Gluon for Micro.blog

I just pushed the Gluon codebase to the master branch for the first time! That means a few things 😊 More info soon 😱

Last night I submitted Gluon for App Store review. It went into review roughly 20 minutes after. Loving the turnaround times 😍.

I remember my first ever app, that I submitted, took around 2 weeks.

Currently taking screenshots for the Gluon support page. That’s iOS only for the moment. Will also have to do a set for Android.

Casually working on the Gluon website…

It’s time everyone, the holiday is close.

As 2019 closes and 2020 is on the horizon I want to give a huge shoutout to every single one of you that has helped on the journey of building Gluon. Anyone that’s been watching, anyone commenting and anyone that’s using Gluon as their client for Micro.blog.

I am truly grateful that there is such a great community! Without you and your support this app would have not gotten where it got to this year.

Saying this, we’ve (together) accomplished much this year and I’m really happy with progress. I tend to take things slow, on purpose. Thank you for sticking with me.

I’ve got one last update that I wanted to get out this year, which is mainly full of little bug fixes. So grab it if you have time.

Gluon is close to being ready, with a few things still left to do:

• Tagging posts - it’s at 90% - I just need to add the UI for it.
• Post drafts - it’s also at 80% - I just need to write logic to save it off so you can have multiple items and get to them.
• IndieWeb (Auth) support for third-party sites and support for other MicroPub enabled sites - I promised this, so it’s going in!
• Revamp the settings/more screen - it’s one of the first things I did, so it’s time to make it nice and useful.

Whilst iPad support isn’t great at the moment, I’ll work on it during 2020 after I initially release it. I have some ideas.

I’m hoping I can keep working on Gluon for a long time to come and I’m always hearing your requests. I don’t discard them and I write them all down and reply where I can. Gluon is full of things that were requested, so keep it coming.

On that note, I want to say thank you once again and I’ll see you all with more Gluon goodness in the new year… I’ll be blogging about other things though!

Working on a few bug fixes for Gluon this morning and added a push prompt on the Mentions screen:

Currently working on adding Post drafts. It’s kinda already there if you don’t send a post, but want to have a dedicated section at least.

Given the option of adding Direct Messaging to Gluon. Would people go for it? Nothing concrete planned on the little details at the moment (like whom you can DM or other settings that allows you to control it). Just putting out feelers.

Comments welcome 😊

Just pushed an update to Gluon for both iOS TestFlight and Android Internal. I’ve added my preliminary integration for image upload to a Micro.blog hosted blog. It took me some time, but I’m happy it’s working now.

I wanted to write a longer blog post, but I’ll let you discover it all and have a play with it first and I’ll write it a bit later. Suggest you read the release notes to find out more 😃

Device testing!

I’ll be running some posting tests for Gluon, on the Gluon account. So ignore it. I’ll clean up afterwards.

I tend to be alcohol free, but my app is giving me a sign… I guess I could. Good progress on Gluon last week, so I’ll give myself some slack 🍷

Just shipped an update for Gluon on both Android and iOS. It mainly focuses on bug fixes that you have all been reporting and also some more Android specific code changes.

Here is a quick summary:

• Settings/Appearance now saves properly and is applied once again when the app launches from fresh.
• Increased contrast on the timeline separators, so it’s a little darker when having a lighter theme.
• Finally fixes an issue when two, or more, links next to each other didn’t have a gap. For example a reply with multiple mentions. Now there is a nice gap.
• Added timeline line height change when changing “timeline spacing”. If it’s relaxed you’ll have a bigger line height - compact is more… compact. Let me know if that should be a separate option for you in general.
• Fixes a few issues when tab bar titles turn to a default blue after closing an image modal, or a reply, or a post.
• More UI tweaks and better contrasts depending on the theme.
• iOS - Started introducing custom header bar titles. You won’t see much difference here to the old ones… yet.
• Fixed some edge cases when a long profile name was displayed.
• Android - bring across auto-themes for Android 10.
• Android - all other iOS changes made recently.
• Android - fixes issues where a back button was shown on a screen where you couldn’t go back.

For Android, it includes all the iOS changes that I blogged about here. It’s not perfect on the visibility of which account you’re in, but I’ve set wheels in motion to make that work as per iOS!

Here are a few screenshots:

Double links are fixed… FINALLY!

That’s the longest name I could find on Micro.blog - now it no longer breaks the timeline cell layout. So if you have an even longer name… it shouldn’t break the app.

Discover on Android. With the same layout as iOS.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this update. I don’t expect to ship any more tweaks and fixes until I have finished my promise to include posting of photos and other posting related items.

If you have feedback, let me know! I read all of them.

Added recent searches to the Search screen for Gluon. Also added some friendly icons too. Will ship an update on Monday I guess, including some bug fixes for account switching.

I could get used to this…