💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~sloum › geminilist › 002812.gmi captured on 2020-10-31 at 14:47:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Nathan Galt mailinglists at ngalt.com
Wed Sep 30 06:43:45 BST 2020
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On Sep 29, 2020, at 8:13 PM, Shadowfacts <me at shadowfacts.net> wrote:
Hey all,
I’ve been working on a native Gemini browser app for iOS and macOS called Rocketeer for a little while now, and I decided to finally release a public alpha for the iOS version.
It’s written entirely from scratch with no dependencies aside from the OS, so it’s very lightweight. The feature set is pretty slim right now, but I wanted to have something out there while I continue working on it. It of course makes Gemini requests and renders text/gemini documents. Rocketeer also registers itself as a gemini:// protocol handler, so links tapped in other apps will open it.
There are a few screenshots here:
https://social.shadowfacts.net/media/28bfba91-b609-4433-ba26-36f40fd793eb/Rocketeer.png
And you can try the app by joining the beta through TestFlight:
https://testflight.apple.com/join/LAs1URxM
If anyone has any issues, suggestions, or other feedback, please let me know! You can of course email me at this address, and I’m also on the fediverse as @shadowfacts at social.shadowfacts.net.
Oh, wow. This is _great_. Dark mode right out of the gate? Be still, my beating heart.
Requests, in no particular order:
- The link-color/background color contrast is a little low in dark mode. I generally don’t have issues with contrast, but link text is a bit dark to read easily. Could you make the link text a bit lighter?
- Add titles to the buttons. Right now, when I turn on Voice Control (“hey Siri, turn on Voice Control”) and say “show names” the buttons on the bottom have names like “Arrow.clockwise”. Could these be changed to “Back”, “Forward, “Reload”, “Share”, and “Settings” (what both Overcast and PCalc use)?
(I cannot wait to browse Geminispace when my hands are coated in partially-mixed hamburger meat)
- swipe-from-edge behavior to go back and forward
- Consider having a minimum 44-point height for links (this may be ugly and/or a lot of work to not be ugly). While almost all links are two rows high on my 1st-generation iPhone SE, most links are only one line on my 10.5″ iPad when it’s in landscape mode. It’s kind of tough to aim for a single line on, say, CAPCOM when any given link has two close-by neighbors. For one way to do this sort of thing, have a look at the screenshot associated with “The Best Comments Experience” on https://apolloapp.io/ — the currently-being-swiped comment is basically all one link, but there’s a nice, easy-to-hit button for it. (For Gemini, having the link _be_ that minimum-height button would probably be best, since we don’t have to worry about a bunch of consecutive words in a sentence being separate links.)
- I visited <gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/adiabatic/tracker.webp?on=/> and the error message got ellipsis-truncated, not wrapped. I had to rotate my phone 90° to read the entire message. (I’m not sure _why_ it failed, but WebP is the new kid on the block when it comes to WebKit support. I blame its newness.)
- Fix the share-button crash that seems to happen only on my iPad (Apple should get those crash reports to you; if not, ping me and I’ll see if I can dig them out of my iPad the old-fashioned way).
And in the “_much_ less important requests” pile…
- Aim assist (that’s what console FPS players call it, at least; Apple seems to call it “Magnetism") doesn’t seem to work for trackpad cursors. That is, the proxy fingertip won’t snap to the outline of the bottom-bar buttons like it will for Safari’s buttons. You can (kinda) see this effect on https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211008 on the second screenshot, er, screenmovie.
Apparently only a handful of buttons get this feature for free; in Overcast’s UI, only the buttons on the left half of the screen (pick-a-playlist and pick-an-episode-in-a-playlist) have auto-aim enabled.
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https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2020/10640/ I’m not sure I’d even bother for myself, but if you’re bored…
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Once again, Rocketeer is absolutely wonderful. Thank you again for making it.