Mobile application developer.

  • 5 Posts
  • 28 Comments
Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: August 5th, 2024

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  • Normally, in commercial services, push notifications require support from the backend. The mechanism works approximately like this: the mobile app registers to a third-party provider such as Firebase Cloud Messaging (on Android) and APNS (on Apple Push Notification System) and obtains a device token, it then makes a network call to the server to communicate their device token (and the user ID this is associated to) and then the server dispatches notifications using the user ID to determine the events of interest and the device token to have it delivered via Firebase or APNS depending on the platform. Lemmy instances, unfortunately, don’t do anything of that so client apps have to periodically poll for new events, which is terrible for both the battery and the network usage. Raccoon is no exception of this, if you look in the “Advanced Settings” screen under the “Experiments” section, there is an item named “Check for unread items in background”. This is an attempt to use Android’s WorkManager APIs to perform scheduled periodic operations such as checking for new mentions/replies/messages. Unfortunately, the scheduler does not seem so reliable so after some time the app is in the background the pending work can never get to be executed. It was an attempt and it should be refined.




  • Raccoon is implemented using Jetpack Compose for the UI layer and the Material 3 libraries (some components like pull-to-refresh are in falback mode on Material 2, though) so it should respect the guidelines, e.g. for text fields, bottom navigation, navigation drawer, top application bar, etc.

    Where there were blatant violations it has been reported and fixed in the past, e.g. here, here or here. However if you are referring to post layout, the choices are not configurable except for full-width images.

    There was a graphic designer once who told spacings were “all wrong” but when asked for suggestions he disappeared. If we could isolate the most painful points and make targeted interventions, it would be super. The next months are going to be dedicated to stabilize and improve the app rather than adding new features.