While we're at it, I love that you let me customize the settings via a config, but for the love of god make the default config the best it can possibly be
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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This. It should be the most sane configuration and fit most use cases and lead to an experience working out of the box.
I contribute to OS projects and work on one full time. EVERYBODY thinks that their obscure use case is the most common (not saying this is what you are doing).
We get users that are completely flabbergasted that our software doesn't offer some feature that is totally specific to their industry and has never been requested even once by anyone else previously. We'll show them our feature request form on our site where you can also view and upvote other requests, and point out that the feature they want has never been requested. They will literally come up with some bs excuse why that is and then insist that we get on it and build out this custom functionality that they need or else they're going to slander us on social media.
Your app doesn't integrate with "didLr"? OMG any decent app integrates with "didLr"!
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There's a real problem here with backwards compatibility. If you add an option for something, it makes sense to make the default match the functionality of old versions, even if it's not the best for general use cases. That way any tools built on top of it can safely update.
Ding ding ding!
That said, the solution is to set new defaults for new installations only and not change existing configs. Users lose their minds (rightfully so) if you modify their existing configs.
I prefer the simple, sane defaults that work for everyone with a heavily commented config file giving detailed information on what each value for each option does, personally. Like MPV's config file.
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Sometimes I'd settled for a simple description of what the tool even is. Sometimes the readme is just straight into compilation steps and I feel like we're rushing into something.
Foreplay is important!
🛠️ Building
To build the app install the gamete dependencies and run the following
make child
A lot of documentation is like that.
Its terrible when the software is called some random word that has nothing to do with the programs functionality
Me, developing a headless component library:
To be that dick, a headless component library is still meant to do something, show an example of it being used!
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Even for a CLI tool, there should be a real world example showing how it works and what the output looks like. Eg, for jq:
$ cat file.json
{"field: "value"}
$ jq '.field' file.json
"value"
And a few other examples.
Also please begin the Github page or whatever with a description of what the app is actually for or what it does. I know that sounds super obvious, but the number of times I've seen links that are like "I made this app from scratch for fun, let me know what you think!" and then you click through and the app is called Scrooblarr or something and it has no indication of what it actually does is... more than it should be.
Wait what? I thought the read me file was to put as little info as possible to prove how awesome anyone was who can use the program.
TODO
Including the documentation link, which only has incomplete getting started section
Getting Started
- Clone the repo
- Install dependencies
- Compile the project: TODO
- Copy the executable to /bin
- Add your app.json config to ~/.config/app*
* IMPORTANT. APP WILL NOT RUN WITHOUT THIS
Or at least a demo site if it's a web site or self hosted web based app 🥲
I wish there was a way to give more props to open-source repos that do this.
I already star the project. But I'd love to say "Thanks for making a demo page it really helped!"
As a user, I completely agree. People often make decisions in a few seconds, and you've done all this work developing an app. That little extra step will allow you to make a difference to more people!
As a developer of a Lemmy web UI, I've been thinking about adding screenshots to my README for weeks but still haven't done so 🙈
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Agree, I don't know what's so hard about a screenshot.
I imagine most single developer projects lack any design or UX so the screenshot would do little to encourage users to download.
I can only speak for myself and a handful of other people I know who are into FOSS, but for us we care more about it being functional than looking pretty. I just want to see what I'm getting into, a reference for what a successful install looks like, or just check to see if it's got the buttons I want on it.
Is it better for someone to download it, see it, and uninstall it immediately? I'm not sure how they are tracking metrics or if they are at all.
Also, installation instructions that don't assume you're already an expert.
100% agree! I always get so frustrated when there are no screenshots in the README.md or on the site.
On github you can even paste your screenshot right from the clipboard. Zero excuses for not having a screenshot.
Yup, if I don't see screenshots for a desktop applications, I don't bother since the developer clearly doesn't understand what they're doing. It's especially baffling when it's a WM/DE. It's really trivial effort too. If the devs don't get this basic point, it's going to reflect in their poorly designed UX/UI as well.
I think this ties in to the grander idea of: please provide information that is helpful on a nontechnical plane of thinking. It goes a very long way
README is usually a text file. While some platforms can now use markdown, that is nowhere near universal. So it might be better to ask for screenshots to be put on the website / wiki.
GitHub and GitLab both support inserting images into your README.md. Here's the syntax:
Not just a text file, a markdown file. And markdown has supported images since forever
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There's an awful lot of comments in this post from people complaining that developers aren't making their projects attractive and user friendly enough, or the READMEs descriptive enough.
Can I just say, as a developer with some open source projects on github, I don't care; you're not my intended audience.
I find this unnecessarily derisive. There are good reasons for a UI or README not being user-friendly, the top-most one being (imo) that it is really, really hard to get right, takes a lot of time and doesn't primarily solve the problem the project was started for.
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TURE...👍
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