The latest version is absolutely terrible. Why fix what is not broken?
As @hans already stated multiple times, we are open to accept merge requests to either add an option for showing the apps in a list instead of a grid or to maintain a light version of F-Droid based on the last version with the old UI.
Yeah, mark me as another downgrader (and you didn’t make it easy with the “unknown error” thing preventing you from downgrading through F-Droid directly).
1.0 (and the other post-.102 versions I was somehow unaware of until today?) is a chaotic mess of an interface from minor things like the text on the bottom buttons being too close to the icons, to the random tile sizes everyone’s mentiomed, to the two-lines-of-text-on-an-empty-page update page, to the New page being spammed with minor updates to previously-rejected apps, to nothing being greyed out in night mode, to the search function with nothing entered being the only place with a list, unusably long as it is (shouldn’t that be a blank page?), to still no relevance sorting being applied to searches such that f-droid is pages down in an “f-droid” search,…
Android prevents downgrading. Also, apps use SQL databases, so someone would have to write specific downgrade rules for that to work. Just uninstall and reinstall.
The list of apps to update is not properly refreshed. See those screenshots as a detailed example with Davdroid.
Thanks.
F-Droid app 1.1-alpha0.
That comic is funny, but also not really applicable to free software. Y’all are free to maintain the old UI. The code is sitting there ready for anyone to maintain it. All the current fdroid devs are willing to help with that project, but none of us are interested in doing it. Not a developer? Organize a funding drive to pay someone to do it.
Is changing the UI totally off the table in current development?
I’ve just tried the most recent alpha, it’s just as unusable as the 1.0 release and so I downgraded straight away, which is a pity as the underlying system seems a lot faster than the old versions. At the moment downgrading is not a problem, at some point we’d assume that .102.x is going to stop working though.
So is there any appetite from any developers to add more options around the UI or is it worth bearing in the back of the mind that f-droid is not for the long haul?
And yes, I’m well aware the old code is there for the taking, I am not a developer of any kind and what I do volunteer on takes well and truly enough of my time. I’m sure that kind of situation applies to many of the people with issues with the new UI. We also have to acknowledge that maintaining dead-end code is probably not the most attractive job for someone to volunteer for, it would be much better if there were options in the current version around the UI.
The proper way to manage different flavors of UI is via forks. As is makes sense, we can split out more and more of the core into libs that can be shared among different forks. Adding options to make the current UI behave sometimes like the old UI is just a recipe for making the code harder to work on.
Sure, somethings a whole fork is needed. But I think what many people are complaining about is the grid format introduced in the new versions. @hans As you are more inside client development: Do you think a option to choose between grid or list format is doable in the official version?
I don’t think people want all the old version back. From what I’ve read the mostly complained thing is the grid and that installed apps are hidden now. Do we already have issues for this?
As I said to Hans, maybe I can do a simple layout adaptation (it’s in the code I will no add other layout files or change them, it’s already managed, I just give other parameters). When I tried to change the icon size (quality problem), I saw that it was easy to produce a layout of 1 column with icon of small size. I think a lot of user just want that. A simple list, not a grid. If we add a parameter in the settings, they can activate the actual view or the “simple view”.
This will not change the complexity of the code or slow the performance…
Can I try it Hans?
The list view already exists in the Search View. Options switching how views work just lead to a confusing and complicated user experience. The Latest view is for browsing. We should focus our improvements on making all that more apparent.
Hans,are you familar with the term GIGO (Garbage In,Garbage Out) because that’s what people are saying the problem with the new interface really is,just like it is with the Gnome3 interface.
New UI is different, after several weeks you will love it.
All applications don’t have to be a flat list without taste.
If you are developers, join us and we will have more ideas and will adapt F-Droid faster.
Keep you bad taste on your OWN computers and devices dude. Don’t inflict it onto OTHER people’s computers and devices.
You might like the new UI or not, but your sense of entitlement is astonishing. In what ways have you contributed to f-droid to be able to insult a project delivering a great service for free and demand how the developers have to act?
Nobody forces you to become “inflicted” with f-droid’s UI, you likely installed it yourself…
sshh…
That having said, I also prefer the old UI, but have to come to terms with the new one.
New UI makes sense on large screens (tablets and TV).
Yes, F-Droid could be ported to Android TV, I made some tests.
I think putting “installed programs” in “updates”, and just sorting the list after updated most recently makes sense.
If dorks like you don’t like hearing that you’ve come up with a
totally lame interface for a sofware package that serves absolutely no
useful purpose,and gets in the way more than it helps and basically
kills the device it’s installed on if it’s not the latest overpriced
google or apple piece of shit hardware on the market then don’t ask
people what they think about it.