Further home screen improvements

[wojtek]

@Listener

(It also works from the InBox, home page, and probably some other places too.)

Interestingly enough, I almost exclusively use queue view and sometimes individual podcast view to add more items to… the queue

But circling back to the original issue - I still don’t understand exactly why the button was removed… it wasn’t problematic or in the way if other stuff?

[Listener]

@wojtek

why the button was removed

There were actually some passionate discussions about that when the button was moved to the menu. The rationale at the time was that it was making room for something else, though I don’t remember if anything specific was [going to be] added.

[wojtek]

@Listener

The rationale at the time was that it was making room for something else, though I don’t remember if anything specific was [going to be] added.

Hmm… I do see search icon (which I actually never-ever used) and that’s it… I could understand “cleaner interface” but on the other hand - hiding everything harms functionality IMHO…

(do you have any links? I tried to search for “update button” and this is the only relevant topic returned)

[loucasal]

@wojtek

(do you have any links? I tried to search for “update button” and this is the only relevant topic returned)

See this lengthy discussion: Changed refresh

[wojtek]

@loucasal

See this lengthy discussion: Changed refresh

I’ll go over it thoug… sadly, it’s closed

[Listener]

This thread is still open

Bring Back the refresh button

By now I’m sure everyone is aware removing the refresh button has created a bit of drama. I make three podcasts. Two of which are about Linux and open source software. I’ve been using and recommending Antennapod for years. I’ve even got a tutorial on one of my websites on how to get it installed and add an RSS feed. This is the first time I’ve ever had to consider using another player. I can also no longer recommend people use the app. Having the functionality hidden in an overflow menu is not a…

[Listener]

@wojtek

I still don’t understand exactly why the button was removed… it wasn’t problematic or in the way if other stuff?

I checked some of the other message threads on this (you can search on “refresh button”) and confirmed the reason it was removed:

@ByteHamster

The point of the change was to make space for new buttons

[loucasal]

@wojtek

I’ll go over it thoug… sadly, it’s closed

The point was: it’s been debated to death. Reasons were provided. Ample feedback was given about the decision. Let’s move on and focus on contributing.

[wojtek]

@ByteHamster

The point of the change was to make space for new buttons

I was checking the codebase (idea was to make it configurable :D) and I did found out that for the buttons in the toolbar it’s possible to configure them with custom:showAsAction="ifRoom" so if there is no space there won’t be displayed. Was that ever explored? I think that would fit the bill of “add new buttons” and people with bigger screens / when there are no said new buttons would still be able to enjoy the refresh button being visible.

@loucasal

Let’s move on and focus on contributing .

Would a PR with such configuration (conditionally visible refresh button) be OK?

[Listener]

@wojtek

I think that would fit the bill of “add new buttons” and people with bigger screens

I’m intrigued by this idea. When I switched from an older phone (with a smaller, lower resolution screen) to the latest model (with a larger, higher resolution screen) I saw how some apps changed. Some took full advantage of the additional pixels and screen size, some looked the same, and some apps or parts of apps actually shrank relative to the larger screen.

I am not a developer, but it certainly seems like the “ifRoom” methodology has this in mind.

[ByteHamster]

Another reason for removing it is to make the app easier to use for new users because then they have fewer things on the screen. I’m convinced that the manual refresh is actually not needed at all for a vast majority of users because refreshing happens automatically in the background anyway. No need to press that button manually.

[wojtek]

@ByteHamster

I’m convinced that the manual refresh is actually not needed at all for a vast majority of users because refreshing happens automatically in the background anyway. No need to press that button manually.

I agree that certain use-cases my not fit the regular usage (like one I mentioned before about going through backlog). Another thing is actually using two apps (AntennaPod on mobile and Doughnut on laptop) that don’t synchronise hence to keep things more-or-less in sync once I listened to new episode that “just” poppeup and would like to mark it as listened on the other app and it’s not yet there I would have to manually refresh. Of course, I could make the refresh interval as short as possible (1h) but that would/could kinda impact the battery… and it still could not catch the update

[ByteHamster]

So you are using the full feed refresh to work around delays in the synchronization feature? Then maybe the synchronization feature should get tweaked instead?

[wojtek]

Hmm… in a way - yes. But save for a very short sync/update time I don’t see a way to go around it.

As I said - ideally having universal podcast usage synchronization (vide GitHub - OpenPodcastAPI/api-specs: Open Podcast API specifications) would be the best to keep everything nice and tidy. But! Even in this case, without a push from server and/or persistent connection (akin to IMAP IDLE) would still result in issue of needing manual refresh. Use case: I’m listening to a podcast on my computer, I have to leave in the middle of episode, I stop on computer, pick up my phone and… it’s not synchronised so I would have to force-synch (with OpenPodcastApi) to get up-to-date listening point.

In general, synchronising state in distributed system (which this basically is the case) is not trivial

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(I have only 23 episodes/30h to catch up so probably in a week this will become a non-issue for me… untill next life-event that will flood the backlog )