I know this isn't brilliant, as in the ideal world every image would be viewable within Bean, but it's the best solution I can think of to avoid a single image crashing the app.

Man this app is already well ahead of all of the other Lemmy clients out there, especially witht eh latest update adding all of the imporvements to comments! Keep up the amazing work!

Dunno what magic you’re using but this app feels really good.

Keep up the great work, this is a great start to potentially being the best Lemmy app.

Tap to collapse comments is no longer working for me.

The overlay is a bit confusing at the bottom of a thread and it’s hard to reach the upvote on the left. [edit] bean is still my go to Lemmy client btw. Can’t wait for the upcoming releases. You’re a blast, Steve. Thanks a lot.

I’ve just pushed a build that will hopefully stop any slow down or crashes when scrolling. It still needs some optimisation but please let me know if you encounter any issues.

I’m here just to say THANKS! Great app. I understand that maybe it has some issues, feels a little buggy, but man. It’s an Alpha!!!

I hope that you can keep the development.

Kudos.

Issues with opening communities within the community tab. No action happens when clicking on a community

Just came across something new. When swiping a pinned post, the whole card changes color. See image.

Can the app retain the sort and read options per community and the home view?

For an example, my home view would be set to hot and unread but for Bean community, new and all posts is my preference since unread would hide the megatread post.

Also, I don’t think pinned should be removed when filtering unread posts.

Thanks!

Changes: July 23rd

Build 2023.07.23.01.28

• Added comment themes.
• Added the ability to collapse comment threads.
• Added swipe actions for comments.
• Added a new button to skip to the next to-level thread.
• Fixed some minor UI issues on the comments screen.

One feature I consider necessary: op of a post should have a different color name or a badge next to their name in the comments.

Literally the only thing keeping me from going with this app instead of Memmy, is being able to sort by top 3, 6 and 12 hours. It’s so smooth.

Today’s big change (aside from earlier’s network rewrite) is image uploads and a redesigned post composer.

It’s going to be hitting TestFlight in a few minutes so please let me know what you think when you’ve had a chance to try it 😄

Just wanted to say the swipe to vote features and the haptic feedback are perfect! I think you guys have it down better than any other Lemmy app at the moment!

Looking forward to future updates. I could see this one being my main for sure!

Minor feedback on theme:

Is there a way to use accent of the main color theme to color the upvote and reply swipes

Today's Changes — July 22nd

Build 2023.07.22.00.35

• Added a new image gallery component for multiple images posted in the body of a post or comment.
• Added a new "iOS default" blue option
• Added an option to hide the thumbnail on text only posts.
• Added a new view menu.
• Added an option to hide read posts.
• Improved Markdown styles.
• Improved performance on comment view.
• Fixed issues with Card View.
• Changed the threshold for the amount of swiping required to dismiss images.
• Fixed links not working in post content
• Hid the page control on the image viewer when there’s only one image
• Added additional link parsing for communities and usernames.
• Fixed an issue where logging into an instance with https:// or http:// would crash the app.
• Fixed an issue with link metadata being wiped when refreshing or upvoting.

More improvements to commenting and performance will be coming over the weekend.