Vincent Ritter

Thoughts

My thoughts, micro blog style. Usually short showing off ideas, screenshots and other things that might be on my mind on the day.

It’s a huge shame that the Music app, on Catalina, yet again just stops playing when you add a song to your library… even if the playlist is in your library.

First steps for the Reply Toolbar coming to Gluon:

That’s a user toolbar, showing the users in the conversation you are replying to and then anyone you are following. Tap to add. Still experimental and more to come. But you can have it already 🤓

Something I have to relearn is text selection on iOS13. It's weird… certainly much nicer though!

Another update for Gluon on iOS which I hope you enjoy.

  • Loading indicators are pretty much gone except the pull to refresh one. The app still does a few things in the background (for example prefetching the feed), however this is way better UX in my opinion.
  • Images Modal - the one you know and love from earlier builds. So instead of navigating out of the app, you’ll get a nice modal. Swipe left or right for more (if there are more), swipe down to close and your usual pinch-to-zoom action. Happy I managed to get that finally in.
  • The Photos tab is now named Media - this shows both images and videos from your timeline.

Thanks to Eli (@eli) for pointing out the many many loading indicators.

A quick note on loading:

The app, at the moment, pre-fetches the feeds when you navigate to each screen. This is for a few reasons. The main reason is that the Micro.blog API is a bit slow at times. So to avoid this and give you the illusion of quick loading it grabs the feed straight away. This means if you do a “pull to refresh” the feed is actually already being fetched in the background. I think, for now, this is the best answer to avoid the sometimes long loading times (they can vary between 1 and 6 seconds). And it gives you the feedback you need when you do do a pull-to-refresh.

Just pushed out another TestFlight build for Gluon. Here are the release notes:

  • Background Audio now continues to play when a video loads. So if you’re listening to a podcast or music, they’ll keep going!
  • When you do a “Pull to Refresh” you will now see the loading indicator at the top - as you would expect. Anything in the background or automatic will still trigger the little green and red spinner - but not the pull to refresh one.
  • List items now have the correct bullet point colour set depending on your theme.

Thanks again for all the feedback so far. Keep it coming!

Also… the dark theme looks out of date on iOS13 (for any of you running it). I’ll probably add a third true dark theme with a black background. The current one I’ll just name “Space Grey/Gray”.

I’ll update the Android build during the week as I need to tackle some specific Android issue that I didn’t have the time for.

Yesterday morning we went to the dentist and they have a UV light in one of the play rooms. Plays funny tricks on the front facing camera. Featured is my amazing daughter, my beautiful bold patch at the top and my long curly hair.

Great Drum & Bass tune 🎶 : Cherokee Heart by Dkay.

Not for everyone, but I urge you to wear headphones and listen beyond the “drum and bass” that the average listener would associate with this type of music.

Great for calm and steady coding.

I’ve been to the gym yesterday morning, after some time away from it.

Things I did not miss: Angry people dropping weights like idiots. People on their phone, messaging or, worse, talking. The bad music. The smell.

I think it’s been raining 6 out 7 days for the past 5 weeks, with a day or two of sunshine. Really gets to you!

Just pushed out an update to Gluon that adds video playback for timeline items. I know I’m late to the party! The videos repeat/loop and they are muted as default. You’ll get your normal iOS/Android controls. I’ll add a few settings to this feature.

I like the idea of “Mac Open Web” - macopenweb.com - but what about other platforms? They surely also do, and need, “open”. It should be global awareness for the better good.

Also a shame that the launch list only provides the “big names”. Of course I understand that you can create a pull request, but some initial research into it should provide a gold mine of indie developers all trying to contribute in big or small ways.

I guess it’s early days for the site, but I’d love to see everyone come together across many platforms and fields. We already have diversity problems, so it would be nice to see something more global across platforms.

An “open web” is, after all, open to all, and not just a subset of people on one particular platform.

My next project after Gluon will be a cross platform RSS reader. However it’ll be simple and do away with unread counts or any other “OMG I’m so behind on everything” feelings. Something simple and enjoyable. More on that soon.

I got the go-ahead to showcase some of the client work I’ve been working on the past few years. Hoping to add that to my site when I have time this year. So probably Christmas 😂 Can’t wait to show people.

Pushed out a smaller, but bigger behind the scenes, update for Gluon.

I gave some loving to the Android version and fixed a few bugs! Also added experimental local push notifications for mentions on Android. Give it a go!

iOS now also has local push notifications again! I pretty much re-wrote the background fetching so it should be much much better in handling background tasks. Which brings me to my next point:

The app used to, 25% of the time, ask you to log back into the account randomly… I REALLY hope I have now fixed this. Please let me know if it works for you! I’m testing like crazy, but the more feedback I have the better!

Also, I want to apologise for all the “Gluon” noise! I’m testing between two accounts with different devices… I promise to blog about other stuff than just Gluon 😊 It’s where my head is at at the moment!

I’m hoping to wrap it up in the coming weeks to get it out there into the wild.

Always interesting to see the limitations I come across when building Gluon cross platform for Android and iOS. Android having its own set of rules, same with iOS. Happy though that 90% works cross platform. Certainly makes it interesting!

My laptop crashed today for the first time ever since I got it. Cause:

"caused_by":”bridgeos” - YAY!

I’m convinced that Apple said that on the new Apple TV App you’ll be able to see all your Family purchases, across your accounts, in the keynote. Or did I miss that? I was really looking forward to that, but I can’t see it at all...

Started work on Posting from Gluon. On login, or when you reload your feed, it will check if you have a hosted site on Micro.blog. If so, the button will show. Will continue tonight with adding the actual posting screen and logic.

Pushed out a small update to Gluon. I’ve added the Micro Monday link on the "Discover more” section, tweaked Wordpress emoji image handling (now real emoji), and you can open images in a browser which is the first step before I add the modal.

I dropped the “software engineer” title and am now a “starter”. I prefer that. Pretty much sums it up for me. I love starting and developing things.

I know I said this before… but when you add a playing song to your playlist in Apple Music… and then it stops playing… ...

Pushed out an update to Gluon before heading to bed. Wanted to get into it again after just over a month away from it (gonna explain why soon). I have many things planned - all to be revealed soon. Also need to give Android some loving too.

I don’t feel like coding again today. Don’t know what is going on. I’ll update the computer and have a shower me thinks. Read a bit for an hour. Forcing work is the worst.

And here’s the second screen. Hasn’t changed much tbh, except the raft of games, because my daughter likes to play together with me (which I love). Apple folder. Random (idea) folder. Money/Bank folder (trying to keep it minimal). Games - just some random ones.

Here is my home screen I have settled on. I don’t use the calendar too much, but I like it there. Having Books in the dock was a great move as I find I start reading mostly. Dynamic background to give iOS some life.

I’ve tried a few meditation apps and general wellness apps over the past few weeks. Doing research. And the sad thing is, they almost all require personal details to sign up to an account before you can even start. I reckon there is a market there.

I felt like writing a short story. It’s a bit dark and I have no idea where it’s going to go. Felt good to write though. Not sure about the title.

I’m not 100% sure who said it (probably Bruce Lee), but this stuck with me for life:

To truly know oneself, is to rid yourself of the influence of others.

This is true more than ever in our modern, connected and always ‘on' society.

I have two questions for anyone using Gluon.

  • I’m planning on removing “Favorites” as a prominent tab item and replace it with “Photos”, which will be a specific timeline just with photos (and some other cool photo things). Favs will live under your profile instead. Good idea? Bad?
  • ”Your Feed” - I’m planning to rename this to either “My Feed”, “Feed” or “Timeline”. Which one do you prefer?

The result of the first local push for a @-mention. I received two from Gluon because I send a blank push with details for the currently logged in user. I get them through every time a background task is run = many 😬

Homescreen for March. Trying to keep it to a minimum with low noise. I may remove Mail from here too as I find myself distracted looking at emails all the time.

Understandably I find myself reaching for the phone a lot. Going to put it in a different room or out of sight. Reset myself.

The Gluon Android Alpha 2.0 is propagating through the Play Store. I’m going to keep an eye on it to see when that updates. Once I’m happy I’m going to add everyone that emailed me. Google Play Store is super confusing, but I hope that it should just work for the existing list of users.

I’m adding swipe actions for “Favor” and “Reply”. I’ve got favourites working nicely and that also triggers a reload of the “Favorites” feed. Next up is replying, but not today. Here are the colours behind the table cell. Always nice to see.

I just completed the Appearance section of Gluon. You can also now choose a font that is used to display timeline items. I don’t apply the font app wide, but I could if enough wanted it. Too much of the same font doesn’t look great.

Close