I must preface this expressing my pleasure in seeing what is happening
with Subsurface-mobile version 2. The enormous effort that is going into
this and the incredible difference that it makes to the usability of the
program. I am privileged to be associated with this team that is
creating a remarkable piece of software.
I experience that there are fundamental problems with manipulating dive
lists on the mobile platform.
1) See screencast at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/47m9ujbzancuxen/2017_06_24_11_28_30.mp4?dl=0
using 4.6.4.443. This playback speed is at a THIRD of the live speed.
View dive list.
Delete a dive
Go back to dive list
Select another dive and hit delete button at bottom.
Display goes to *previous deleted* dive and the second dive is not
deleted at all. Looks like delete sequence is not even started.
Hitting the Android Back button (to get back to the dive list) crashes
the program.
Fortunately, upon restart of the program, no dives are deleted.
I can supply adb logcat if required.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is such an intense flurry of Subsurface-mobile activity at the
moment, I hope some of the above can be addressed before the next major
release.
Kind regards,
willem
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