preferences and settings for Subsurface-mobile

[Dirk Hohndel]

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 02:50:28PM +0000, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> On Monday, January 11, 2016 06:30:44 AM Dirk Hohndel wrote:
> > When testing Subsurface-mobile Jan noticed something rather important that
> > I of course "kinda sorta" knew, but had forgotten to follow up on. In
> > Subsurface-mobile you get the default setting for all our numerous
> > preferences on how the UI looks. There's no way I want to reproduce the
> > convoluted, complicated preferences screen on the mobile app - that just
> > seems way to overwhelming (it's overwhelming on the desktop app quite
> > frankly.
> 
> We'd benefit from having as little settings as possible, as every setting 
> means maintenance overhead, regression potential and reduced test coverage. 
> IMO we should only add a setting that is really essential to the working of 
> the app, especially in this early phase. Implementing settings may also 
> distract us from getting the basics right. So please apply relentless scrutiny 
> to every setting that we add.

I completely agree - that's why I started this thread in the first place.
There may be things that people really really care about - so I try to
listen (before arguing) :-)

> > A few seem easy. For legacy reasons the color choice of our fearless
> > former leader are still the default - so the dive computer reported
> > ceiling is shown in "surface" color (beige) instead of in red. I'll
> > happily make the executive decision to switch that default to being red
> 
> Sounds sensible.
> 
> > But what about things like calculated ceiling. Various partial pressures.
> > The tank bar. Should we make those preferences on the mobile device?
> > Should we do the same we do for the units and just carry over the
> > preferences from the last time you saved things on the desktop
> > application?
> > 
> > Opinions?
> 
> I'd say that the usecase where someone runs the desktop and mobile UI on the 
> same machine are rather slim, and that therefore it should not be a priority.

Misunderstanding. We store the units in the cloud storage (so the HTML
export on the backend uses the same units) and have now started using
those same units for Subsurface-mobile. This will give people a neat
seamless experience where the mobile app simply does "DWIM" - you get the
same experience you got on the desktop.

That's why I considered possibly adding this for a couple more settings.
So if a user has the tissue loading graph turned on on their desktop,
chances are they might like to see it on their phone. Critically
important? No. But it seemed worth talking about.

But I definitely understand your concern about test coverage and
distraction, so I don't think this is high priority.

/D