3 ms·

How about some screenshots?

qweqwe14 20d ago
I constantly see those projects that would benefit from a screenshot in a readme, but for some reason the thought about adding one doesn't even come to the authors' mind, even though it's pretty obvious. I'd really like to know what's going on.
- gbalduzzi 20d ago
  I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics. Which is a bummer because it is a complete different point of view from the more typical user experience
  - xboxnolifes 20d ago
    An image is functionality, as it provides significant information to the reader.
  - gremlinunderway 20d ago
    Yeah but see, we're talking about a functionality that is inherently visual. Ergonomics has nothing to do with esthetics, and it's such a dumb excuse to hand wave aside interface issues as of they are just about "making things look pretty"
    - em-bee 20d ago
      exactly, i am looking at screenshots for apps to get an idea about their functionality.
  - embedding-shape 20d ago
    > I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics. In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else. With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.
- Dig1t 20d ago
  "A picture is worth a thousand words" It's like we've had this ancient knowledge passed down for generations but people constantly just ignore it.
- sakisv 20d ago
  I think the reason is that you can get quite much of a tunnel vision while developing. Everyone involved already knows what they're building and how it looks, so it's very easy to overlook it. Case in point, I recently wrote a CLI to show which of your AWS infra is not captured in terraform, and you can either print the result as a json to consume by a machine or generate a dashboard with some charts. It took me an embarrassing while to realise that I should have included a damned screenshot in the README, in fact I think I only realised when I wanted to show it to my brother.
  - IshKebab 20d ago
    It's also just quite a lot of work to generate screenshots.
    - sakisv 20d ago
      That's true as well, especially if you're still developing and changing things - because you tend to realise problems only after you've pushed the new screenshot :P
- alerque 19d ago
  Posting screenshots inside code repositories is hard. The binary asset handling does not belong in the source code tracker, so you end up with either bad repo hygiene or linking external assets inside the README, which is brittle. Also updating them to match every change in the code is a pane. Most app stores have ways to track screen shot assets along with releases, and even GH has a way to add image assets to release notes without tracking the images in Git, but not very many projects realize that's an option.
nicolas_ 20d ago
I was looking for the same thing. Fine! Maybe it’s in the Readme.md. Nothing! Well, ok then
karimabuseer 20d ago
Worth raising a PR/discussion on the repo as reasonable chance the devs haven’t even considered it
why_at 20d ago
I just updated mine to try it out, it definitely looks nicer. https://imgur.com/a/ZGpbqB7 https://imgur.com/a/ZGpbqB7
grapheneos 20d ago
A video would be needed rather than screenshots since those wouldn't show the new animations and UI flow. GrapheneOS users can update to it via the Alpha channel and try it out rather than looking at screenshots. There's still more to improve before it will go to the Beta and Stable channels. It's the default SMS/MMS app for GrapheneOS and isn't available for use outside GrapheneOS so we aren't trying to promote it as an option.
- gib444 20d ago
  [flagged]

I constantly see those projects that would benefit from a screenshot in a readme, but for some reason the thought about adding one doesn't even come to the authors' mind, even though it's pretty obvious. I'd really like to know what's going on.

gbalduzzi 20d ago
I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics. Which is a bummer because it is a complete different point of view from the more typical user experience
- xboxnolifes 20d ago
  An image is functionality, as it provides significant information to the reader.
- gremlinunderway 20d ago
  Yeah but see, we're talking about a functionality that is inherently visual. Ergonomics has nothing to do with esthetics, and it's such a dumb excuse to hand wave aside interface issues as of they are just about "making things look pretty"
  - em-bee 20d ago
    exactly, i am looking at screenshots for apps to get an idea about their functionality.
- embedding-shape 20d ago
  > I think in many cases the authors value functionality much more then esthetics. In many cases the repository isn't meant to be more than for source code too, not everyone use their git repository as also the marketing page, that'd go somewhere else. With that said, grapheneos.org doesn't seem to have any screenshots either, which I also don't understand and think is a bummer. Even though the point of the differences with GrapheneOS might not be mainly visual, just showing what it looks like seem like a no-brainer.
Dig1t 20d ago
"A picture is worth a thousand words" It's like we've had this ancient knowledge passed down for generations but people constantly just ignore it.
sakisv 20d ago
I think the reason is that you can get quite much of a tunnel vision while developing. Everyone involved already knows what they're building and how it looks, so it's very easy to overlook it. Case in point, I recently wrote a CLI to show which of your AWS infra is not captured in terraform, and you can either print the result as a json to consume by a machine or generate a dashboard with some charts. It took me an embarrassing while to realise that I should have included a damned screenshot in the README, in fact I think I only realised when I wanted to show it to my brother.
- IshKebab 20d ago
  It's also just quite a lot of work to generate screenshots.
  - sakisv 20d ago
    That's true as well, especially if you're still developing and changing things - because you tend to realise problems only after you've pushed the new screenshot :P
alerque 19d ago
Posting screenshots inside code repositories is hard. The binary asset handling does not belong in the source code tracker, so you end up with either bad repo hygiene or linking external assets inside the README, which is brittle. Also updating them to match every change in the code is a pane. Most app stores have ways to track screen shot assets along with releases, and even GH has a way to add image assets to release notes without tracking the images in Git, but not very many projects realize that's an option.

nicolas_ 20d ago

I was looking for the same thing. Fine! Maybe it’s in the Readme.md. Nothing! Well, ok then

karimabuseer 20d ago

Worth raising a PR/discussion on the repo as reasonable chance the devs haven’t even considered it

why_at 20d ago

I just updated mine to try it out, it definitely looks nicer. https://imgur.com/a/ZGpbqB7 https://imgur.com/a/ZGpbqB7

grapheneos 20d ago

A video would be needed rather than screenshots since those wouldn't show the new animations and UI flow. GrapheneOS users can update to it via the Alpha channel and try it out rather than looking at screenshots. There's still more to improve before it will go to the Beta and Stable channels. It's the default SMS/MMS app for GrapheneOS and isn't available for use outside GrapheneOS so we aren't trying to promote it as an option.

gib444 20d ago
[flagged]