Subsurface mobile: delete and sync operations.

[Davide DB]

On 19 July 2017 at 15:03, Dirk Hohndel <dirk at hohndel.org> wrote:

>> 2) When deleting a dive/profile from the button at the screen bottom, the undo option only shows up for about 1 second. This is way too short for an unprepared user to respond appropriately. And then the dive is (theoretically) permanently deleted. Extremely user-unfriendly. The interface would be much more safe if the 1-second button rather said: "Confirm delete". Noticed the steps in Github that are required to delete a repo? You must really be convinced to do this in order to delete a repo, no way of doing that accidentally. I am pretty conversant with the mobile UI and on a few occasions my finger has managed to accidentally stray to the dustbin under a dive profile. And then the "Undo" button comes up, out of the blue, and I am so startled that I do not respond in time. Dive gone.
>
> The pattern of confirming an action is something that is not well liked in mobile apps. I am pretty sure we had this discussion here a while ago. I agree that it's way too easy to delete a dive. Of course, that dive isn't really gone (thanks to our git storage), but that's no consolation for a regular user.
>
> I'm not sure what to do about this. Davide, you are our resident UI guru... what do you think?

Unfortunately ATM I cannot be of great help on these use cases.
Currently my main desktop subsurface is behind a proxy and git cloud
connection doesn't work (I posted about it months ago but I understand
that I'm a corner case) so currently  I have mainly access only to
Subsurface mobile and I'm afraid to delete my logbook so I'm always
very cautious doing experiments. Occasionally I use another desktop
connection just to save my new dives.

>> 3) I intentionally deleted four dives from my dive log (using dive list and red button) in order to test the delete option. Then I tried to regain them by doing a "Save to cloud" from my desktop. Nice, divelog saved. Then I do a "Sync with cloud" on the mobile but the four dives do not come back. No way of get them back, except by uninstalling Subsurface-mobile on Android and doing a complete reinstallation, re-initialising the cloud credentials and reloading the divelog from scratch. My four dives are back.
>
> You'd think that would work, but it doesn't because of the way git merges the operations. We need a UI to bring back deleted dives. It's not really hard to do, it's just something someone needs to implement.
>
>> I am just thinking how an unfamiliar user will struggle with this interface. My firm suggestions are:
>>
>> a) On Android, the "Sync with cloud" tries to be too clever and as far as I can see does not succeed. As user I would be much more happy if I had complete control with two more options: "Save to cloud" and "Load from cloud". These are unambiguous with clearly predictable results.

I agree that a normal user gets confused on which side is updated
while syncing to the cloud. While using GIT for cloud logbook is
really a unique feature, we cannot pretend that the average joe
understands it.

> The way git works it's not that easy. Yes, it's easy to implement "forget everything I've done and go back to what's on the server". I actually started working on that and then got side tracked. I should have a branch that has the beginnings of that somewhere. But "save to cloud" and ignore changes from the other side is not something that I'm keen to implement. That's basically a force push and that will make any other Subsurface instance that is connected to the cloud storage decidedly unhappy. So this needs a bit more thought.
>
>> b) Make the delete dive action more safe. Dive data are valuable, often with significant time spent in writing notes, specifying cylinder pressures (that are lost upon delete) and the like. One does not want to lose a dive accidentally.
>
> Agreed. I'm just not sure what the best user interaction for that would be.

Let me see if I find some doc specific to mobile apps...



-- 
Davide
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