Be more selective about features requests
Hi,
I already posted a 4/5 comment on Google Play, and I want to share my opinion on your app :
It seems that, since a few months, a few features have been added (from user requests, I guess), and sometimes it feels a little weird :
Categories could be a nice idea, but I want to keep a clean and simple home screen.
Removing every categories in the options didn't help.
The app still displays a useless spinner with two identical items ("all categories" & "no categories").I don't need playlists. And even if I don't, I can sometimes see an automatic playlist created against my will.
When I leave a podcast to launch another one, the previous one is resumed at the end...
It seems to be a nice touch, on the first sight, but if I felt asleep during a listening, twice, and it makes me lose every timestamp on every paused podcast.
Worse, the second time, it made me lose a lot of downloaded episodes with the "auto-delete at the end" option.On the last update, you triggered a popup on every screen.
Even if it cames with good intentions, seeing 5 popups in 15 seconds is quite intrusive, and the 2 last ones cannot be well received.
It's nice of you, but kind of clumsy.Since the v2, you added an "options" button in the action bar, a side-menu, and additionnal buttons on the bottom of your side-menu that offers pretty much the same functionnalities that the still-accessible actionbar...
It seems that it could be simplified.With the v2, it is sometimes impossible to relaunch the player with the notification.
The player notification is displayed, and clicking on the play button makes it dissapearing.
This is a commonly reproductible bug in the new versions that I never saw last year.
My goal is not to prevent you to do anymore development, but I want to warm you about a problem in many growing apps :
It's way more easy to build a massive labyrintic system full of unknown features than building a simple app that does just what you need.
and I want to make you consider that sometimes better is the enemy of good.
But let me get this clear : I don't want to be disrespectful about your work, actually.
I love what you did, and I even bought the premium package (which is something that I don't do easily, actually)
I just was kind of annoyed by some of the new features that doesn't seems indispensable to me, and by the bugs that came along.
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Adrien commented
@Xavier : I saw that ! That's awesome.
This is nothing big, but it feels way better.
Or maybe I just have OCD... -
Anonymous commented
I think that to get ready for version 3.0 that it would be a good idea to stop adding more features and focus on 'papercuts,' small issues, small fixes, cleaning up the app menus and app layout to get a better more focused app.
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BTW I fixed the grid layout and the settings/display screen in the latest version currently rolling out
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Adrien commented
Sorry, I uploaded a wrong link :
http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/394873device20140327121147.pngAdding a little left/right/top padding (the same size then between cells) on the sides of the GridView would probably make it a more conventional card-mode UI.
At least, if you don't want an additionnal padding at all on the borders, the weird grey 1px on the right (between the right cell and the screen border) seems inappropriate. -
Initially I was going to call this Tag then I changed my mind and renamed everything as category.
Obviously I missed one entry ;)Regarding the padding issue I don't see where it's missing.
I will add a wizard to simplify the original setup but didn't get the time to do it for now.
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Adrien commented
Thanks for your feddback's feedback.
I guess I bumped into some minor UI details...In the french menu, you talk about "Categories" everywhere, but the option to disable it is named "Tag" in the options. I looked for this disable option in the "Categories" submenu.
You can restart the app through Notifications actually, if it was killed by the system. I thought it was already the case on older versions, maybe I just didn't see it. That would be a nice fix.
I've got nothing to blame about playlist, actually. This was just the "I don't use it but it happens sometimes" effect. Setting a timer on every listening to avoid it is way too forgetable.
It's something that I didn't have to do on earlier versions, and somehow that should be done with newers...The GridView display is great, by the way.
Loved the idea : simplier/visual interface, this is the kind of improvements undeniabely in the right way. Simplifyed, prettier, better.
Minor fix, maybe : it misses some top and left paddings on Nexus 4, and have a weird 1px right padding :
http://www.hostingpics.net/thumbs/15/49/59/mini_154959device20140327121147.pngYou already got a few comments on Google Play bitching about simplicity, I just wanted to tell you my impressions that goes in the same way, with a developer's voice.
But again, your app is great.
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Thanks a lot for your feedback.
As explained in the changelog you just have to go into settings/display to disable the category filtering.
Playlist feature is the core feature of any podcast/player app. This is the most used feature of the app and by far.
You have a timer feature to avoid the falling asleep issue. Just tell the app to stop at the end if the current episode or after X minutes and this won't happen again.The popups are only displayed first time you open a new screen then that's it. As a matter of fact I didn't get any more questions regarding the information explained in those popups since the last version. The number of 1 star review also dropped a lot so I'm guessing it's serving it's purposed. I could have limited it to new install but I thought a lit if existing users wheren't aware of all those points.
The sliding menu is available in every screen which means that you can open the settings, refresh your feed, add a podcast, switch to the playlist... From anywhere in your app. The only duplicated function is the + button which is there so new users can find it more easily
When the player notification disappears it means that android killed the app. Any app can be killed by Android when it needs to free some resources. In that case notifications are not cleared.