6
Inigo
1y

There is a part of the Devrant UI I hate.

I hate how it truncates each 'rant', meaning that I have to click into it to finish reading it, which takes a few annoying seconds to load and takes me away from the main list.

I wish it just loaded the *whole* rant by default but hid the truncated part, such that tapping it would make it expand and appear *instantly*. It'd be so much slicker.

Then you'd click to load the associated reply chain, if you wanted to. Or otherwise just minimise it back to its truncated state and continue scrolling the list.

Comments
  • 6
    You know, it would have been funny if you had cut the rant off early and... [read more]
  • 0
    If the full content is shipped to the client the payload would drastically increase, slowing down loadtimes even further and also requiring more resources on the backend to generate all the text.
  • 0
    @max19931 // if the full content is shipped to the client the payload would drastically increase //

    Would it? Scrolling briefly through the list as I'm currently seeing it, only about half the rants are truncated in this way, and of the ones that are, the truncated part only constitutes about another 1/3rd of the total text. So I'm forced to tap and wait 2 seconds just to read that last 1/3rd of the rant. I can only find a couple of large rants that more than double in length when you click into them. I don't see why loading this extra text is going to lead to a massively bigger data footprint. And even if it did, you could just load fewer rants into the list by default, or perhaps don't the load images. Two possible solutions right there that would get round any issues of increased data load, which I doubt is an issue anyway, and which would make this particular piece of shitty UI a lot slicker... imho
  • 6
    The full payload is in fact shipped to the client. The official clients truncate it then.
    My unofficial iOS client JoyRant doesn’t truncate the content, because I disliked it as well.
  • 1
    @Lensflare that's interesting! Albeit even more dumb that the Devrant app does this. Damn, with they had JoyRant for Android
  • 3
    @Inigo SkyRant is an unofficial devRant Android app made by @joewilliams007

    I don’t know if he implemented the truncation, though :)
  • 1
    @Lensflare I'll check it out, thanks !
  • 2
    @Nanos 💯

    Yeah you'd need to be loading tens of thousands of words before the data footprint of pure text becomes anything significant.

    Glad people agree with me here. Really crappy piece of UI, even more so if what @Lensflare said is true and that data has literally already been retrieved by the API and is just sitting there ready to go, lol
  • 1
    I don’t mind it being truncated. I often find myself scrolling through the posts to go back to an older one. If the entire content of every post (or a large part of it) were visible, the scrolling would become a nightmare.
    Also, I usually read the comments of a post, so I’d probably be opening all the posts I’m reading anyway.
    The main gripe I have is the iOS app crashing when you open a post. But it’s a well known fact it’ll never get fixed, at least not anytime soon. So I’ve learned to live with it
  • 1
    @black-kite I‘d say that the vast majority of posts are small enough to fit into the truncation limit anyway.

    Regarding the crashes: I fixed that with JoyRant and I‘d be glad if you could try it :)
    It‘s my primary devrant app for over a year now.
  • 2
    I recall back when the site was more active, some people would create rants that intentionally filled the feed. Maybe that's the reason why it is how it is.
  • 1
    @Lensflare Yup full post loads instanly. But i need to push some more updates soon 🤭.
  • 0
    I disagree
  • 3
    @chonky-quiche I disagree with your disagreement
  • 2
    @Nanos I disagree
  • 1
    @Nanos don't you allow me to disagree with you?
  • 1
    @electrineer you have invented a new paradox 😆
  • 0
    @spongessuck niiiiice. Definitely gonna have to steal that one.
  • 0
    @Lensflare the real VIP.

    where do we find your client?
  • 1
    @Wisecrack https://testflight.apple.com/join/...

    Also, see my github page for the open source project there.
  • 1
    @Lensflare oh, its apple.

    I'm on android. Pity.

    But its cool you went that far to begin with. Respect.
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