Another test table by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

This is actually an issue I was aware of. Unfortunately textview on iOS does not have any native support for tables like the MacOS counterpart does. For tables in Arctic, I rolled my own using tab breaks for the layout, and some custom drawing for the background. This solution does not allow word wrapping within columns in the table, nor does text alignment work correctly when using tabs.

In the end, what I’ll end up doing for this, is embedding a custom view within the text view for rendering tables. This will come later as I plan to include this in a larger text rendering update that will allow for in-line media rendering, link previews and improved code and block quotes etc.

This would be a relatively trivial task using SwiftUI, but in UIKit, it’s going to take me some time to develop a custom solution.

Table and spoiler support by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

Oof, yeah that looks horrendous in Arctic.

Arctic does have support for spoilers, though currently some elements are not hidden by the spoiler tag such as thematic breaks (horizontal lines) code-blocks etc. I’ll need to fix that. Table support is planned, though I haven’t figured out a good way to accomplish this yet.

I’ll do some testing over the weekend and see if I can at least get some rudimentary tables working so that content like this is readable while I come up with a more refined solution.

Thanks for letting me know!

Redgif videos by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

I added a temporary fix for this in yesterday’s TestFlight release. It seems to work for most videos, but fails with some.

This issue started due to RedGifs changing the accessibility of direct links to their videos. They provide a direct link to video files in the opengraph data on their site, this is what Arctic uses for generating link previews for most sites. Recently they made some changes, and the video link they provide will fail to load unless busting their API.

I requested access to their API several weeks ago so that I could properly fix this issue, however I have not heard back from them yet, hence the temporary and somewhat unreliable fix was added.

Hopefully I’ll be able to properly fix this issue soon, in the mean time, along with the temporary fix, I added a link attribution button in arctic, for videos hosted on other sites. So you can just tap the button to open the link in the browser if the video does not load.

Feature requests by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Thank you so much for the detailed requests, it’s definitely a big help!

The markdown editor in arctic is relatively new. I rewrote it not long ago, to allow for more features and extensibility. In the process of rewriting, I left a few features out that I had originally included. Link detection is one of those features. I am planning to go back through and expand the editor with support for contextual awareness. Basically links & highlighted will be detected and handled when when using the toolbar. Lists will insert a new bullet when hitting return, headers, and quotes will start on a new line, etc. I’m not exactly sure when I’ll start working on the editor again, but hopefully in the next week I will have some time for this.

Account switching definitely needs some work. Account switching was one of the earliest features I added, and back then Arctic didn’t support resolving Lemmy urls for links to other instances, making it impossible to keep the current context open. I’ve since added support for non-local urls, so this should not be hard to implement. One catch being, that this will only work for open posts, post feeds will need to reload, or paging will be thrown off when switching instances. The one exception to this being, if you switch to an account on the same instance, and are not browsing your home (subscriptions) feed.

As for resuming composition, I actually started working on this a while back and never really finished it. I couldn’t decide on how to implement the UI for it. I had thought about using the floating button approach, but it felt wrong. So I ended up adding a drafts button in the comment composer so you could insert a draft from a previous unfinished comment. This works, but you still need to browse and find the comment you were replying to, etc. It feels a little half baked in its current state. This is also supported for posts as well, though I haven’t added the drafts button for that. So, the functionality is mostly there, I just need to decide on how to implement it in the UI to finish ironing it out.

I’ll see I can get some of this implemented in the next TestFlight build. Thank you so much for the great feedback!

How do I delete comment drafts? by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

I completely overlooked that detail. I just went ahead added support for swipe to delete, and I’ll include it in the TestFlight build later today.

Thanks for letting me know!

Arctic is live on the AppStore by CreatureSurvive in c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Arctic supports all available mod actions, and also has a mod-zone in the sidebar. I do need to work on improving them, but the support is there.

[edit] it also supports push notifications for reports and applications.

Arctic is live on the AppStore by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I do have a buymeacoffee, you can also find it in the sidebar for the Arctic community, or on getarctic.app. I’m not able to add a direct link to other payment options in the app due to AppStore policies.

I’m working on a bug fix, and feature request build right now, but the next release I will add some widgets and other extensions. I know we talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

Arctic is live on the AppStore by CreatureSurvive in c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Glad you like it!

I’m also not satisfied with the icon, though I am not a graphic designer and I’ve been struggling to make a better icon/logo. I’m hoping by the next release I can either find a graphic designer to assist, or come up with an improved logo on my own.

Arctic is live on the AppStore by CreatureSurvive in c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Auto-reader is for opening links in the browser in reader mode, where only the text is shown in a nice readable format. It’s great for some of the horribly formatted sites with ads between every paragraph.

Arctic is live on the AppStore by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Thank you! I’m very excited about it.

Should we continue to use the test flight version, or switch to the AppStore one?

It really depends on how you want to use Arctic. Currently the latest TestFlight release is the same as the AppStore version. Going forward, the TestFlight will usually be ahead of the AppStore version, but you may encounter more issues. So if you’d like a more stable experience, go with the AppStore version, or if you want to help test new features, stick with the TestFlight version.

Arctic v0.3.x is out on TestFlight! by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

So Arctic started as a personal project without the intention of releasing it. I had been an avid Apollo user since its launch and thoroughly enjoyed using the app. I decided to model Arctic based on Apollo for myself.

Once I had a near full feature set, I decided I might be interested in publicly releasing Arctic. At the time there was only one other native Lemmy app for iOS (mlem), the rest were either web-based or using react native. I didn’t intend on making an Apollo clone as a public project, but that is exactly where this went. I’ve been trying to breathe some alternative design into the app as it’s progressed, and I will continue to do so.

I know you were not necessarily asking about the design, I just thought I should share a bit about The roots of the project and its design.

As for what makes Arctic stand out; Firstly, I’ve not used Voyager or really any other Lemmy app for very long (a few minutes, maybe hours), so I cannot speak much on what Arctic offers that others don’t.

Arctic is currently the only iOS app I’m aware of that is written in pure Swift using UIKit rather than SwiftUI. For the most part, this does not make much of a difference to the end-user, however, this does allow for some optimizations that are not available in SwiftUI apps, and from the feedback I’ve received, Arctic offers better performance compared to other native alternatives.

Arctic is currently the only native iOS app that offers Account push notifications, and Community notifications for free (to the best of my knowledge), please correct me if another app offers this.

Key Features:

  • No advertisements or trackers, ever
  • Native support for media, photos, videos, gifs, etc
  • Robust media viewer to view content in full detail
  • Rich link previews in posts and comments
  • Customizable swipe gestures to make navigation a breeze
  • Account quick switcher, supports unlimited accounts
  • Community switcher, quickly jump between communities
  • Account push notifications, badges, replies, mentions, messages, reports, applications
  • Community push notifications. customizable notifications for communities based on filters
  • Content filters, exclude content by keyword
  • Smart cache keeps browsing fast, and storage free
  • Rich markdown editor, for composing new content
  • Upload manager for keeping control of uploaded media
  • Lemmy Explorer integration, browse Lemmy Explorer directly in the app
  • Full-featured client, if you can do it on the website, you can do it in Arctic

In the end, I I encourage everyone to try out the all the available apps and find what suits them the best.

Widgets? by CreatureSurvive in c/arctic@lemmy.world
[-] CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Yes, I am planning several widgets for Arctic. So far they have just been a lower priority task. So far in the TestFlight I’ve been focused on core features, and stability.

With an AppStore release around the corner finally, I should be able to spend some more time on things like Widgets, and custom notification reply extensions, etc. Hopefully here in the next few weeks I’ll have some widgets ready for testing.

55
Arctic v0.2.1 is now available on TestFlight (testflight.apple.com)
submitted 9 months ago by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world
7 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5508813

Arctic v0.2.1 is now available for testing on TestFlight!

Sorry for the delay with this update, it took longer than I had originally planned. I’ve had a busy couple or weeks, and have not had as much time as usual to work on Arctic. Additionally this update was larger than past updates, with larger features and more commits than any of the previous updates. In the future I will try and keep the updates coming more frequently,

Notable new features

This update comes packed with some exciting new features. Arctic now has support for iPad layouts (split view, slide over, full screen). This is still a work in progress and will improve in future releases. Collapsible comment chains are finally supported, tap or swipe any comment to collapse it’s content and children. Mod tools have also joined the party! You can access mod actions when viewing content from any community you moderate. Just open the action menu for any post or comment for quick access to (ban user, remove content, speak as a mod, feature or lock a post). You can also review and resolve user reported content in the new Mod Zone accessible from the sidebar, and community action menu.

Mod tools and iPad support are still a work in progress and any feedback on theses features is more that welcome.

Less notable new features

Arctic now has Lemmy Explorer (lemmyverse.net) built in. This allows for browsing and searching thousands of instances and communities inside Arctic. Currently, you can access this through Lemmy Explorer in settings. However, I’m working on integrating lemmyverse databases directly in the Search tab, and in the Community browser to allow for better search results, and increase community discovery.

Media viewer action buttons are working now, not much to explain here. You can now vote, share, save, open in browser, etc directly from the media viewer.

Upcoming features

Better iPad support. I plan to add support for 3 column layout, and a context aware sidebar. I’m also working on adding support for multiple windows, so you can browse multiple accounts, or use mod tools while browsing etc. this may take some time and likely won’t be coming in the next release.

Mod tool improvements. Better UI support for moderation, currently the UI doesn’t properly update for all mod actions. Additional convenience actions for mods, such as speak as mod, and feature posts etc before submitting the post/comment.

Comments feed, view instance or community comments in a feed similar to the posts feed, this is to match the web UI.

Chat mode for comments. Disables hierarchical comments to view comments with absolute sorting. Additionally, child comments of deleted or removed comments are not shown.

Adaptive layout. Currently long usernames, or deep nested comments, etc cause some wonky UI, where elements will overlap. I’m working on adding better support in these cases to allow the UI to adapt.

Accessibility improvements. Voiceover should already be working fairly well, however there are a lot of areas for improvement. I’m working on going through the whole UI to ensure all elements are properly supported.

State synchronization. I know I’ve mentioned this before, and I haven’t gotten to this yet. I have a pretty good idea of. How I’m going to handle this, it’s going to take some time to implement though.

Customizable swipe actions. Adding support for user customizable swipe actions. This will also come with distance based triggers rather than the current drawer style swipe actions.

Until next time

As always, thanks to everyone for testing Arctic and providing feedback. We still have a fairly small community here, and I would like to increase engagement, so everyone feel free to post any feedback or suggestions here.

V0.2.1 changes

v0.2.1

  • Added support for collapsable comment chains
  • Added split-view iPad layout support (also supported on full size iPhones)
  • Added option to select app layout (iPhone, iPad)
  • Added Moderation options to post and comment action menus (must be a moderator for the community)
  • Added Mod Zone for viewing post/comment reports, and resolving them
  • Added Lemmy Explorer for browsing communities/instances
  • Added support for uploading images from the Files app
  • Added support for loading video thumbnails (WIP)
  • Added option to save, copy, or open in browser any media
  • Added swipe actions to the posts feed
  • Added option to select text from the detailed post view
  • Added support for refreshing the profile page
  • Added open in browser option to community feeds
  • Added alert for viewing detailed account score, and account age
  • Redesigned settings page, and organized options
  • Increased the posts feed page size
  • Optimized image loading, and memory usage
  • Refactored the profile view and added support for viewing save comments
  • Fixed posts with no comments not displaying a no comments message
  • Fixed issue that could cause community feeds not to load on certain instance
  • Fixed issue where canceling an image upload would result in an infinite loading screen
  • Fixed crash when deleting an image from the Upload Manager
  • Fixed search bars on iOS 16 to match the layout of iOS 15
  • Fixed layout issues after device rotation
  • Fixed media viewer action buttons not working
  • Fixed issue where posts would fail to load due to unencoded urls (matrix urls)
  • Fixed crash that could occur when submitting a new post/comment
  • Fixed sidebar banners displaying the icon rather than the banner
  • Fixed comment reports opening a post report
  • Fixed alerts displaying underneath the media viewer
  • Fixed moderator list in profiles always displaying your own moderator list rather than the selected user
  • Fixed crash that would occur when adding or changing accounts
  • Fixed delated/removed comments always displaying "deleted by creator"
2
Arctic v0.2.1 is now available on TestFlight (testflight.apple.com)
submitted 9 months ago by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

Arctic v0.2.1 is now available for testing on TestFlight!

Sorry for the delay with this update, it took longer than I had originally planned. I’ve had a busy couple or weeks, and have not had as much time as usual to work on Arctic. Additionally this update was larger than past updates, with larger features and more commits than any of the previous updates. In the future I will try and keep the updates coming more frequently,

Notable new features

This update comes packed with some exciting new features. Arctic now has support for iPad layouts (split view, slide over, full screen). This is still a work in progress and will improve in future releases. Collapsible comment chains are finally supported, tap or swipe any comment to collapse it’s content and children. Mod tools have also joined the party! You can access mod actions when viewing content from any community you moderate. Just open the action menu for any post or comment for quick access to (ban user, remove content, speak as a mod, feature or lock a post). You can also review and resolve user reported content in the new Mod Zone accessible from the sidebar, and community action menu.

Mod tools and iPad support are still a work in progress and any feedback on theses features is more that welcome.

Less notable new features

Arctic now has Lemmy Explorer (lemmyverse.net) built in. This allows for browsing and searching thousands of instances and communities inside Arctic. Currently, you can access this through Lemmy Explorer in settings. However, I’m working on integrating lemmyverse databases directly in the Search tab, and in the Community browser to allow for better search results, and increase community discovery.

Media viewer action buttons are working now, not much to explain here. You can now vote, share, save, open in browser, etc directly from the media viewer.

Upcoming features

Better iPad support. I plan to add support for 3 column layout, and a context aware sidebar. I’m also working on adding support for multiple windows, so you can browse multiple accounts, or use mod tools while browsing etc. this may take some time and likely won’t be coming in the next release.

Mod tool improvements. Better UI support for moderation, currently the UI doesn’t properly update for all mod actions. Additional convenience actions for mods, such as speak as mod, and feature posts etc before submitting the post/comment.

Comments feed, view instance or community comments in a feed similar to the posts feed, this is to match the web UI.

Chat mode for comments. Disables hierarchical comments to view comments with absolute sorting. Additionally, child comments of deleted or removed comments are not shown.

Adaptive layout. Currently long usernames, or deep nested comments, etc cause some wonky UI, where elements will overlap. I’m working on adding better support in these cases to allow the UI to adapt.

Accessibility improvements. Voiceover should already be working fairly well, however there are a lot of areas for improvement. I’m working on going through the whole UI to ensure all elements are properly supported.

State synchronization. I know I’ve mentioned this before, and I haven’t gotten to this yet. I have a pretty good idea of. How I’m going to handle this, it’s going to take some time to implement though.

Customizable swipe actions. Adding support for user customizable swipe actions. This will also come with distance based triggers rather than the current drawer style swipe actions.

Until next time

As always, thanks to everyone for testing Arctic and providing feedback. We still have a fairly small community here, and I would like to increase engagement, so everyone feel free to post any feedback or suggestions here.

V0.2.1 changes

v0.2.1

  • Added support for collapsable comment chains
  • Added split-view iPad layout support (also supported on full size iPhones)
  • Added option to select app layout (iPhone, iPad)
  • Added Moderation options to post and comment action menus (must be a moderator for the community)
  • Added Mod Zone for viewing post/comment reports, and resolving them
  • Added Lemmy Explorer for browsing communities/instances
  • Added support for uploading images from the Files app
  • Added support for loading video thumbnails (WIP)
  • Added option to save, copy, or open in browser any media
  • Added swipe actions to the posts feed
  • Added option to select text from the detailed post view
  • Added support for refreshing the profile page
  • Added open in browser option to community feeds
  • Added alert for viewing detailed account score, and account age
  • Redesigned settings page, and organized options
  • Increased the posts feed page size
  • Optimized image loading, and memory usage
  • Refactored the profile view and added support for viewing save comments
  • Fixed posts with no comments not displaying a no comments message
  • Fixed issue that could cause community feeds not to load on certain instance
  • Fixed issue where canceling an image upload would result in an infinite loading screen
  • Fixed crash when deleting an image from the Upload Manager
  • Fixed search bars on iOS 16 to match the layout of iOS 15
  • Fixed layout issues after device rotation
  • Fixed media viewer action buttons not working
  • Fixed issue where posts would fail to load due to unencoded urls (matrix urls)
  • Fixed crash that could occur when submitting a new post/comment
  • Fixed sidebar banners displaying the icon rather than the banner
  • Fixed comment reports opening a post report
  • Fixed alerts displaying underneath the media viewer
  • Fixed moderator list in profiles always displaying your own moderator list rather than the selected user
  • Fixed crash that would occur when adding or changing accounts
  • Fixed delated/removed comments always displaying "deleted by creator"
4
iPad support is going well (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

I just wanted to share that my progress on iPad support is going great. I should hopefully be releasing the v0.2.1 in the next couple of days. So far I believe I have all features working as intended on iPad, though there is a lot more to do in terms of improving the layout.

I’ve also added quite a few new features in this next version that I can’t wait to share with everyone.

iPad Layout

Preview

3
Arctic iPad layout is coming soon (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

I’ve been tinkering with adding a proper iPad layout to Arctic, and I wanted to get some feedback. I am not an avid iPad user myself, so I would like to know what everyone would expect, or want out of an iPad layout in Arctic.

The obvious features would be:

  • A collapsible sidebar for subscriptions
  • Slide-Over and Split-Screen support
  • Less overwhelmingly large images

Please let me know if you have any iPad specific feature requests or suggestions, it would be very helpful in improving iPad support.

1
Arctic v0.2.0 is now available on TestFlight (testflight.apple.com)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

v0.2.0 is out!

I believe I finally fixed the crashes some users were experiencing when refreshing posts feeds, if you still experience one of these crashes, please report it via TestFlight. Also, links in posts and comments are way easier to tap now, that was frustrating, I know. You can read about all the changes in this version below.

Upcoming features

Collapsible Comments has been implemented, and will be included in the next release. I’m working on integrating a Lemmyverse browser for exploring outside of your instance. I’m also working on proper a proper iPad layout. Browsing on iPad is a little off-putting at the moment, so hopefully I can fix that.

Issue Tracker

I completely forgot to include a link to the issue tracker in the last release, but if you would like to submit an issue, you can visit the GitHub Issue Tracker. I will add a Feature Request option soon.

v0.2.0 Changes

  • Fixed a crash that would often occur when refreshing a post-feed
  • Fixed pull to refresh not working in detailed post views
  • Fixed Community Settings not properly loading the icon URL
  • Fixed issue that could make links in post bodies difficult or impossible to tap
  • Fixed issue that could make links in comment bodies difficult or impossible to tap
  • Fixed a potential memory leak in the Posts Feed
  • Workaround for an unsupported KBin link type, will redirect to browser for now
  • Added ability to search posts from the posts feed, for searching limited to a single community
  • Added support for creating communities from the Moderates section
  • Added lock indicator for locked posts
  • Added a title to the report view to indicate the type of report
  • Added instance sidebars
  • Added support for composing, and replying to Private Messages
  • Added an instance browser to browse your instance's federation
  • Added instance legal information to instance sidebars
  • Added modlogs to the sidebar (WIP)
  • Added option to report posts from the detailed posts view
  • Tapping the active tabbar item will now scroll to the top, or pop to the previous view in all views
  • The Media Viewer will now allow zooming up to 30x
  • When submitting a post or comment, a progress indicator will now show to indicate it is working
  • When editing a post that has an image as the URL, the image will be loaded and displayed
1
Arctic v0.1.9 is now available for testing (testflight.apple.com)
submitted 10 months ago by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

Arctic v0.1.9 is now available for testing.

Unfortunately, I was not able to implement Private Messages the way that I had hoped due to API limitations. In the next update I’ll at least add support for composing/replying to private messages. However until the API is updated, Arctic will display messages the same way Lemmy-UI handles it, as one big feed.

Arctic will now handle expired login sessions properly, and prompt you to re-authenticate if needed. This is due to the fact that Auth-tokens can be revoked for various reasons by instance admins, and Arctic used to just display server response errors in this case, rather than stating the session had expired.

Arctic also now supports reporting content, open the menu for any post/comment and tap report.

I’ve also added experimental post keyword filtering. So far this seems to be working well, and it does support basic regex expressions. Currently filtering is disabled in the search section as it has not way to query the server with filtering options. So it would require multiple paging requests in some cases to show any results. Hopefully I can find a way around this in the future.

You can read the full change-log below, and don’t hesitate to reply or create a post here with any feedback, issues, or suggestions.

v0.1.9 Changes

  • Added community settings editor, for community moderators to update the sidebar of their communities
  • Added keyword filtering, filter posts by keyword in either the title or body of the post
  • Added option to report Posts/Comments
  • Added an option that prompts the user to log in if their login session has expired. Admins can revoke all API tokens for various reasons, and this results in errors on the client side. Arctick now handles this scenario, and asks the user to re-authenticate.
  • Added proper error message for when the login session has expired, rather than just a server status code
  • Added option to select text from posts/comments to copy rather than just copying the whole contents
  • Imgur videos should now correctly play inline
  • Animated images now pause when offscreen like videos do
  • Posts now resize when loading images without animating, this may be reverted. Let me know if scrolling feels better or worse
1
Arctic release notes (testflight.apple.com)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

I haven’t been posting here about Arctic updates, and I realize that is a little counter productive towards building an active community here. So I would like to change that and start posting about changes in each release, and about active development.

I have been trying to wrap up a release every couple of days, and keep them coming as frequently as I can manage. Each update I try and throw in a mix of bug fixes and new features or quality of life improvements. I believe at this point I have all the crashes fixed except one, which I’ve received a good number of crash reports about. The crash usually happens after refreshing the posts feed when letting the app sit in the background for a while. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to reproduce this crash which makes it difficult to resolve. However I do know where the issue originates, and I hope to have it resolved in the next update.

What’s next?

In the next update I’m planning a few new features. First and foremost, is private messages. Currently, you can view private messages with Arctic, but there is no way to reply or create messages. I’ve been putting it off because I don’t have a clear idea of how I’d like to design this. I’ve never been a fan of the Messages app-like design within an app like Arctic, so I’m thinking of implementing it more like a forum than a chat app. Im also planning to add in UI support for post and comment reporting, as this is a critical feature that should already be implemented if I’m being honest. I’ll hopefully have instance sidebars added in the next update as well.

Going forward

Within the next couple of releases I’d like to tackle some of the biggest issues within Arctic currently. First is state synchronization. Currently the app state is poorly managed: for instance you can open a post and vote or comment on it, and back-out to the feed and the UI will not depict the changes. This is rather cumbersome task as UIKit does not have proper binding like SwiftUI does. But I have a good idea of how I will manage this.

The second issue will be improvements to scrolling performance in posts feeds. This is also a tricky task as UIKit does not handle changes to cell height in tables very well. Currently, Arctic tries its best to prefetch images before they are displayed to prevent having to resize visible cells, but dependent on network conditions, this may not always happen in time and it can cause some jumpy scrolling. I may never completely negate this issue without the the lemmy API providing image dimension data in the responses. However, I have some options for improving this that I have yet to try.

Lastly, I’d like to address issues with links being un-tappable in some posts. This one is really annoying, and honestly I’m just going to throw out the current system and rewrite the system using official techniques.

Some more thoughts

Once stability and core features are a bit more polished, I’ll be focusing on design. Currently Arctic is quite static in design, but I’d like to offer a bit more user control over appearance. Things like app-wide color themes, comment color themes, customizable action/swipe menus, etc. while implementing all of this, the settings section will also get an overhaul and be a little more organized.

I’ll also be working on implementing mod/admin tools. This is likely going to take some time, as there is a lot to implement, and familiarize myself with. I’ll keep everyone up to date on my progress with this when the time comes. I may also seek out some mod/admin users to test these features in a private testing group to avoid issues

Anywho, I didn’t intend on this being such a blanketed post, so I will leave it at that. I’ve included change-logs below as I’m not sure if anyone reads release notes in TestFlight releases. I’ll be sure to make a new release post here every time I release an update going forward.

Thank you, to all of the users. You’ve all been great. Our numbers are still quite low at the moment, only 153 testers at the time of writing this. Hopefully I can bump those up with the coming releases.

v0.1.8

  • Fixed videos failing to load in the media viewer if more than one video is in the list
  • Fixed crash when trying to share a video from the media viewer (for now, only the link will be shared. I will add an option to share the video file soon)
  • Fixed videos not posing when swiping to the next page in the media viewer
  • Fixed the search bar not always showing on the initial load of the Search tab
  • Fixed issue where some community icons would fail to load
  • Fixed issue where some animated images would not animate in the full post-view
  • Fixed issue where link previews would fail to display a default icon if a site favicon is not found
  • Fixed markdown not being applied when opening the post editor
  • Added loading indicator in the media viewer when loading videos
  • Added support for cross-posting (option is available in the action menus)
  • Added a community selector to the post composer, for changing what community you are posting to
  • Added support for scrolling to the top when pressing the posts tab while it's already active
  • Added option to open the post composer when long pressing the posts tab
  • Added reply context preview to the Reply Composer, for viewing the context in which you are replying to

v0.1.7 hotfix

  • Fixed crash when pressing the cancel button in the Search view
  • Fixed placeholder text not hiding in the post editor when editing an existing post

v0.1.6

  • Redesigned Post Editor UI
  • Fixed issue that could cause the login screen not to recognize when username/password was pasted
  • Fixed crash that could occur while trying to scroll the subscriptions view before it's loaded
  • Fixed issue causing some comments to be truncated (cut short)
  • Fixed layout issue causing odd behavior with the statusbar on non-notched devices
  • Fixed an issue that could cause some animated images in the post feed not to animate
  • Added a Upload History manager for deleting previous media uploads
  • Improved error messages to be more descriptive
  • UI now depicts when an upload is in progress
  • Media in comments can now be opened in the Meia Viewer
  • Index scroller in the Subscriptions view is now easier to grab
  • Increased tappable area for user/community labels in post-cells
  • Tapping the stats section of a post cell now opens the post
  • Improved success rate for losing YouTube videos
  • Improved image-loading behavior in the post feed
  • Hopefully, TOTP tokens will now be auto-filled when using a password manager to login

v0.1.5

  • Added compact post option (work in progress)
  • Added a network monitor that will show when no network connection is available
  • Added inbox paging, inboxes will now load more content when scrolling
  • Added placeholder icon for users avatars in search view
  • Updated Search and Profile styling to match that of the post feed (spacer between cells)
  • Improved performance when scrolling posts in search and profile views
  • UI now shows when you've reached the end of a feed, or the feed is empty when browsing posts

v0.1.4

  • Fixed account switcher positioning issue that occurred after switching accounts
  • Added Guest Mode to the account switcher

v0.1.3

  • Added option to disable video scrubbing gesture
  • Added upload history tracking to manage media uploads (No UI Yet)
  • Fixed a crash that could occur while parsing username links
  • Added image upload support to the markdown editor
  • Provided default icons for communities without an icon
  • Added BOT badge to post cells for showing bot accounts
  • Community cells in the search tab now show more statistics
  • Added option to override the interface style (light/dark)
  • Added some experimental swiftUI views
88
Arctic beta is out on TestFlight (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world
12 comments fedilink

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3634233

After a few delays, Arctic is has finally been submitted to TestFlight and got the green light. For those of you who don’t know what Arctic is, it’s a Lemmy client for iOS 15+ built in pure Swift.

Arctic began as just a little side project for me. As an avid Apollo user I was missing a feature rich and familiar client for IOS. So I started working on Arctic. My primary goal with the project has been creating a native UI appearance, and content presentation, focusing on putting the important content directly in the feed without feeling cluttered. I’m finally at a point where I feel Arctic is stable enough, and houses enough features to go forward with beta testing.

I’m currently testing out Reimplementing the UI in SwiftUI as it allows for quicker iteration, and less boilerplate code. Though I’m not sure about performance yet. SwiftUI seems to be lacking in certain areas such as prefetching APIs for heavy feeds etc. you can find an experimental post feed in settings that uses SwiftUI.

As of right now, I have not set up an issue tracker for Arctic. The reason for this is that I don’t know for sure if I will be Open Sourcing the project yet. I’d like to keep the issues/project in the same repository, and I’m unable to have a private repo with public issues. I’ll be deciding what route I would like to take over the next week or so.

While on the subject of open source, I’d like to mention that Arctic does not collect any information from users devices. The only user specific information that is stored is the Lemmy account JWT Auth token for communication with the Lemmy api. Absolutely no personal information is collected, or leaves your device. Currently I have no plans to implement any analytics in Arctic, and if I ever do, it will be on an opt-in basis, and be completely anonymous only tracking information relevant to Arctic support.

Development

I feel the need to point out that I work a full time job, and am often busy outside of working. With that said Arctic development may be a bit slow compared to some of the other projects out there. I do however plan to release at leas one update every week for now. I will try to push out more frequently as my time permits, even if that means smaller hot-fix type releases. I do plan to support Arctic long term, as I’m already quite invested in the project and have really enjoyed working on it.

Anyways, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask questions, or offer feedback/suggestions . I’m quite busy most days, but I will do my best to respond as soon as possible.

Almost forgot the most important part, here is the link to Arctic TestFlight

Current Features

  • Submitting / Editing Posts
  • Submitting / Editing Comments
  • Voting on Posts / Comments
  • Blocking Communities / Users / Instances
  • Subscribing to Communities
  • Search (URLs, communities, comments, posts, users)
  • Rich link previews
  • Uploading images
  • Rich Markdown Editor
  • Community browser
  • Basic guest (anonymous) mode
  • Multiple accounts, and quick switcher
  • Integrated Media Viewer
  • Upload manager manage previous media uploads)
  • In-line YouTube videos (experimental, this seems to have broken with recent changes to the YouTube api)

Known Issues:

  • Some in-line links do not recognize taps, I’m looking into overhauling the Markdown rendering and may be switching to swift UI for this, as it is better suited for that task instead of UIKit
  • State Sync, The UI does not update in all cases to reflect changes such as voting on a post, and then viewing it in the post feed
  • Some media fails to load and is unhandled by the UI
  • Scrolling performance needs improvement
  • Long usernames/community names can overlap action buttons
  • Fast scrolling can result in user/community icons showing in the wrong cell
  • Videos do not display in image gallery previews
  • YouTube videos fail to load at times
  • No spoiler support at the moment
  • No in-line images Yet
  • Private Messages are not currently supported, they will be coming soon

Previews

Preview 1

Preview 2

Preview 3

3
Arctic beta is out on TestFlight (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

After a few delays, Arctic is has finally been submitted to TestFlight and got the green light. For those of you who don’t know what Arctic is, it’s a Lemmy client for iOS 15+ built in pure Swift.

Arctic began as just a little side project for me. As an avid Apollo user I was missing a feature rich and familiar client for IOS. So I started working on Arctic. My primary goal with the project has been creating a native UI appearance, and content presentation, focusing on putting the important content directly in the feed without feeling cluttered. I’m finally at a point where I feel Arctic is stable enough, and houses enough features to go forward with beta testing.

I’m currently testing out Reimplementing the UI in SwiftUI as it allows for quicker iteration, and less boilerplate code. Though I’m not sure about performance yet. SwiftUI seems to be lacking in certain areas such as prefetching APIs for heavy feeds etc. you can find an experimental post feed in settings that uses SwiftUI.

As of right now, I have not set up an issue tracker for Arctic. The reason for this is that I don’t know for sure if I will be Open Sourcing the project yet. I’d like to keep the issues/project in the same repository, and I’m unable to have a private repo with public issues. I’ll be deciding what route I would like to take over the next week or so.

While on the subject of open source, I’d like to mention that Arctic does not collect any information from users devices. The only user specific information that is stored is the Lemmy account JWT Auth token for communication with the Lemmy api. Absolutely no personal information is collected, or leaves your device. Currently I have no plans to implement any analytics in Arctic, and if I ever do, it will be on an opt-in basis, and be completely anonymous only tracking information relevant to Arctic support.

Development

I feel the need to point out that I work a full time job, and am often busy outside of working. With that said Arctic development may be a bit slow compared to some of the other projects out there. I do however plan to release at leas one update every week for now. I will try to push out more frequently as my time permits, even if that means smaller hot-fix type releases. I do plan to support Arctic long term, as I’m already quite invested in the project and have really enjoyed working on it.

Anyways, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask questions, or offer feedback/suggestions . I’m quite busy most days, but I will do my best to respond as soon as possible.

Almost forgot the most important part, here is the link to Arctic TestFlight

Current Features

  • Submitting / Editing Posts
  • Submitting / Editing Comments
  • Voting on Posts / Comments
  • Blocking Communities / Users / Instances
  • Subscribing to Communities
  • Search (URLs, communities, comments, posts, users)
  • Rich link previews
  • Uploading images
  • Rich Markdown Editor
  • Community browser
  • Basic guest (anonymous) mode
  • Multiple accounts, and quick switcher
  • Integrated Media Viewer
  • Upload manager manage previous media uploads)
  • In-line YouTube videos (experimental, this seems to have broken with recent changes to the YouTube api)

Known Issues:

  • Some in-line links do not recognize taps, I’m looking into overhauling the Markdown rendering and may be switching to swift UI for this, as it is better suited for that task instead of UIKit
  • State Sync, The UI does not update in all cases to reflect changes such as voting on a post, and then viewing it in the post feed
  • Some media fails to load and is unhandled by the UI
  • Scrolling performance needs improvement
  • Long usernames/community names can overlap action buttons
  • Fast scrolling can result in user/community icons showing in the wrong cell
  • Videos do not display in image gallery previews
  • YouTube videos fail to load at times
  • No spoiler support at the moment
  • No in-line images Yet
  • Private Messages are not currently supported, they will be coming soon

Previews

Preview 1

Preview 2

Preview 3

1
AppStore Review Guidelines for NSFW content (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/lemmydev@lemm.ee
0 comments fedilink

I’m in the process of submitting my Lemmy client (Arctic) to TestFlight, and I had some concerns about NSFW options in my app.

As per section 1.2 User-Generated Content it states that NSFW content needs to be disabled by default, and can only be enabled through the website.

Apps with user-generated content or services that end up being used primarily for pornographic content, Chatroulette-style experiences, objectification of real people (e.g. “hot-or-not” voting), making physical threats, or bullying do not belong on the App Store and may be removed without notice. If your app includes user-generated content from a web-based service, it may display incidental mature “NSFW” content, provided that the content is hidden by default and only displayed when the user turns it on via your website.

Does this mean that I am not aloud to include any options in my apps interface regarding NSFW content, eg: Blur / Hide NSFW Content, Even if the content is hidden by default?

Any pointers here would be useful. I do see that other Lemmy clients are including options within apps and have not had any issues so far, but the policy seems to indicate this is not allowed.

1
Update on Arctic development (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/arctic@lemmy.world
0 comments fedilink

I just wanted to post a little update on Arctic’ development. I’m a little bit behind on my original release target. I moved to a new house last week, and have been busy with the logistics of that. I also encountered some performance issues with Arctic that took some time to resolve.

Arctic is finally reaching my original MVP (minimum viable product) goals and should be able to push the project to TestFlight this week. I have a couple of usability features I’d like to polish up/add before releasing. To name a few:

  • Improve Markdown editor for comments and posts (currently writing this from Arctic, and the editor is lacking polish)
  • Improve performance around media playback for video types (mov, mp4, hsl, etc)
  • Implement better error handling to notify the user if something does not succeed
  • Add support for spoilers

As of right now Arctic has a a fairly full feature set for the initial release. To name a few off the top of my head:

  • Subscription Feed
  • Post Feed
  • Post View
  • Inbox (Comments, Replies, Mentions, Messages)
  • Search (Posts, Comments, Communities, Users)
  • Submitting/Editing Comments
  • Submitting/Editing Posts
  • View Community Sidebars
  • (Un)Subscribe, (Un)Block, (Un)Hide Communities and Users
  • Options for making posts as read
  • Supports dynamic type for respecting system font size settings NSFW blurring/filtering
  • Basic support for handling lemmy URLs in app (WIP)

There is quite a bit more to mention, and I will try and compile a complete feature/issue list before releasing.

In the interest of submitting this post before my going back to work (I’m currently on my lunch break) I will wrap this up here. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions/suggestions. I will also try and upload more screenshots of Arctic before releasing.

Also, Arctic is still in need of a proper icon. I whipped one up in Sketch, and it’s rather pitiful.

1
This is another test post from Arctic (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by CreatureSurvive@lemmy.world to c/foo_test@lemmy.ca
0 comments fedilink

Lorem ipsum dolor sit er elit lamet, consectetaur cillium adipisicing pecu, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Nam liber te conscient to factor tum poen legum odioque civiuda.

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