It is a long time I didn’t take the time to write any update about the development of the STEMsocial app. Four weeks to be precise, since this post in which I clarified various items embedded in our funding proposal (#91).
Even if we are still far from being funded, I believe it is important to communicate about what has been done and I will do my best with this item in the next few weeks. The current period is bad as I actively participate to the activities of an important hiring committee, which eats 150% of my time. I will be free again from July 3rd.
In this post, I briefly detail what has been done with the last 13 commits, the modifications to the code being traceable from the GitHub folder. The deployed version of the app can be as usual accessed from https://stem.openhive.network.
A new editor and a better MarkDown/HTML converter
Our new post editor has been finalised, and is used for more than 3 weeks by several STEMsocial members. This helped a lot in the debugging, and we improved our MarkDown/HTML internal converter at the same time (one bug always leads to another bug). In particular, video embedding is working way better than before, code areas and quoted text are correctly displayed and text alignment too.
Therefore, I benefit from this post to personally thank the 8 STEMsocial members who helped me here with their tests and bug reports: @carlos84, @acont, @cyprianj, @dexterdev, @emperorhassy, @gentleshaid, @medro-martin, @sciencevienna and those I sadly forgot (my brain is over busy those days; feel free to manifest yourself in the comment section of this post, I will apologise 100 times and add our name to the list).
As a summary of what has been done, the code is now free from the older packages that were initially used for post editing, and a few options have been added in the process: users can easily add beneficiaries, choose the payout distribution method and get some MarkDown (or HTML) template for improved text format through a home-made toolbar. At the same time, the way codes and quotes are displayed has been rewritten. This was a long-term suggestion that I addressed in the process.
I hope posts now look nicer for the eyes and post editing is smoother! :)
Communication with Hivesigner / Hive Keychain
In addition, it was quite unexpected, but I had to rewrite entirely how the app communicates with Hive. This took some time. Even much more time than planned.
Two options are still allowed to login and broadcast transactions: Hive Keychain and Hivesigner. I have improved the design of the modals associated with those login options and centralised all the communication tools in a single file.
In particular, extra checks on the viability of the Hivesigner token are made, redirections after token renewal are now fixed from various bugs. This even leads to fix some issues at the Hivesigner level together with @good-karma (thanks for your time). Finally, the app now reports in a more detailed way any broadcast error.
All of this was achieved again with the help of various patient beta testers: @agmoore, @cyprianj, @felixrodriguez, @nattybongo, @robotics101 and @steepup. Thanks to all of you! I hope no one has been forgotten :D
About close-future development plans
In the next few weeks (after my committee meeting, I plan to work on various aspects:
- fixing some issues with the followers/following feature of the app (that is actually broken);
- improving the loading time as the app is asking too much to the chain (which makes it unnecessarily heavy at the client level);
- finalising the wallet transfer functions;
- improving the display of the user personal blog profile (@dexterdev, pelase be happy);
- getting some statistics about the app usage.
From there, I will move on with the major tasks planned for the summer: improving routing and SEO…
That’s all for today!
The famous last words
If you like what we do, please consider:
- supporting our funding proposal (#91), on which extra information can be found here;
- approving our witness (@stem.witness);
- delegating to the @stemsocial account (or trailing it).