Episodes screen proposal

But you could have all new episodes added to the queue automatically. Then from there you can play, pause and/or swipe away. It lists also your paused episodes. I think that was ByteHamster’s proposal for your use-case. That way you can keep your workflow, but with the existing screens. You just always use the queue, and don’t need to switch screens either.

But i do want to scroll back, because maybe i want to listen to a episode from last week, i see the queue more like a playlist, no?

I don’t agree (with the default expectation). AntennaPod is more like a music player where you listen a playlist. Besides default setting is to download not to stream. I also think all podcasts players use queue(s) but I might be wrong! :sweat_smile:

I have no problem with “all episodes” screen to be enhanced with filter and swipe but I don’t think it’s how most users manage their episodes.
When thinking about it the one thing lacking is ability to quickly switch to episodes screen from queue in one tap. And it would be perfect if there was a visual cue when there is new episodes.
In your case it would need to be customizable so you could choose to quickly go to all episodes (and not new). If it was maybe queue could also be more useful to you?

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It is kind of a playlist. But if all episodes of all podcasts you’re subscribed to are added to it, you have what you need. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to scroll back and listen to an episode from last week? As long as you don’t swipe it away, it can still be there waiting for you.

I think of it less like a music player and more like a subscription feed like youtube - either way, i think, however great, the queue workflow shouldn’t be forced, the user should be able to learn und discover this functionality if he maybe uses AP like i do, and who knows, maybe some day i’ll use the queue, i’m just not there right know.

So i think removing tabs from Episodes and having the floating quickfilters at the bottom instead is a good idea, irrespective of the discussion above (enables customizable two directional swipe actions and is easier to use with one hand).

Actually having a seperate Inbox tab, might be a good idea to make it more distinct. I still would open a small infographic and a link to swipeactions settings on the very first swipe to introduce the queue workflow to help new users. :slight_smile:

Is there a way you could agree to a modified episodes screen or do you absolutly want to keep the tabs?
I would offer to do the Inbox screen as well then (as i basically already have all the code for bidirectional swiping and so on).

I generally like it but I would not change so much at once. After just switching the new/history screen, we should probably wait at least half a year, so users can adapt to the change. Doing too many changes at once will probably lead to annoyed users. The list is missing the “playback history” screen, by the way.

We could say the same about the “subscription feed”/“episodes screen” workflow :slight_smile:

Well you don’t have to, you can use the queue, what I’m saying either way it should be optional/complementary.

So i think removing tabs from Episodes and having the floating quickfilters at the bottom instead is a good idea, irrespective of the discussion above (enables customizable two directional swipe actions and is easier to use with one hand).

Is there a way you could agree to a modified episodes screen or do you absolutly want to keep the tabs?
I would offer to do the Inbox screen as well then (as i basically already have all the code for bidirectional swiping and so on).

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I find it much more comfortable for mobile phones to use the alternative that you propose in this pull request.

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For me it would be OK to move the tabs/filters to the bottom. @Matth78 has a valid concern, though:

Also, the relying on icons only should be done with caution, warns Google in its Material Design Guidelines:

With tabs you can’t have swipe actions.

IMHO filters are more easy to understand instead of multiple near identical tabs where its hard to even see the difference (at least for me).

Of course the icons should be chosen wisely (current ones are just placeholders), but as you know, a icon says more than a thousand words.

Also just using the filters quickly shows you what they do, especially for new users the empty description will provide useful information (like “No favorites - select an episode with a long tap and mark it as a favorite”).

@Matth78 the current Filter Dialog available in the toolbar is kept of course, so you can still filter. Would encourage you to just try the PR, the quickfilters do provide a very nice way to use the Episodes screen, especially with one hand :wink:

It just happens I tried this morning!
I felt it would be better to have filter accessible from top bar and not inside 3 dots menu. Yet I know it probably be vetoed because there is already 2 buttons.

About quick access with bottom icons what I feel not good is that it’s hovering above episodes and that make it harder to notice. I don’t mean it shouldn’t be, it’s just my reaction.
Being said why not using tab bar and instead of having tabs having your icons to filter?

All in all I don’t mind too much as long it can be quickly filtered (with one tap) to show only new episodes and be able to quickly switch between all / new / favorites.
When trying to filter with your bottom bar it didn’t work. I am not sure if I correctly interpreted icon meaning. :-/

What I am not keen on is having both an episodes entry and an inbox one. I know @keunes will rant :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: but right now I still don’t see inbox as anything else than episodes screen filtered.

So tabs are really hard to reach with one hand and to use tabs to filter (not to have different screens/pages) is breaking this design pattern, which will really be confusing people.

I think floating actions are familiar from the action button and I doubt that the quickfilters will be unnoticed long (that’s ok though, it does take some time for a new user to learn all the features in an app).

I think making inbox separate does make a lot of sense because it is a different workflow than Episodes screen and especially with the title “Inbox” I believe it will be a lot easier to understand what it is. (Also separate screens can be hidden in the settings :wink:

The quickfilters are: all / just unplayed / downloaded / favorites
So that should work, there are a few bugs with swiping that would need to be fixed, if this is to move forward.

Which is why I wanted a separate Inbox screen, to which ByteHamster now agreed :slight_smile:

The saying is about pictures, not abstract symbols :stuck_out_tongue:

:laughing: I agree that an extra screen feels a bit superfluous. But the fundamental problem is that tabs don’t combine with swipe actions, as @ueen already noticed. So either we get rid of tabs (having the floating buttons in the bottom, or don’t have tab swiping), or it’s an extra screen (which you could disable btw).

Can we make them more visible somehow, @ueen?

We could add some color or a border or something, but I’m not sure that it is really that hard to notice, as I said, it’s ok not to get all features right away and discover them step by step, it still serves its purpose, showing all episodes.

Sorry for the late reply. I am currently rather busy and have trouble keeping up with the recent large number of design change suggestions. I tried out your PR and I must say I’m still not happy with this whole thing. I hope that the following thoughts don’t sound too harsh.

  • Sooner or later, we need to switch to bottom navigation. That’s just what apps use now. Sidebars interfere with the touch gestures of Android 11+. Having filter and player and bottom navigation will make it hard to scroll.
  • Keeping paused episodes on top feels weird to me. What if you are no longer interested in an episode that still has its position somewhere in the middle? This is why there is the queue - it contains all episodes that you started but you can remove them from the queue if you are no longer interested - without (incorrectly) having to mark them as played. Your current design is basically trying to create a second queue screen and put it on top of the episodes list. Then, users will request a way to hide episodes from that “queue” part on top and we have to introduce yet another episode state that confuses users.
  • I don’t get why marking something as played should be such a prominent action (swipe and “mark all played” menu item). You haven’t played it, so why should it be marked as played? This sounds like you are trying to solve a problem with a strange workaround. If you look at the episodes of a subscription one year later, the ones you played should be distinguishable from the ones you didn’t play. With this prominent action, we encourage users to break the consistency of their database.
  • A swipe action that does not actually remove an item also feels strange to me. Swiping something out is a natural gesture for removing. This works on the “Inbox” screen, where both adding to the queue and marking as “not new” removes the items. On the episodes screen, you swipe out an episode (so it is no longer visible) but then it suddenly comes back with grey color.
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I hope we can think about the BottomNavigation, i think it absolutly makes no sense with the bottomsheet (never saw bottomsheet+bottomnavigation) Also there are to many screens, plus the podcast list is quite helpful.
Tbh it’s not that hard with gesture control (Android11+), you just have to pull a little bit longer/slower than you would for going back, or you use the hamburger menu.

As for the pausedOnTop: it’s optional, and you can change/deactivated swipe action, so the current behavior is what I use, but that’s not necessarily the default, or what everybody has to use.

Let me argue little bit why I think the current behavior is good and different than queue anyway:
This way is more a pick and choose approach, I never have more than 2-3 paused podcasts, if I do get tired of one I can swipe it away, that will move it back from the top to it’s chronological order, or (second filter: only unplayed) remove it from the list! This makes sense because I did play it I just done want to finish it (No need to introduce another state).
Other than that, I always have a chronological list that basically never gets empty.

I get what you’re saying though, I could make my workflow somehow work with inbox/queue, but I don’t want to switch screens and queue just feels strange to me (at least for now) but that’s ok isn’t it? There could be different ways to use the app and basically this PR only simplifies the EpisodesFragment, and adds more optional/customisable functionality, so I don’t really see the downside, it just offers a better UI/UX and choice, you don’t have to use it or can use it differently :slight_smile:

Other swipe actions can be download or add to favorites or and so on, and you choose the one you use the most (or you deactivate it if you don’t want it).

The same applies to the queue. Episodes are removed when you finish them, so if you don’t enable auto-download, it only contains the paused ones. I don’t really want to add two different implementations of the same use-case.

paused ones in queue

Yea but that’s another screen I have to go to, that’s:

  • (1) slide sidebar open, (2) select queue, (3) scroll down, (4) start episode instead of

  • app starts with episodes screen (1) select paused episode on top…

…or select new episode or old episode that’s in Episodes but not in Queue, so my workflow requires less taps/gestures, and less screens.

But I’m more than happy to disable pausedOnTop by default and 98% of users will never even notice/use it.

Other than that I think one list and filter approach is better to understand and it enables swipe actions (which you can disable if you want - I think best would be a choice presented at first swipe, of course you could use episodes without ever swiping).

In general I don’t get the strong opposition to different workflows, in the end I’m happy with just using my episodes screen myself, but I suspect that this would be an improvement and will benefit others as well, especially new users.

So I think I offered all the arguments I have, just let me know if you want the customisable swipeactions dialog and I’ll be happy to work on the PR again :slight_smile:

Then we should improve that instead of inventing a second way to manage paused episodes.

If I understood you correctly, you want to have a list of started episodes on the same screen as the list of all episodes. I think it might be possible to do something like this on the “home” screen. We could maybe add a setting that changes how many episodes it shows in each section. Then you can move the queue section to the top of the “home” screen, add an “episodes” section and disable all others. Conceptually, this can then be used exactly the same way as your pausedOnTop setting (but with the benefit that you don’t have to mark partially played episodes as fully played when you are not interested in them).