I have one big request: Pierre Hébert , please stop working on Scripting for a while and for a while focus on bug…
Please, all, read to the end.
You all know I’m a Lightning Launcher fanatic, using it for years now. And for sure I will never ever use any other launcher! But lately I’m sad getting more and more frustrated working on templates for LLx. Really, the last weeks I trashed half a dozen or so templates I was working on. Simply because they did not work in practice as they should in theory — because of bugs and I finally gave up literally cursing and crying when I found no workarounds.
Just some simple examples:
Swipe gestures and panels
I have a panel with vertical scrolling. Swiping horizontally should scroll desktops. I does not. As workaround I even added swipe left/right gestures to the panel that scrolled to desktop shortcuts left and right. (Looked and felt terrible BTW).
Back button
Nothing much to say, reported that lately. Use shortcuts to jump from desktop to a position inside panel and your lost trying to return with “back” button.
To be honest: I did not even try any of the latest features added to LL(x). And reading the the postings the last weeks shows, new users still struggle with basic features. LLx is powerful, but it’s gettings overwhelming even for experienced users.
I don’t want to see LLx go down because it’s some day so powerful only long time hardcore users understand and newbies would need a 3 weeks training with certification to do basic stuff — leave alone handle the beast.
As much as I liked the idea of scripting, the more I think about it (I’m really sorry to say that): I don’t think it is the right way. How many users would (and could) use scripting finally? About 1%? … and how many of those would do something useful with it?
I currently have the feeling too much energy in LLx development i spent in the wrong direction. Especially when those little bugs keep crawling out and disturbing my every day life with LLx.
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Lutz Linke it’s funny you should mention all this because in my attempt to create a theme that I could use in the playstore I accidentally cheaply mimicked the basic paneling for one of your hns themes. the bottom panel isn’t doing well because of my lack of stop point knowledge but the idea is there….. as for the bugs some of them have been os bug or user error…or in my case that is. other than that you are right. I have know scripting knowledge at all so script editor is almost useless to me.
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Curtis Sylvester Jr. I know how to code, but even I don’t know wether I’ll ever use scripting. I mean, I did with Tasker for my ZW Color Styler app, but that was merely “plug & play”, somewhat limited and restricted, but it worked surprisingly good. And: it can be IMHO used by almost anyone.
But that is OT here.
I’m just sad about how little I can achieve currently with LLx. So many ideas, so many fails, so much time wasted.
I wouldn’t call LLx “buggy” per se — hell, it runs smooth, fast, very stable etc. But: it just “feels”… rough? I don’t know how to say. It has edges that hurt when hit.
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with some of us it hurts just too touch like when trying to pick a rose for that special someone (I can’t believe I said that I’m gonna be sick for sure) for me I have no knowledge so yeah even basic theme creation is a joke. I’ll never get to stack up and that hurts honestly because I can sit her for a month trying to come up with something others might enjoy but in the end even I think it’s garbage. if I think it’s garbage what are they gonna think? let me put it this way: don’t be like me (a failure) at least you know what you’re doing. Hell I love tasker but am I ever gonna do something cool with it? no because I don’t know codes and scripts all I know is basic commands thanks to hollywoodfrodo. you think your discouraged try NOT having the knowledge you have. I wouldn’t know what a ll bug is because 89 percent if what I report is either a tablet bug or I’m doing it wrong.
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I understand you are upset. Totally understandable. Don’t take this comment into something against you. Please don’t.
I want to say:
Swipe gestures: solved in the alpha.
Back button: solved in the alpha.
Script is a very advanced feature, and the percentage of people that will use it will be low, very low…at the beginning. Tasker is also a ‘scripting’ (more or less) app, and it was an “I don’t know how to do this, I don’t like it” app once, and watch what it is now.
And the last thing: a lot of post are about how to do basic features, but that’s the normal thing in ALL communities. New users ask. Old users don’t. That the reality.
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Right now, as it is, this llx is freaking difficult. I’ve been using it for 1 week now and i cant figure out how the shortcuts work and the stopping points either.
The last two days I’ve been trying to go to specific places in the screen by tapping an icon and i still can’t make it.
I recommend this launcher to 5 friends and they give up in 1 day, too difficult and i think lutz is right, if they keep adding stuff, this launcher will be just for a few people.
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By the way, if someone can give me a hand with shortcuts i will appreciate it.
The tutorials are only 2 or 3 and for really newbie people, there is nothing out there for people that want to go a little further on customize the launcher
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ok I can give you a hand just email me at HANNTHEFTAUDIO@Gmail.com pablo tacchini
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Chris sledge totally right.
The only thing that is difficult to me to understand is…why those advanced features interfere? That’s what I can’t understand (but I’m an advanced user, a very advanced one maybe, so I want an answer to this question make by a basic user)
Uhm…uhm….a solution…it will be a bit…no, not really.
What about disable/enable the advanced features (we will need to discuss which ones) with a simple checkbox in all settings?
They will be only hidden, so they will still work in case someone load a template with them.
New users will only see the ‘basic’ features and that checkbox. Check it or not will be their decision, and maybe this will help to understand that LL is more than a launcher.
…
I need to make a new post about this.
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I agree and disagree with the original post. Pierre seems to be taking on one major project at a time but while doing so is also fixing bugs like TrianguloY pointed out. I will always support more features to this launcher because so far these added features are always optional and are only something people get in to if they want to, nothing is a must for this launcher.
The current alpha is actually in great working order so far and has fixed a few bugs and also added some interesting features besides just scripting. You are right that scripting will be for the very few but I think once it becomes easy to share scripts between users things will become very interesting for LLX’s more advanced users.
This all being said I do believe new users need a help in getting started with this launcher. I plan to post a few ideas on how to possibly do that even though I have no idea if Pierre would want to do it.
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Jacob Barton Thanks for the info. I did not participate in the Alpha yet, lack of time. Great to hear things are improving there! But for users of the official version, the time is standing still. Don’t rush with the alpha, Pierre Hébert, take the time if takes. But if possible give the official release some attention, too 🙂
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Dear Lutz Linke , I specially value your judgement, and be sure I understand your point of view.
A lot of new features have been added recently, and scripting is probably (surely?) the last big thing to be added in this app. As I said earlier, there won’t be a v11. Next to follow are improvements and small additions. Everything has an end.
Scripting is a critical feature. Yes it is a developer thing, and yes it will be understood and mastered by few users. But this is nevertheless the only way to enable a few things than would otherwise need complex screens made of an unintuitive and scarying pile of checkboxes and options. Often, a small script will be far better than a rigid customization screen, and I hope that thanks to script sharing, those use cases will be available to non developer users as well. To name a few: close a folder while hitting the back key only if a given panel is visible, toggle between two (or more) positions of the same desktop using the same button, fade out some items and highlight abnother one when scrolled to a given page, scroll to a page using its x/y number and not an absolute pixel position, scroll to a given position inside a panel from a gesture (or screen rotation event). Some of these actions could (or should) be configurable through the settings screen, but most can’t. I feel like some of the rough edges that you legitimately mention could be soften using short scripts, at the expense of a more obscure way to do, yes, but paradoxically in a much easier way. Don’t get me wrong: scripting is not a replacement for other things, this is the way to do stuff that would have been very difficult to setup through menus. Menus are already way too long.
About bugs… Yes there are bugs. And there are several kind of bugs. Some of them are true bugs, some of them are badly designed behaviors, some other are behaviors that are fine in a given context but bad in another context. I take responsibility for all of them.
I sincerely think that biggest true bugs are ironed out at a regular pace (but maybe I am wrong). However the fact is that new ones are added with new features as well and I am perfectly aware of this. Sure, before panels, there were no bugs with panels, and I wonder (or fear?) how much issues scripting will trigger. Regarding other minor bugs, I admit that some tend to stay there longer (or even a very long time). Most of the time this is because fixing requires an amount of energy that I don’t have. In other situations I simply don’t have a solution, or I have a solution but it needs another thing to be done before, so I prefer to wait and do things in the right order instead of building, breaking and building differently again. Those who have a team, a fixed feature plan and one million to spend in marketing can do this. I can’t. So I take the shortest path from my developer point of view, which does not always match user expectations, agreed. Not at all an excuse, but only an explanation.
And over the time, I may forget about issues. The list is so long that I regularly fail to sort them by priority 😉 Don’t hesitate to remind me if I am too long, bother me with questions, ping me or shout: it helps.
A long time ago I thought at adding “Beta” to the app title, it didn’t fit in the allowed 30 characters name, but at least things would have been clear 😉
Ok, now I claim for the longest post so far on this community 🙂
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Pierre Hébertu purposely wrote all that just to claim the longest post you cheater lmao. you are right but for someone like me long menus may be the better solution because I don’t have a degree in this script editor stuff. truthfully I dropped out of highschool my grades were shit my gpa wasn’t even that of a chimpanzee let alone a mentally challenged kindergartener on downers. i hate math reading sucks science is too complicated and to Hell with history. my only good areas were in pe and elective where I was allowed to goof off. I’m not saying this to sell myself short I really was a failure in school. so now that I’m older I have to struggle with the basics of ideas in this complex launcher and it hurts my head just thinking. however that won’t stop me from using this launcher all it does is stop me from ever being able to do anything cool with it. maybe I can get a few ideas at how to do this or do that but by the time I implement these ideas they will have already been done because I don’t have the skills to do it myself. this hurts. then to top that off I’m using a tablet with so many restrictions it’s amazing that I can even use ll or llx at all. at least everyone who’s even remotely good at scripting can use it. I look at it and think whoa cool another text app. why? because I’m too stupid to figure out what it’s really for and how to use it. I’m one of the noobs Lutz Linke was talking about honestly. I’m new to this and it bothers me that I can’t even get stop points right how am I gonna get scripting down? correct me if I’m wrong but in a way a degree is needed just to use the advanced features on this. however at the same time I also don’t give a f..k about some of them. to me some advanced features is like a playground where I goof off with it just for laughs…. while other areas I look at it and go screw this shit. maybe your method of things works better who knows? maybe this is just what I need to get off my fat ass and get some education ask questions get help like I should have been doing in high school. I’ll be 32 this year and I can barely do simple math it’s sad but I need to count on my fingers just to answer any math problems passed what’s 25+30. even that problem had me grinding my brain cells a little. the answer is 55 right? that’s a guess. wrapping this up this launcher does have a leading curve as stated in your description in the play store. it’s not for anyone looking for just a simple launcher so anyone reading this if that’s what you’re looking for you got things to learn. i on the other hand am glad I bought this that way I can learn a few things. I knew what I was getting into. I’ve stated that I’m not ask that bright and I have a low iq but I hope by reading this you figure that I’m not ask that completely stupid either. with all this said let’s see who the longest post is now. >:)
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Thanks Pierre Hébert for your long answer.
Once again let me state: you are doing a magnificient work, especially without a team behind! Pretty grown (and growing) community around LLx does not make things easier for you. Motivation on one hand, pressure on the other.
I was in the position of having installed LL on my wife’s new phone (Xperia Z1 compact), she liked my Elegance template (or a variant of that), but had a few wishes for modification. It were those bumps I wrote in the post here, that I myself were not that aware of. Out of habit I avoided them instictively — but she could not get used to “no, you cannot swipe here, that does not work; swipe here or here”. And that’s understandable.
But, damn, now I REALLY am curious and have to take my time to test the LLx Alpha very soon on one of my devices to get a glimpse of it’s scripting possibilities 😉 Currently I’m out of the position to judge, but from what you wrote about using basic scripts to handle situations instead of blowing up menus sounds reasonable. Sounds like scripts can be called like “macros” or functions with parameters? That’d be great.
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EDIT: Be warned, I am a .NET professional and used to Visual Studio’s IntelliSense and syntax highlighting, so I have high expectations to any other IDE; even if it’s a script editor.
(Just kidding)
(Maybe not)
(Kidding again)
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Interesting conversation. I have been using some version of LL for about a year now. Last week I finally figured out shortcuts, and was ecstatic! Still don’t have a grasp on stop points-I just keep tweaking until I get something that works for me. I am self-taught, middle aged & love learning new stuff, but have to admit scripting troubles me bc I will want to use it, but won’t know how, just as I have tried & retried Tasker. I also have to say the 1st time I tried LL, I gave up in disgust, but it kept luring me back with the ability to place widgets inside folders. Pierre Hébert, I mean no disrespect to you, I just had that feeling Curtis Sylvester Jr. had: why am I too stupid to figure this out? Now I love & adore it, can’t imagine phone w/o it & say praises to you each day for such a slick setup. Now,pls realize I do not develop templates for others, just little old me. So therefore I consider myself a little more than a noob, more a wanna-be expert. Just my 2¢, fwiw.
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Terri Hine mentioning tasker alone got my attention I’m all ears now. I love tasker. but yah I know why I’m too stupid to learn some of this stuff. it’s because I hated just about every subject you can think of. as I stated to me math was a joke. 6nx5 or some math problem like that and the only thing I can think of is ok you wanna tell me what n is so I can solve this? now not only do I need to know the answer to that I’m also adding x y z to the picture well wtf is x what’s y and what the hell is is z? to me it’s like a 2nd language and I’m not that good with that subject either. all I’m saying is now I wish I had taken the time to pay attention. it’s where I mentioned needing a college degree. you gotta know how to script just to use the script editor and to me when I look at a script ask I see is what looks like a math paper Albert Einstein turned in after he sniffed butane and shot up his arm full of crank with a horse tranquilizer. now I know how my mom feels when I try teaching her how to use the DVD recorder the only difference is that ain’t got crap to do with math just read the labels right? well I’m just as stumped in this as she is on the DVD recorder. only difference is I’m willing to learn. here’s an idea why don’t we join forces and show that we can learn new tricks.
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