Bean

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tap to collapse comments is no longer working for me.

Changelog August 6th

Build 2023.08.06.22.41

• Added the ability to sort comments.
• Added a default comment sort to the Filtering settings.
• New theme: Midnight
• New theme: Forest
• New theme: Hacker
• New font: Futura
• New font: Menlo
• Fixed correct font styles not loading in the markdown editor.
• Fixed http:// and https:// links automatically being detected.
• Updated dependencies including SDWebImage. Should solve some crashing images with WebP and SVG parsing.
• Stopped reloading Inbox on focus as it seemed to be causing some glitches. Will reassess later.

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Push notifications are now also functioning as expected. Please test and let me know if you encounter issues.

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

Since the last update, communities and comments haven’t been loading quite right. Always possible that it’s a .world problem, but I’m using Voyager right now without any apparent issue. I’ll try again in a couple hours and see if there are still issues.

More GIF changes

Build 2023.08.07.11.30

• Added a badge to the card view to show that an image is a GIF.
• GIFs are now played in a WebKit view. The transition when opening is glitchy so will be improved soon but… No crashing! (famous last words?)

Changelog: August 1st

Build 2023.08.01.01.14

• Added the ability to create "groups" on the Communities tab. This is a WIP and you cannot delete or edit yet. I'm also open to a better name for this feature!
• Pushed the creation of SDAnimatedImage to a background thread to alleviate some of the UI blocking that was causing animations to stutter. I'm still not 100% happy with this and will be revisiting in the future.

Seems like the line spacing is a bit out of whack, definitely not as condensed as it should be (especially obvious in comments).

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 😄

Changes July 27th

build 2023.07.27.16.16

• Added the ability to select a community from the post composer.
• Added a FAB to the home screen to create a post.
• Added the ability to mark a post as NSFW.
• Added loading indicator when creating a post or comment.
• Improved the quality of images uploaded. May need to reassess if servers deem them too large.
• Wrapped the Markdown accessories in a scrollview for smaller devices and future buttons.
• Shrunk the link preview if there’s no image found.
• Removed the preview from the comment composer (it may come back, I’m still deciding if I like it or not).
• Turned the fullscreen swipe off by default. I don’t like that it was changing the iOS animations due to the pan gesture handler, but the option still remains.

Any feedback on the post composer is welcomed

Changelog: July 30th

Build 2023.07.30.22.45

Smaller update than anticipated this weekend because it was pride 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ and I was out celebrating with friends ❤️

This one is mainly bug fixes but there is a big change to how I'm handling multiple accounts. States are now persisted when accounts are changed. This means if you have a certain post open, switch accounts to browse on another instance, and then switch back — it will still be right where you left it.

• Added state persistence between account switches.
• Added press and hold on the account tab to open the account switcher.
• Removed background on the card and post footer.
• Removed background from featured posts on the single post view.
• Featured post backgrounds are now based on the accent colour.
• Made the entire card view tappable, not just the title.
• Tidied up the card and single post views.
• Fixed issues with bookmarking.
• Fixed issues with sharing links.
• Fixed issues with overlapping content in the post composer.
• Changed search on the communities selector in the composer.
• Fixed a visual glitch between the composer and community selector.
• Keyboard can now be dismissed in the composer community selection screen.
• Fixed an issue with scroll to top offsets.
• Added a link to posts on the Inbox and profile comments views. Still a WIP.
• Content of comments is now hidden if removed by a moderator or deleted by author.
• Added a link to the community on the Inbox and user profile comments.
• Markdown editor is now reset when creating a post or comment.

In the last update, I’m no longer able to pin/unpin communities. I added a lifetime subscription.