[WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Hello again.

I have decided to have fun with Qt again, and in order to prepare for Sailfish launch, I was decided to write a library for Facebook graph API in Qt.

Of cause Jolla people were also writing their libraries on their own, and thanks to Sledges, I got in touch with the main developer of their solution, the so called Nemo Social QML plugin. After hard work with them, we now have a quite nice library that many projects can use.

It was normal that the previous client that I was working on got rebased on that new project, but I'm still focused on performances and smoothness as a key factor.

After a lot of work, and the help of Jolla people to debug my library, I have the pleasure to reintroduce Friends for N9 !

Friends for N9

Friends for N9 is currently a work in progress in creating a nice, beautiful and smooth Facebook client based on Nemo Social QML plugin.

Of cause, right now I'm far from having a fully featured client, so there are a lot of things that do not work now:

• Most Features in Facebook
• No capability to logout
• Caching system is ... basic

Of cause, there are also a lot of things that works, meaning that it can be used as a Facebook client from now:

• Browing your list of friends and their profile
• Reading news feed (initial suppport)
• Seeing album list, and thumbnails of photos
• Browsing photos
• Posting status updates on your / friends's wall (was working, not working now)
• Posting comments, liking posts (was working, not working now)
• Posting posts in groups, browsing groups (but not group management and informations) (was working, not working now)

I'm working hard to get new features, but it takes time, and I can only give them in an incremental fashion. I'm currently focusing on

• Getting feature parity with the old Friends for N9 client
• Enhanced groups support
• Pages support
• Photo commenting and tagging

You can visit the Facebook page of the application as well, and like it if you want. You can also get your hands dirty and clone my repository on GitHub.

Get it

Thanks to openrepos, we have now a smooth path to push updates, and hosting our packages. You can see all the versions of Friends in openrepos:

http://openrepos.net/content/friends

If you are coming from the 0.0.X versions, please remove everything related to qfb (qfb-friends, qfb-friends-clientid) if you want to try the 0.1.X versions.


Some debug stuff

Friends cannot log you out currently, and the login system may change from time to time. So if you want to log out, you need to remove

• The file /home/user/.config/SfietKonstantin/qfb-mobile.conf
• The folder /home/user/.local/share/data/SfietKonstantin/qfb-mobile/

Cache management is poorly managed, and might take a lot of space. You can remove it by deleting

• The folder /home/user/.cache/SfietKonstantin/qfb-mobile/

Contribute

You can help by coding ! Don't hesitate to clone my repo, and find bugs, or improve stuff. You can ping me on IRC (harmattan@freenode) or better, go to nemomobile or jollamobile@freenode and talk directly with all the developers, especially chriadam for the QML plugin part. You can also talk to me if you have some enhancement ideas, or want to contribute code.

You can also help by providing feedback. Be constructive, and tell me about what feature you want the most.

Finally, you can help by supporting my work. Code cannot be written on it's own, and "Free" apps are actually very time consuming, so financial support are really appreciated. So please support my work by doing a donation.

Bugs and enhancements

Here is the list of enhancements and bugs that were already listed, please take a look before posting yours.

This list might not be very up-to-date either. I will come back to them when feature parity is restored.

Bugs

• While posting, the list of posts is not updated when the post sent.
• Scrolling become laggy in a long list

Tier 0 enhancements (critical)

• Correct caching system (purge photos cache, avatars and usless stuff)
• Error handling (removing auth, wrong graph call, token needing to be renewed etc.)
• Seamless update using Apps formeego In progress. Currently, you have updates through my repo.

Tier 1 enhancements (important)

• Localization
• Quick nav in friends list, and filtering
• A Filter search bar for friend list

Tier 2 enhancements (less important)

• Better start screen (less empty)
• Nice animation to hide the cover photo (while scrolling or not)
• Separator for comments
• Icons for likes and comments (before the number of likes and comments)
• Dark theme
• No useless "load previous" comments button
• Load when scrolling
• Photo downloader
• Notifications (background daemon)
• Single signon
• Feed integration
• Better pictures as cover for Albums

Bugs and enhancements can also be posted here. They are even easier to track !

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Wow ! Very nice. Thank You ! Wait a new fetures ?

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

I want a full client.
But first, I focus on reading capabilities (read albums, read likes, read groups)

After that, I will focus on write (post) capabilities (post posts, location, pictures, vids etc.)

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

That's cool :) actually up to now there is no fb app for Harmattan that works better than the mobile site imho. This is very promising and smooth as butter :)

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

it's awesome. Can wait the next update. Btw nice icon too :)

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Bloody Brilliant :)

Oh man now this is sweet. :) Can't wait for future updates, thanks.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Any screenshots ?

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Here they are

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

brilliant app, it looks very promising!

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

This is great news - somebody putting their heart n soul into a project for the N9, but with Sailfish in mind for the future.

This is why I love this community :)

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

This is awesome! I love the UI. When you add liking and commenting this will become my most used facebook app. Just a note though, having an image cache would be nice so less data is used and loading is just a tad faster. :)

Looking for this....

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Great to read that you're working on a FB app made in Lausanne :) Looking very promising and I hope to see it as one of the Sailfish-launch apps :)

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Obviously this is early WIP... but what there is already looks better than Nokia's Facebook app. Looking forward to this.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Looking good. I have a few recommendations.

I think that the UI should follow how the Facebook website works - profile page, feed, and then the miscellaneous pages (friends, groups, etc.)

Oh, and the text in front of certain header images is unreadable. A drop shadow like shown below can fix it.
https://goput.it/oc2.jpg

Oh wow, this looks GREAT! I love the UI and the whole design. Can't wait until it's more developed.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Very good ideas !
Why there is no "Me / feed / misc" now is because the "user page" is the same that is used for you and other people ...

I will fix the drop shadow, it is a very good idea, thanks !

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Small teaser

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Can't wait for this! :cool:

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

BTW, I think that you won't be against accounts integration because I plan to add it :)
I will also try, but it is harder, to get event feed integration.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

yeah ↖(^ω^)↗

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

I posted the update with status update.
Link is the same (1st post).

I hope to get like and comment working quickly, while improving API. When the client is nearly feature complete, I will add "fancy stuff", like feed integration and single sign on.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Does Facebook API allow user tagging?

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

still 0.0.1? is that the new one?

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

It should ...

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

so do you plan to include tagging then?

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

"event feed integration" is main attraction....waiting...:-)

Looking forward for future updates. :)

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

A really nice client! Really well done, simplistic and easy to use. And it does run smooth.

As long as your taking feedback:
- I would chance the "Informations" to "Information" or "Personal Info"

and that's it everything else seems to work just great.
Keep up the good work and I can't wait to see what your going to show us next

You mentioned album list in your list of features but does album list show anything? I only saw a blank list.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

- Seeing album list, and thumbnails of photos

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

could someone share .deb via dropbox... Can't download it

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

same here. But i just saw a blank page

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

Permissions problems. Either you disabled access to 3rd party app to your albums, or the friend does. Because here, it works.

Try also to clear the cache and config file and relogin.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

If you can write a client that supports:
1. Group chat
2. Uploading images to groups

It will be awesome!!!! KEep up the good work man! This is awesome!

edit: downloaded the 0.0.1, and WOW HOW FAST AND SMOOTH IT IS :eek: This is a great start!

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

I log in, and get a 'success'-screen. And the app doesn't remember the login.

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

cheers dude...

Re: [WIP] Friends, a smooth Facebook client for N9
 

i really like this app... like everyone else here :) so keep going...

just add features step by step and improve some ui things...

as u have a lot of features still to do i don't have to tell you about them... maybe first have a look at the features missing in standard facebook app... like check in, pages, groups

ui:

- startscreen looks a bit empty...
- in news feed or friends, where the cover foto is smaler, you could remove the name... bit useless there and it would look nicer i think,,, or just make it also smaler...