I don’t mean to sound entitled, and I hope that the author of Arctic is in good health. But, with the TestFlight soon expiring and the AppStore version somewhat outdated, I was hoping if there would be anyone who had any news about updates? Or, should we be looking for alternatives?
I used arctic a little, but decided to build my own alternative. It’s very actively maintained.
The clock is kinda ticking with all these apps, since Lemmy V1, in the next year ish, will bring breaking changes. I’m committed to Lemmy V1 support, and if you don’t like my app, I’m pretty confident Voyager will also have Lemmy V1 support.
I wasn’t sure about trying yet another app since Arctic really hits a sweet spot for me but yours is really good. It looks polished and is laid out how I generally prefer. Does it support any push notifications for DMs, replies, etc? Also if you have a TestFlight build I’m happy to run that as well.
Not yet. I’m trying to have Blorp not depend on any remote web server at all. I was thinking about doing local notifications, but the caveat would be 1) ~15 delay and 2) app has to be running in the background.
Not depending on a web server means lower cost/maintainer for me, and people can more easily fork my project. Then for the notification content, I’m thinking it’s a summary “15 unread replies and 2 dms”.
Is that a good enough solution or is that significantly worse than push notifications in your opinion?
I think that’d be fine generally. I’m on Lemmy enough it’s likely to be in the background most of the time and I don’t really get a ton of notifications anyway. If it makes it more maintainable I think it’s a solid compromise
I literally just installed your app (on Android) to give it a whirl about 15 minutes ago. I’m afraid to ask how you chose the name…
Glorp glorp kinda sounded like a Rick and Morty character, and it made me laugh. I don’t think it is a character, but I was like glorp glorp… Blorp? Lol
After having worked on this app for 6 months, I told my girlfriend I was gonna call it Blorp and she was like “yeah, let’s keep working on the name”. I bought blorpblorp.xyz and didn’t look back.
Also, happy cake day!
Sounds like you might be a character (that’s a good thing, BTW)! Thanks for the explanation - I love R&M as inspiration!
Arctic’s the only one with proper theme customisation, which is an accessibility requirement for many people :c
Interesting. Let me mess around with arctic themes. I do want to support increased contrast, but I wasn’t planning on theme support. But I could be convinced.
No pressure! I wanted to give it some visibility because it’s a significant need in the community (at least for iOS users, I can’t remember what the current Android lineup is like). It’s something that’ll prevent people from using the threadiverse at all, and likewise, allow them to use it when they can’t use platforms like Reddit. I wish Arctic was open source. At least Ice Cubes for Mastodon is.
It’s actually just as common for people to only be able to use low-contrast themes. There’s a range of conditions that cause it, such as light sensitivity (which can be debilitatingly severe) and astigmatism.
It’s not so much a pressure thing as it is me learning how to be a product manager. My job as a PM is to sort through the noise and figure out what will actually improve the app.
For example, screen reader feels very clear cut to me. There’s an obvious problem (a need to navigate the site without your eyes) and an obvious solution. I would have to understand other accessibility needs better to solve those problems.
How my choice of words “problem/solution” is ok. I think everyone is perfect the way they are, and what I’m really trying to say is “what are the minimal steps I can take to meet everyone where they’re at”.
TL;DR, how about we start with this. If I could only add 1-2 more themes, what 2 themes would benefit the app the most from an accessibility standpoint.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Unfortunately many areas of accessibility don’t have such a one-size-fits-all solution. Low, medium and high contrast themes in both light and dark mode would be a good starting point and allow at least minimum use for most people, but it would still exclude many people. If you’re adding more themes than just light and dark mode, is it that much more time consuming to add customisable themes? The iOS Mastodon app Ice Cubes is open source and has similar theme customisation to Arctic, I’m not sure if it could be of any help.
‘Problem/solution’ is appropriate wording for technology, no one will interpret it ableistly! Inaccessibility is a huge problem. I’m not sure anyone feels fine just the way they are when they’re excluded from the majority of the internet and society at large though, haha.
It’s not a lot of work to add multiple themes. It’s more that everything I add need to test and maintain as I ship updates. I would love to grow the project and have more testers. Having people report accessibility bugs is super helpful.
I could use some help writing out what themes to add. Would you be willing to open a GitHub issue with all the themes listed? Feel free to provide comparables like “High contrast - See Arctic this theme”
Edit: or maybe I should just implement all of Arctic’s themes if you think they are great as is
Looks interesting your App 🧐. Does it support video playback, screenshots creation from comments and posts or uploads to a video hoster?
A bit late in asking, and I’m currently supposed to be paying attention to something else lol, but do you have or plan iOS support? I love Arctic but will need a replacement 🫡
Blorp supports iOS. I’m an iOS user myself so I actually do most of my testing there. There’s also a macOS app, though it’s currently distributed outside the App Store. My goal is to offer a great experience on every platform.
My favorite time to work on Blorp is when I’m supposed to be paying attention to something else. 50% of this project is to prove to myself that I’m capable of finishing a project lol.
You sound like me lol, so I downloaded it and I’ll give it a shot, thanks! Is there an instance for it at the moment?
It defaults to Lemmy.zip for now. You can add custom instances by putting them in the search durning login. I don’t plan on running a public instance, since running that would be time I could dedicate to working on Blorp. There’s a community [email protected], but I think I’m going to migrate to [email protected].
Awesome to hear, I just made this @lemmy.ml account. I’ll create one on zip. I’m just looking for compatibility and up time, a few are sadly disappearing.
A lot of people block ml, but it’s run by the Lemmy devs so I would expect it to not disappear. I personally was caught off guard with lemm.ee shutting down, but it seems like lemmy.world and Lemmy.zip are safe. I hope.
Alright, you’ve convinced me to switch again lol. Mind if I ask why? I’m just trying to pick closest servers, but I don’t want to be blocked.
Edit: Signed up for zip and waiting on acceptance.
Unfortunately all the signs point to this app being dead in the water it seems.
Loved using it, was the best one out there imo.
Yeah, I really hope that the dev is well. That’s the most important thing. FWIW I’m using Voyager now and it’s all mostly there. I just can’t seem to let go of the swipe from right to left gesture that would reopen the last viewed post, though.
I also hope the dev is doing well.
I noticed that the notification server for push notifications has been returning 500’s for days now.
So yeah… unless there’s some info from dev, I’m looking to move on. Unfortunately, no other app compares to Arctic (if Arctic added Piefed support, it would be perfect).
No activity on their Lemmy account or GitHub in 5 month. Hope they’re ok :(
