The current state of the front end

[gingerbeardman]

I mean this in good faith with the goal of constructive criticism.

Whilst the backend seems to be better in most regards, IMHO the front has become worse in many ways. How do with think it can get back on track?

[gtsteffaniak]

Can you provide some concrete examples of "IMHO the front has become worse in many ways."

The frontend is evolving in many ways, most of the growing pains are going to be seen in the frontend. And as I mentioned 0.8.0 is a big milestone for reshaping things in a way that paves the way for stability.

For example, I cannot yet add all of the integration tests that I want because the frontend is not fully baked. The more tests I add right now, the more tests I will have to break and fix VERY soon.

So, if you have concrete examples of the frontend regressions, I would recommend opening specific issues so I am aware.

[gingerbeardman]

Of course, I have opened individual issues.

from me:
#929
#913
#902
#739

there are more from other people:

#871
etc

This thread was to have a higher level discussion about how things have been changed from OG filebrowser and on a lot of ways have become less good, introduced problems, removed information, etc.

[gtsteffaniak]

Ok. All of the issues you mentioned except the flickering upload have existed for over a year since the beginning of this repo. The flickering issue was fixed via retag of the same release.

The feature request about upload changes is coming in literally a couple days -- also been this way on this fork for years.

This is a silly discussion. I'm closing it

[gingerbeardman]

I only started using your fork last month, so apologies if I’m raising issues that are long-standing problems.

That said, the flickering issue still isn’t fully fixed.

But even if some of these issues go back to the very start of the fork - why does that matter? Are long-standing problems off-limits for discussion? If anything, their persistence makes them more worth addressing.

There must be reasons for each UI change: I want to understand how it got here and where it's heading.

You’ve made significant changes from the OG filebrowser, which is great. Not just in the backend (which I know you’ve said you didn’t like) but also in the frontend. And that’s your prerogative - it’s your fork. I’m just trying to understand why some things were changed in ways that (in multiple user's views) are clearly regressions. You want this to be the “best”, which is an admirable goal, but some things here are objectively worse in usability and/or visuals. Is the quality of the software not measured by your users as well as you?

I’m doing my best to raise them, but honestly, it’s exhausting filing issues - there are just so many. So I thought a discussion could help focus my attention and the energy I want to spend on this project.

A little about me: I am an independent software developer, GOTY 2023 accolade winner, former Apple designer engineer, who likes to help with OSS.

[gtsteffaniak]

Opening issues for specific concerns is how this should be handled, and I appreciate that you have done that.

Opening a discussion to aimlessly talk about how something isn't as good doesn't actually help anything.

Most of the issue you mented were open in the past week... By you. Are you too impatient for the issues to be handled? Do you really need to open this discussion?

There is no point to this, if you are not patient enough to let issues be tackled and fixed by priority, continue using the OG FileBrowser! Unless of course, you want this fork to improve, then you know what to do... But you are going to have to be more patient than that.

[gingerbeardman]

I'm not requesting anything, I'm not expecting issues to be dealt with at all. I'm just asking for information. I started this thread with "I mean this in good faith with the goal of constructive criticism" and I maintain that. This is not an attack but just a curious person who is asking a question.