Testing for new Messages App?

[gfwilliams]

I've just been playing around with a new message ui for displaying messages.

The old gui displayed a fullscreen message, and you could tap it to get a scroller:

And I think @thyttan suggested this but I couldn't find an implementation - I made some changes that go straight to displaying the message in a scroller so if the message is too big you can swipe up/down immediately:

Widgets are hidden, but swipe left/right markers are still shown at the bottom. Swipe up/down for next/prev message works too (as long as you're at the top/bottom of the current message).

I think it works quite well, however:

• Not tested on Bangle.js 1
• Widgets are hidden, so you can't see if the screen is locked! (I guess I could add a new lock widget in the bottom?)
• I still need to do work on the scroller with different font sizes (it assumes a 25px line spacing, which'll be wrong for the biggest/smallest fonts)

But it'd be great if some of you could give it a go and let me know what you think. You can go to my app loader at:

https://gfwilliams.github.io/BangleApps/?id=messagegui

And install from there - and to go back you can just go back to the normal app loader and install that one

[thyttan]

Interesting, will try!

And I think @thyttan suggested this but I couldn't find an implementation

My effort here below, I closed the PR since I felt there were more to fix than I cared to work on for now :)
espruino/BangleApps#3685

[thyttan]

I'll push my version to my app loader again in a bit.

[thyttan]

I merged it into my app loader again now. Won't link directly to it here so I don't confuse it with @gfwilliams's version. But it's linked in the closed PR i referenced above.

[gfwilliams]

Thanks! Right, I think I see what your plan is there - so the messages are displayed in one scroller and you can just keep scrolling through them?

That's very cool, but also I can see quite a big change to get right (and possibly a bit divisive for some people?).

Really makes me wish I'd split up music/navigation into separate apps/libraries as at least then we could have had separate apps for this without duplicating a bunch of work (I guess we still could do that?)

[thyttan]

[...] so the messages are displayed in one scroller and you can just keep scrolling through them?

That's very cool, but also I can see quite a big change to get right (and possibly a bit divisive for some people?).

Yes 👍 But my implementation made the scroller a bit choppy while scrolling. So I was actually thinking of making it like you have, loading one message at a time but add swipes for navigation at top/bottom 👌

Really makes me wish I'd split up music/navigation into separate apps/libraries as at least then we could have had separate apps for this without duplicating a bunch of work (I guess we still could do that?)

Yes I also lean towards wanting the more modular approach. But maybe lets not change that now?

Overall I like your version here better than mine 👌🙏

[gfwilliams]

Thanks! I'm sure someone will complain it's changed, but I think on the whole it's going to be a big improvement over the current version without being jarringly different

But maybe lets not change that now?

Yes - definitely!

[thyttan]

Hm - I wonder if your app loader points to the branch with these changes on, @gfwilliams? 🤔

[gfwilliams]

Sorry, my bad. I think it should be there now if you refresh - 0.86

[thyttan]

Yes now it worked! 🙂

[thyttan]

@bobrippling you may want to try this? I think you're not so often here on the forum (?) so I thought I'd tag you 🙂

[bobrippling]

Yeah I'll give it a test - I'll be a week or so, currently not at a PC!

[thyttan]

My feedback as a thread.

[gfwilliams]

Just updated (same version no., though). I feel like it's a decent improvement now, and not having to mess with the widgets makes it a bit less hacky.

It works on Bangle.js 1 too - it's a little hacky there because each item in the scroller is highlighted with a while box, but I think it's still an improvement over the old arrangement

[thyttan]

When swiping between messages we should probably skip over e.g. music entries? I think I get stuck on them and can't swipe up/down from that screen to go to other messages.

[gfwilliams]

Thanks, yes, that's a good point (same with nav?). Although I guess that's behaviour left over from before as well.

Or can you think of any reason we couldn't make music/navigation change with swipes too?

[thyttan]

same with nav?

I would guess so but didn't test that yet.

Or can you think of any reason we couldn't make music/navigation change with swipes too?

For music at least - no, that should work as well!

Navigation I'm not too familiar with the implementation and what would work good or not.

[gfwilliams]

Ok, just updated - you can now swipe from nav/music too. I haven't bumped the version number but if you refresh and reinstall that should be sorted now

[kingcharles1666]

Please keep the old behavior as an option. I use the clock widget to tell me the time when a message is in the screen. So I can still see the time while I wait to deal with the message.

[gfwilliams]

Would just having an option to keep widgets shown work for you?

[kingcharles1666]

Yes, absolutely

[gfwilliams]

I've just merged this in to the development app loader: https://espruino.github.io/BangleApps

I've been using this in my daily watch for a while and it seems like a big improvement.

Not perfect if you have the International font installed (as it uses that by default for everything) but still

[WhelanB]

I really like the new scroller behaviour, but spotted one small issue around message rendering while testing something unrelated:

When opening this message from the message list, it renders as follows:
GB({"t":"notify","id":1575479860,"src":"Whatsapp","title":"A Name","body":"This is an example of a really short message"})

if I swipe down to another message with a larger font in the body, for example:
GB({"t":"notify","id":1575479861,"src":"Whatsapp","title":"A Name","body":"This is an example of a short message"})

when I swipe back up to the original message, (1575479860), it now renders differently, using the font from the previous message(?) instead of the original smaller font, requiring scrolling:

[gfwilliams]

Thanks for those lines to reproduce it!

Just fixed I hope - I think it was whether it thought it had widgets or not (which changes the amount of space it thinks it has for the body text)