Help beta test new Facebook reader app

[JLB-UK]

Much improved version, I am certainly liking the more pages removing the limit of 50! Much welcomed feature!

When the iPad is in landscape, the icon still appears in portrait first before changing but this is minor. I know others have reported this and it is still present in 4.3

I am certainly looking forward to being able to view friends from within the app

JLB

 

[mrl72]

Device is updated in test flight now.

I'm not seeing you in TestFlight. Can you go back in and ensure you are setup in there?

Thanks.

 

[kevingaffney]

On latest beta, home button dimmed and does not work. News feed does not show any photos only text. Everything else a lot snappier

 

[mrl72]

On latest beta, home button dimmed and does not work. News feed does not show any photos only text. Everything else a lot snappier

I forgot to mention in the build notes to completely remove the app before installing. Or logging off back on then refresh should take care of it. This always seems to be an issue with the beta builds unfortunetely.

Cheers.

 

[Ltnluv23]

My iPad 2 is updated and registered in TestFlight as well.

 

[kevingaffney]

I forgot to mention in the build notes to completely remove the app before installing. Or logging off back on then refresh should take care of it. This always seems to be an issue with the beta builds unfortunetely.

Cheers.

Working great now. Very smooth. Home button still not working for me, apart from that it's great

 

[mrl72]

Working great now. Very smooth. Home button still not working for me, apart from that it's great

I really do have to get that home button fixed for you 🙂 What's weird is you're the only one that's reported it and no matter what I tried I can't replicate it. Logically, the home button should be disabled if you don't have any images for the slideshow, which really should not be the case unless none of your friends (or you for that matter) have uploaded any photos within the last 30 days. The only other thing I can think of is that your privacy settings in FB aren't jiving with Frienatic. What you can test for me if you can, is to go into Privacy settings in FB then under Apps & Websites click Edit settings, then click on Frienatic then remove app. Then on your iPad open up Frienatic, Logoff first then logon again. That will create the new settings again. If that doesn't work we'll try something else.

Cheers!

P.s There is a bug in the latest beta, the photo uploading stopped working. I am looking into this now..

 

[Requiemm]

PM Sent

 

[mrl72]

-- deleted --

 

[Fliesen]

Hey, there.

Just tested your app a bit, so here we go:

Liked:
+ the welcome screen
+ the very 'pulse-news'ish color scheme, loving it, and generally...
+ ...the design overall
+ Status Updates - tab
+ snappy performance

didn't like:

- no multi-user support ... i share the iPad with my girlfriend, so some sort of fast user switching (like Friendly for iPad offers) would be really really neat
- 'Friend Favs' ... if you know SOME teenage girls it is completely pointless, as they spam-like those joke pages (facebooklikes.com / xlikes.com / you name it) ... also, i don't think this would deserve an entire tab ... you could replace it with 'recent picture uploads' or something like that
- '23 hours ago' on the status updates tiles is barely readable. Either remove it altogether to keep it clean or make it slightly more readable?
- why the number badge on Friends? ... it makes me feel like i should delete them to reduce the number. Usually a number badge indicates you have something unread. But i can't mark my friends as 'read' really, so again, why the red badge?

ideas for improvement:
* Status Updates -> Recent Photos: When magnifying a photo i'd love some kind of transition / animation, instead of the enlarged version just popping up
* some kind of Filter for the 'News Feed'. There's some pages and people on my 'Like's and if one of them shoots out 8 posts, he pretty much makes up 50% of my tiles. So maybe only 1 post of the same person / page / group on each page of tiles? ... if that's doable
* less intrusive method of refreshing. Maybe the already pretty common 'drag and release' to just refresh individual tabs without making the entire app unresponsive for 20 seconds


yeah, that's pretty much all i can say about this for now.
really good job so far, though

 

[mrl72]

Hey, there.

Just tested your app a bit, so here we go:

Liked:
+ the welcome screen
+ the very 'pulse-news'ish color scheme, loving it, and generally...
+ ...the design overall
+ Status Updates - tab
+ snappy performance

didn't like:

- no multi-user support ... i share the iPad with my girlfriend, so some sort of fast user switching (like Friendly for iPad offers) would be really really neat
- 'Friend Favs' ... if you know SOME teenage girls it is completely pointless, as they spam-like those joke pages (facebooklikes.com / xlikes.com / you name it) ... also, i don't think this would deserve an entire tab ... you could replace it with 'recent picture uploads' or something like that
- '23 hours ago' on the status updates tiles is barely readable. Either remove it altogether to keep it clean or make it slightly more readable?
- why the number badge on Friends? ... it makes me feel like i should delete them to reduce the number. Usually a number badge indicates you have something unread. But i can't mark my friends as 'read' really, so again, why the red badge?

ideas for improvement:
* Status Updates -> Recent Photos: When magnifying a photo i'd love some kind of transition / animation, instead of the enlarged version just popping up
* some kind of Filter for the 'News Feed'. There's some pages and people on my 'Like's and if one of them shoots out 8 posts, he pretty much makes up 50% of my tiles. So maybe only 1 post of the same person / page / group on each page of tiles? ... if that's doable
* less intrusive method of refreshing. Maybe the already pretty common 'drag and release' to just refresh individual tabs without making the entire app unresponsive for 20 seconds


yeah, that's pretty much all i can say about this for now.
really good job so far, though

Awesome feedback!! Thanks so much! I've been thinking about multi user support, another beta tester brought that up so I added it to the to-do list. I think it's possible, FB changed their authentication APIs recently and since I'm using the new one and probably not what Friendly uses, I'm not 100% sure it can be done, but looking into it..

The badge number for Friends is there becuase, well, I couldn't really find a nice place to put it 🙂 Real estate is a concern whenever I have to make changes because the tiles neatly fill up the screen. Saying that, I'm toying with reducing the pixels slightly on the tiles so that I can fit a status bar along the top where the default status bar resides, so basically swapping that out and replacing it with one that will be able to show who you're logged in as, # friends etc.

For the issue where a friend spits out a bunch of posts all at once (I have those kind of friends too lol, always filling up my wall) I am thinking of adding a "more" icon on the tile that when pressed flies out a panel with the remaining posts. That way you don't lose the posts but rather have them grouped under the user.

Currently looking into background refresh. I'd use that pull-to-refresh but someone patented it believe it or not.

Thanks again and please rate/comment on iTunes if you could, every review helps.

Cheers.

 

[Fliesen]

I don't really believe in the importance of the actual number of facebook friends one has 😉

 

[kevingaffney]

Good update. My famous home button is now working .... some of the time with a swipe. Friends section excellent except search for friend doesn't work or the little bar beside it with first letters in friend's names.
When do you expect to release app for iPhone.

 

[mrl72]

Thanks! All of these issues should have been fixed now in latest build. The version on the store will be updated in the next few days and I'll provide everyone here with a promo code for the full, legit version. Just PM me for a code and I'll gladly send you one. Of course, everyone who has been beta testing the app is more than welcome to stay on as a tester for future versions, if not feel free to remove your name from TestFlight. And of course you are all more than welcome to ask for new features which will almost certainly get added in if they are good ideas. I am still working on chat, better refreshing, multi-user support, filtering options and more so stay tuned..

Thanks again everyone! BTW the app is currently ranked #19 in Social Networking category, which is not bad, about 100+ downloads a day. Unfortunately the version on the store is almost a month old now and has come a long way since then. Fingers crossed people will like the new update.

Cheers.
P.S iPhone universal version within next 10 days..

 

[gigemzach]

I love the idea of your app! I recently downloaded it in the store after stumbling across this thread. I was just wondering if we could be able to see who actually liked the status. Also, in the friends section is there a way to open up their profile without having to go to the native website? Thanks again for an awesome app!

 

[Ltnluv23]

Hey just downloaded 1.1 update, and thanks for fixing a lot of the quirks. Much better now. One thing that quickly stood out that you might wanna address and that you probably are aware of already, are....

1. Should be able to access a persons profile/page when you click their default photo of them when reading a status of them.
2. Transition from portrait to landscape n vice versa has a tiny 2 sec bug where the screen goes black.
3. When you first open the app, is there a way or setting to default which section opens up first..ie the news feed instead of home.
4. As mentioned before, ability to see who liked a status and specific comment, and a "like" button for each comment.
5. Any possibility of push notifications.

Aside from that, great job updating the app. I think in a few more versions I'll be able to get rid of Friended. Hopefully chat comes along nicely. Still haven't seen a good implementation of it. 🙂

 

[mrl72]

Hey just downloaded 1.1 update, and thanks for fixing a lot of the quirks. Much better now. One thing that quickly stood out that you might wanna address and that you probably are aware of already, are....

1. Should be able to access a persons profile/page when you click their default photo of them when reading a status of them.
2. Transition from portrait to landscape n vice versa has a tiny 2 sec bug where the screen goes black.
3. When you first open the app, is there a way or setting to default which section opens up first..ie the news feed instead of home.
4. As mentioned before, ability to see who liked a status and specific comment, and a "like" button for each comment.
5. Any possibility of push notifications.

Aside from that, great job updating the app. I think in a few more versions I'll be able to get rid of Friended. Hopefully chat comes along nicely. Still haven't seen a good implementation of it. 🙂

Awesome feedback, thanks!

1. Should be able to access a persons profile/page when you click their default photo of them when reading a status of them. Working on this will be in 1.1.1 release.
2. Transition from portrait to landscape n vice versa has a tiny 2 sec bug where the screen goes black. Not really a bug and unfortunately cannot be avoided since it has to do a complete redraw of the tiles and re-calculate and re-size the tiles for display. I'll look to see if it can be sped up though.
3. When you first open the app, is there a way or setting to default which section opens up first..ie the news feed instead of home. It'll only ever default to home if the app is completely closed or killed, otherwise it should take you back to where you last left it. I am working on moving the login button to a settings page (and replacing it with your own wall). When I do that I'll add an option to set the default home.
4. As mentioned before, ability to see who liked a status and specific comment, and a "like" button for each comment. Definitely coming in next release, in fact was working on it last night 🙂
5. Any possibility of push notifications. I have given this some thought but in order for push notifications to work it means I have to check your status/news feed server side and then push it to your device. It is do-able but a pretty big overhead. If the app takes off I will look into it further.

Chat: Actively working on it, and it's going to be pretty cool if I can get it all to work 🙂

Cheers.

 

[Ltnluv23]

Awesome feedback, thanks!

1. Should be able to access a persons profile/page when you click their default photo of them when reading a status of them. Working on this will be in 1.1.1 release.
2. Transition from portrait to landscape n vice versa has a tiny 2 sec bug where the screen goes black. Not really a bug and unfortunately cannot be avoided since it has to do a complete redraw of the tiles and re-calculate and re-size the tiles for display. I'll look to see if it can be sped up though.
3. When you first open the app, is there a way or setting to default which section opens up first..ie the news feed instead of home. It'll only ever default to home if the app is completely closed or killed, otherwise it should take you back to where you last left it. I am working on moving the login button to a settings page (and replacing it with your own wall). When I do that I'll add an option to set the default home.
4. As mentioned before, ability to see who liked a status and specific comment, and a "like" button for each comment. Definitely coming in next release, in fact was working on it last night 🙂
5. Any possibility of push notifications. I have given this some thought but in order for push notifications to work it means I have to check your status/news feed server side and then push it to your device. It is do-able but a pretty big overhead. If the app takes off I will look into it further.

Chat: Actively working on it, and it's going to be pretty cool if I can get it all to work 🙂

Cheers.

Thanks for the update. I did notice the default home/news feed scenario I mentioned and your right, only defaults to home if it's a fresh open of the app.
Not a big deal about notifications, in fact it's not even that necessary, especially if someone has a large amount of friends and they keep getting notified every minute. Also iOS's notifications system needs to be reworked on completely. Can't wait to see what 1.1.1 version looks like.

 

[Ltnluv23]

Ooo another thing I just noticed...

Any way of expanding a users profile. All I see is name, location, gender...and for some reason, most all are labeled "Unknown". No "About Me" "Hobbies" etc sections. Maybe like a pull down window could work if someone wants to expand their profile and see details.

 

[mrl72]

Ooo another thing I just noticed...

Any way of expanding a users profile. All I see is name, location, gender...and for some reason, most all are labeled "Unknown". No "About Me" "Hobbies" etc sections. Maybe like a pull down window could work if someone wants to expand their profile and see details.

Sure, let me know what you'd like to see in there. If it shows Unknown it's because your friend either hasn't populated that field in FB, or they've got them hidden in their privacy settings.

 

[HDJulie]

Is there a way to get to your messages from this app?

 

[Ltnluv23]

Sure, let me know what you'd like to see in there. If it shows Unknown it's because your friend either hasn't populated that field in FB, or they've got them hidden in their privacy settings.

1. I checked into that, and checked the website version of Facebook. The "Relationships" and "Birthdays", sometimes "Hometown" all show up as Unknown on Frienatic, but aren't hidden or unpopulated on Facebook.com.

2. Also, it be nice to see "Mutual Friends" when going into a person's profile. Maybe adding a button, right next to their info would help.

3. Haven't seen this mentioned yet, PHOTOS ALBUMS!! The only place I seem to access photos is when I click on a person's status, and their "Recent Photos" show up, if any. Definitely Photos/Photo Albums is a much needed request. Maybe adding a strip at the bottom where you can swipe through different albums, could do the trick. Once you open up a album, you can have a grid of all photos, and click on each one to see in full screen individually, or swipe from there, left n right.

4. As far as what info should be shown on the profile, the following could be a start:
Education and Work (College + High School)
Arts and Entertainment (Movies + Music + Television)
Contact Information (Phone #/E-Mail)---> Hint: Maybe have the option to add contact info to Calendar, or open up e-mail link with the "Mail" app.

5. Another thing I came across is using the Search option in "Friends", sometimes when I would type for instance "Jay", it would take me to the friend's grid/page BEFORE the actual grid/page where the person is actually on. Not sure if that makes sense.

6. Messages/Events/Notifications (Not Push) Sections?

Sorry if everything sounds overwhelming, but I figured I jot them down before I forget. I'm sure its gonna take a couple revisions and versions to get to where the app is nearly perfect. Also believe not alot of these things can be made possible due to their API's. Made alot of progress for an app thats only been out for nearly a week.

 

[Fliesen]

One bug's still there: when you magnify a photo on someone's 'profile' page and switch to another tab, the photo doesn't really go away and keeps 'ghosting' around between tab switches.

 

[mrl72]

Appreciate the feedback all and I'm actively working on some of those features. There's a new build available which incorporates some of the new features and changes, check it out.

I wanted to get your opinion on the icon, which is pretty important and one of the first things users see in the store. I've been fielding comments about it being too plain so wanted to get your opinion on it. Below is the current icon (left) and a new one I've been playing with (right), note these are for the free but limited version that is out there. Let me know what you think.

 

[Ltnluv23]

Appreciate the feedback all and I'm actively working on some of those features. There's a new build available which incorporates some of the new features and changes, check it out.

I wanted to get your opinion on the icon, which is pretty important and one of the first things users see in the store. I've been fielding comments about it being too plain so wanted to get your opinion on it. Below is the current icon (left) and a new one I've been playing with (right), note these are for the free but limited version that is out there. Let me know what you think.

Definitely love the current icon.