Many of you heard me talking on the AMAs throughout April about the updates to INLEO. This month, we've focused entirely on fixing bugs and improving stability.
A few days ago, we celebrated the 1 year anniversary of the Project Blank UI Launching. Comparing what the UI looked like on May 1st, 2023 to what it looks like now... The differences are astonishing.
The past year, we've been relentlessly pushing new features and that is what we are all about: iterating quickly and getting public feedback loops with all of you.
INLEO thrives on feedback. By pushing things out into the world and kickstarting the feedback-iterate-feedback loop, we are able to make progress faster than any other project I've seen in the Web3 social media space.
With these quick feedback loops come massive headaches. Both on your end as a user and on our end as the dev team. That being said, it allows rapid progress and that is what I am all about.
We know what the future holds for LEO. The question is not IF we get there but WHEN. My goal is to accelerate the timeline and get us there faster.
In this post, I'll talk about the updates we made in April to the INLEO UI. The updates - again - were entirely focused on bug fixes and overall stability improvements.
There were 27 major pushes to the UI throughout April along with over 25 app errors that got addressed as well.
This post quickly breezes over all the updates we made to show you our progress on creating a smooth and enjoyable Web3 experience on Inleo.io.
April Updates
1. Editing Comments
Editing comments wasn't working properly. We decided to ditch the main editor and instead make "Light Edit" the default. Now a pop-up window allows you to quickly edit a comment on any long-form post you've made.
2. Random Bug Recirculation
We fixed a bunch of random bugs which seemed to cache in local browsers and recirculate sporadically.
3. Premium Checkmark missing from certain views
Premium checkmarks were missing from blog articles and the hover module (when you hover a user's username). We fixed both of these.
4. Issue with blog pages not loading on profile tabs
50/50 roll of the dice for loading a blog page on someone's profile. We fixed this and improved the loading speed in general.
5. Blank white screen when sharing blog posts externally
6. Fix for Android typing issue
Some users experienced a glitch when typing text from an Android device.
7. Add Loading Indicators for Editing Threads/Posts/Comments & Profile Page Items
8. Issue With Clicking Tags From the Trending Selection
Sometimes when you would click a tag from trending, nothing would happen. We've fixed this and now it loads the tag feed properly.
9. Fix "Who to Follow"
This is on the explore page. It was broken and showing incorrect rep score and profile information.
10. Follow button showing "Follow" even if you are already following
The follow button was displaying incorrectly and also acting improperly sometimes. We fixed this across all devices.
11. Premium checkmark missing from certain views
The premium checkmark was missing from a few elements (like the hover window showing you more info about a user). We fixed this and the checkmark for premium users now shows in these different view windows.
12. Fix Blog Filters for Articles
We made some changes to the /articles page and how the blog filters work.
- "LEO" now shows any content posted from inleo.io or labs.inleo.io (before, it was showing only LeoFinance community content under our old content rules)
- The following tab was broken and showing content that shouldn't be there. We now show the following tab in the standard "Hive way" when Hive is selected. When you select LEO, it will show you content from accounts you follow ONLY if posted from inleo.io
13. Expected Payout Display for the 16% APY for delegating to @leo.voter broken
@leo.voter pays a 16% APY for delegations of HIVE POWER. You can manage your delegation at https://inleo.io/dashboard.
The expected payout values were showing NaN (obviously doesn't impact payouts but just the displayed $$ value in the dashboard).
We fixed this and you can now correctly see how much LEO you are getting paid daily/monthly along with the estimated $$ value of it.
14. Slow Loading
Certain elements on the UI were needlessly increasing load times. We removed them.
One of them was Google Adsense. We'll talk about LeoAds in a future post but the TLDR; is that adsense code was ruining the INLEO experience and they were paying us pennies for views.
We are going to launch our own native ad platform soon and that will fully replace the old centralized models we used. It will also pay us a lot more $$.
15. Profile Images Not Displaying Correctly
In certain views, a user's profile image wouldn't display correctly.
16. 25+ App Errors Resolved
We have an autonomous discord bot that is tracking App Errors when you guys experience them on the UI.
It sends us a crash report and then we can index and fix them. Over 25 were fixed this month and we're focused on reducing overall App Errors.
Personally, I have felt this change drastically improve the experience of INLEO. The app errors are far less prominent. Hopefully you've noticed as well.
17. Lists are broken
We fixed a massive bug with Lists that made them not show up at all.
18. Clicking on a User's Profile name gave an incorrect URL
If you clicked the chosen name of a user, it took you to that name in the URL instead of their actual Hive username, which caused a missing page error.
19. Markdown Errors
Some issues with markdown were resolved. They were preventing certain users from accessing the Bold/Italic features as a premium user.
20. Repeated Threads in the feed
A bug was causing certain threads to pop up multiple times in the feed (even though they were only posted once).
This should be fully resolved now but the bug has been recurring for months. We're monitoring the situation. If you see it happen again on an edge case, please post a #feedback thread.
21. Updating Profile Broken
We fixed a bug that prevented profile data from updating properly.
22. Announcement Banner overlap
On certain device sizes, the announcement banner was overlapping content.
23. /Publish Utterance error
Prevented users from using the long-form publisher on certain devices.
24. Upvote slider hidden behind long-form articles in /articles feed
Clicking for the upvote slider sometimes didn't work on certain devices.
25. Upvote slider hidden underneath long-form articles (above comment section).
Similar issue to the above but on the actual article page itself.
26. Ctrl+Click not working to open in a new tab
27. Duplicate Threads in a Threadcast
Similar issue to #20 but a bit different. We resolved both.
Feedback
As always, my PSA is to create threads using the #feedback tag and include as many detailed steps to reproduce + screenshots as possible for any errors you encounter on the INLEO UI.
May is going to be another month where we pour 100% of our attention into bug fixes, stability and overall improvements to the User Experience.
We've pushed a core feature set over the last 12 months and I am very happy with that feature set. Now is our time to clear up the mountain of technical debt that was built up by pushing all of these bleeding edge features.
After the tech debt is down to 0, we will start again on adding new features but moving forward, we will clean up the tech debt as we go rather than let it pile up.
There is a reason for both approaches. The initial approach was to hammer out hundreds of new features to a UI that was built from scratch.
Now that the foundations are laid, we don't need that hardcore "break everything" approach anymore. Instead, we can push for innovative features while maintaining a seamless UX.
Enjoy the fixes and updates! 🦁