General usability (of this forum) with SFOS browser

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It seems the next Sailfish release (or the one after that) will at least have Gecko 52 instead of 45, but considering Firefox 78 (ESR) was just released, that’s a looong way to go. Please, hire more people to work on updating the browser engine. It’s become almost impossible to browse any kind of website with these long outdated versions of Gecko…

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I get you point, but IMO an app could implement a native style with our loved Silica-components. This would integrate nicely in the whole system as long as we don’t have web apps. Additionally one could have cool features like multiple forums with one app…

Either you don’t get my point, or more likely… I don’t get your point.
I’m genuinely curious, what makes it better being an app? What integration do you need? As an app developer myself i sure wouldn’t like to re-implement a web page just for the looks. The maintenance need makes me feel uneasy just thinking about it. The “cool feature” of multiple forums comes standard in any web browser.

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“The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps. And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need!”

-Steve Jobs, 2007

The mobile application development world has come full circle. When Steve Jobs took the stage at the Apple 2007 WWDC, he announced that the iPhone would not need native apps because everything could be written for Javascript/HTML. Developers were not happy. Fast forward 11 or 12 years, and now app developers are perfectly content to write “apps” for mobile platforms that are little more than JS/HTML.

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From another topic:


Since few people mentioned a native client in this thread and the speed this forum loads on jolla C is atrocious (and no way to use flatpak on these older devices)… I’ve changed a couple of URLs in my old app and now it seems to somewhat work with this forum:
https://openrepos.net/content/szopin/sfos-forum-viewer
probably very buggy, but the source is available (https://github.com/szopin/harbour-sfos-forum-viewer) so hopefully can be fixed

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My problem is less the web page itself, but the way I can use it with SF. I need 1 swipe and 4 clicks (swipe to app grid, open Browser, wait a long time until it opens, burger menu, new tab, bookmark) to open a web page I bookmarked in the browser. Next I have to enter my credentials, which is always a pain on mobile, because I am using a KeePass-password safe and have to copy username and password one by one every time the login is forgotten. But this is complaining on a high comfort level for sure.
All this does not really require a native app, more a good-working web browser and web apps.
So maybe the only - but very weak - argument is, that the design would better match with the rest of the system. But I am here with you - a re-implementation (with the ongoing work it produces) is not really worth it.

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Well that didn’t take long :smiley: Could we have it in Harbour as well?

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Sure, there’s one issue I want to fix today and will submit it (outside of the ugly as hell icon, but hoping some sailors can help with this)

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Submitted 0.3 to QA, not fully tested as the forum seems to have some form of rate limiting and started hitting this error recently:

errors
0 “You’ve performed this action too many times, please try again later.”

When it happens the threads view is stuck on ‘Loading…’ and it seems to happen on both the emulator (landline) and on phone with mobile connection at the same time, so it’s not an IP ban? Probably more users affected, hard to tell :confused: Might need to add some kind of error handling in a future version
edit: seems to be related to using ?print=true in the URL so as to pull all posts at the same time and also related to being logged in or out, this URL works in browser where I’m logged in: First comment on the new Sailfish OS Forum but in new private window throws the abovementioned error

edit: different way of pulling more posts implemented in 0.4, shouldn’t cause issues as it mimics how browsers pull extra content

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And another one:
when trying to copy a link from a post into the clipboard for further usage!
This is just not possible with SFOS browser due to the forum will automatically open a text box and Sailfish is 7y later still not able to select/copy text from within a text box in the browser.

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The bookmark icon of the page does not show (black logo, transparent background on dark).

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link text not to copy to clipboard

Due to the forum restriction (posts only editable within a day!) I do need to answer my own post with a new post:
workaround to get the linkt text to the clipboard is just to press the e-mail icon , let the app start and select/copy from the mail draft, discard the new mail, close mail app and you have it.
Oomph…

Yes, you can see it only when using light/white themes.

Not really serious but:
Another tiny sign that no one of the (responsible) sailors uses their outdated browser (i.e. own product)? :no_mouth:

… which is the right thing to do. Then anybody who has already read your post will see the workround.

Of course, doing both would be best.

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I agree that we disagree here. :smiley:

Yes, that is right. But imagine I write nonsense in the first post and would like to correct it? Everybody not reading to the end would then follow a ‘devel-su rm -fr /’ :wink:

But then I would like to link to the corrected post in first post as well. And for that I would need to edit it.Just found that this is done automatically by this forum SW. One point for you.

Furthermore we will then get such posting/quoting/recurring stuff like above :upside_down_face:

And editing and correcting typos would not be possible (I do hate typos). Even months later I like to correct them…

And, this my fouth edit or so, what I really really hate when we do have a hundreds posts long thread / topic discussing a bug/enhancement/whatever that the solution is buried somewhere in the middle! But I feel like I said this already?

when trying to copy a link from a post into the clipboard for further usage

Did I misunderstand your problem with copying links? If I press&hold a link on sailfish browser, I can choose whether to open it in a new tab, copy the link to clipboard …

Just copied this link First comment on the new Sailfish OS Forum from szopin’s post above.

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@hsjpekka
Ah, language barrier.
I meant the link of a post itself using the link button just beside the heart at the bottom.

link of a post

And again another example why I like posts editable. There is no chance now to correct a small typo / language quirk for other users to understand it better.
Why should we leave obviously ‘wrong’ answers stay wrong and not correct them? Do you (@all and discourse guys) really think it is good that way and we just have (always) to read to the end to get an updated answer in another new post?l?

@peterleinchen I agree with you that the usability of the forum should be better with the sailfish browser. Virtual keyboard hides the text box, for example. An app would be great.

On the other hand, together.jolla.com wasn’t very handy either. But I liked the distinction between comments and answers. And one was able to edit his posts. Btw. just earned an Editor badge. At the end of the description:
“Edit to make your posts even better!”

But back to the link-problem: How about tapping at the browsers address bar, and when it expands to show the favourites, reselect the address (click ones to clear the selection, and press&hold to reselect). Reselecting copies the address to the clipboard. Or press the two circles below a post on the forum.

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