Rachel 4:03 pm on August 24, 2016
Tags: Android ( 166 ), beta ( 47 ), wpandroid ( 34 )

Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 5.8

WordPress for Android version 5.8-rc-1 has been released in the Google Play Store. You can join the betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. from the Google Play Store on your device (under “Become a beta tester”), and join the Google Plus beta community for more discussion with other testers.

New Features:

Synchronized read notifications: Push notifications will now be synchronized across your devices, and automatically dismissed if you read the notification on another device. To test, make sure push notifications are enabled, trigger one or more notifications, and then read those notifications in a web browser or on another device. They should be dismissed as you read them elsewhere.
Invite Followers/Viewers: You can now invite followers and viewers to your site in People Management (WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ sites only). To test, make sure you can invite followers (on public sites) or viewers (on private sites), and that invitations to become a user on the site still work as expected.

Additional Changes:

Improved offline messaging: A “no connection” message now appears if you aren’t connected to a network in these parts of the app:
- Plans
- Editor > Post Settings > Select categories
- Editor > Post Settings > Add categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging.
- Me > My Profile
Reader tweaks: There are a number of small tweaks to the Reader’s design and behavior, including how the Follow button and Likes appear. Let us know if you have any confusion or trouble following blogs and liking posts!

Bugs & Feedback

Did you find a bug or come up with a feature request while testing? You can discuss it here, report it using the “Enter feedback about the app” form in the Google Play Store, or head straight to the Android Github repository and open a new issue.

#android, #beta, #wpandroid

srstancil 7:56 pm on August 24, 2016

Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly…with the new synced notifications feature, you’re saying that the Android system notification should be dismissed when it’s read from another device, right? Or is it just that the notification internal to the WordPress app will be acknowledged across devices? (i.e. the ‘unread’ badge disappears from the bell icon on the upper right of the app)

If it’s supposed to be the latter, then it’s working fine. But if it’s the former, then it’s not working for me using Android 6.0.1 on a Nexus 6P
- Rachel 9:37 pm on August 24, 2016
  
  It’s the former — the Android system notification should be dismissed when it’s read from another device. (The original enhancement description is in issue 1603 and the pull request is PR 4493, for reference.) I haven’t tested this yet so I’ll take a closer look at it tomorrow.
- Rachel 11:48 am on August 25, 2016
  
  Thanks for bringing this up. Due to issue 4503 the push notification syncing won’t work correctly on alpha/betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. versions. That’s being worked on, but for now we’ll have to hold off on testing that feature.
  - srstancil 3:18 pm on August 25, 2016
    
    Ah, gotcha. Thanks.
  - srstancil 3:17 pm on August 26, 2016
    
    Testing invitations:
    
    1) On the actual invitation page, the styling on the Role selector is misleading…there’s nothing to indicate that it’s a dropdown, it looks like it’s hardcoded to the preset value. Issue 4510
    2) In one case I was able to invite an existing user (a Contributor, I think) as an Administrator, and it actually upgraded them instead of telling me that they were already a member…but I haven’t been able to reproduce it, so maybe I just imagined it. But I’m reporting it here just in case somebody else sees the same thing and we can try to narrow it down.
    
    I’ll test the offline messaging this afternoon and report my findings on that separately.
Rachel 2:06 pm on August 25, 2016
I tested follower/viewer invites:
- Follower showed up on public sites and Viewer showed up on private sites, as expected. I also confirmed they appear in the same order (Follower/Viewer at the top of the list of Roles) as they do in Calypso.
- I confirmed that if I try to send a follower invite to someone who already follows the site, I get the expected error message: “[username]: Already following”
- I confirmed that if I try to invite an existing member/viewer of the site as a follower/viewer, I get the expected error message: “There’s already a member with username [username]”
- I confirmed that I can invite a non-viewer follower (i.e. someone who followed a site before it became private) to become a viewer on a private site.
- I confirmed that follower/viewer invites are sent correctly to the invited users.
I came across a couple confusing points about invite errors, but those are already tracked in issue 4358 and 4351.

Tested on Nexus 9, Android 6.0.1, WPAndroid alpha-20.
- Rachel 2:44 pm on August 25, 2016
  
  I also came across issue 4347 again — you can’t invite a viewer to become a member of a private site.
Rachel 3:24 pm on August 25, 2016

I tested the improved offline messaging and confirmed that when I’m offline I get appropriate offline error messages on the screen mentioned above: https://cloudup.com/c_HX0fsUvfI

The only unclear message I saw was if I had an internet connection when I started creating a new categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging., and lost it before I finished. In that case, after I tried adding the category I got a generic “Adding category failed” error.
Victoria 4:30 am on August 26, 2016
I tested follower/viewer invites:
- Found an error where a user role from a user in Team would show up as the role of a viewer who does not have a user role, when toggling from Team > Followers > Viewers. Reported here in 4506.
Tested on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, Android 6.0.1, WPAndroid alpha-20.
Victoria 2:24 pm on August 26, 2016
I tested improved offline messaging:
- could not see any offline message when I was in Plans, Profile, or Edit categories when the phone was in airplane mode, although if I went back to the site dashboard I’d see the no connection warning at the bottom, but no indication in the above three areas: https://cloudup.com/c0fYKpJPbRF
My Profile
1) From site dashboard, put phone on airplane mode.
2) After seeing the yellow no connection error at the bottom, I navigated to My Profile, where the yellow error bar disappeared. Edits to the profile don’t save, but there’s also no indication that I’m offline.

Categories
1) From site dashboard, put phone on airplane mode. Confirm yellow no connection message.
2) Go to Posts > Posts Settings > Select Categories.
3) Unable to add any more categories, but also unable to see any no connection message.

Plans
1) Start on Plans with internet connection.
2) Disable internet connection.
3) No indication that I’m now offline, I go back to the site dashboard, where I immediately see the yellow no connection bar at the bottom.

Tested on Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus, Android 6.0.1, WPAndroid alpha-20.
- Rachel 1:37 pm on August 30, 2016
  
  The yellow “No connection” banner at the bottom of the screen doesn’t appear on all screens. (I believe it only appears on the 4 main tabs in the app.) On most screens, you’ll see a toast message indicating the connection error — such as when you try to save changes to your profile.
- Rachel 1:43 pm on August 30, 2016
  
  In any case, I’ve reopened issue 4410 to ask about this behavior and the other issue I reported above. Thanks for reporting it!
  - Victoria 2:45 am on August 31, 2016
    
    You’re welcome! I should have worded it better, I meant to say that there was no indication of no connection happening at all, no toast message or yellow bar, even when I was trying to save/make changes. The only way I knew I was offline was that nothing happened whenever I tried to save changes.
srstancil 7:28 pm on August 26, 2016

Reader – overall the changes look good, but I came across a bug with the Discover list not refreshing correctly – 4513

Offline messaging – I didn’t find any issues not already noted by others in this thread.
designsimply 10:09 pm on August 29, 2016

I tested adding a viewer to a private site and confirmed that the viewer showed up as expected. (See visual record.)
Rachel 3:12 pm on August 30, 2016

I tested the Reader: I mostly didn’t have any trouble, but I did see that post headers (above each post) on post lists were sometimes missing. Reported in 4517