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.

The hacker theme looks so amazing. Thank you so much. Let me know if there is a link to donate. Would be more than happy to do so

Issues with opening communities within the community tab. No action happens when clicking on a community

The overlay is a bit confusing at the bottom of a thread and it’s hard to reach the upvote on the left. [edit] bean is still my go to Lemmy client btw. Can’t wait for the upcoming releases. You’re a blast, Steve. Thanks a lot.

Tap to collapse comments is no longer working for me.

I’ve just pushed a build that will hopefully stop any slow down or crashes when scrolling. It still needs some optimisation but please let me know if you encounter any issues.

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.

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.

I’m all registered for the notifications. Notify me if you dare!

steve! loving the app so far man. couple questions -

• will you be adding screen swipe to go forward at any point?

• i’m having the same bug that another user mentioned where my saved/bookmarked posts aren’t showing up; it sounds like you aren’t able to reproduce this at this time but just wanted to give a heads up!

thanks again and looking forward to watching this all continue to grow!

Minor feedback on theme:

Is there a way to use accent of the main color theme to color the upvote and reply swipes

Changelog August 3rd

Build 2023.08.03.23.29

• Added the ability to edit and delete comments.
• Added a new context menu on press and hold of comments.
• Added the ability to delete a post. Known issue: it’s not immediately removed from the list and requires a refresh.
• Added the ability to edit a post.
• Deleted or Removed posts are now filtered from post lists.
• Increased maximum font size on the slider to 140% from 120%.
• Increased the bottom padding on the comments list on themes with a translucent tab bar.
• Tapping a comment in the Inbox will scroll to that thread on the post view.
• Tapping a comment in the Inbox will highlight that comment in the post view.
• Removed email parsing from Markdown.
• Removed the “View Anyway” button on blocked communities as it doesn’t work.
• Added Markdown parsing for spoilers.
• Added a new button to the Markdown editor for writing spoilers.
• Added a new Headline post view.
• Added section for account settings in preparation for more there.
• Added video support.
• Added a welcome screen.

Best part about the new icon set: it feels like I’m giving a cat a little tiny high five with my thumb every time I open the app.