April is going by so fast, just one day left of it. We know that INLEO's dev team has paused the release of new features on threads because they aimed to make the UI bug-free and give us a smooth user experience.
From what I heard, this month has been dedicated to that purpose. Unfortunately, things have been challenging, with persistent errors on some days, making the interface almost inaccessible for most of us. It can be frustrating but somehow, we are getting through the rough times and I believe more than anything, Khal wants the site to be reliable.
I use the UI (both production site and Labs) for almost everything - publishing my posts, engaging with others (threads and long-form posts), and curating. I do use Ecency for swapping HBD/HIVE plus some other things. PeakD is used to check and confirm if my transactions (activities) on INLEO went through successfully.
Sometimes when I can't access INLEO, I open the other interface, locate the post I want to read or engage with, manually change the URL to inleo, and then go from there, lol! That sounded crazy but I got used to doing it that going through such a long route didn't feel burdensome at some point.
Anyway, let me share a few of my experiences using the INLEO frontend this month.
Publishing UI
So far, I haven't had any issues publishing my long-form content through the interface. Once I hit the 'publish' button, my post goes through and gets indexed without a problem.
The publishing UI however, was not allowing me to upload photos so most times I create my draft on another frontend and copy-paste it to INLEO when it's ready to be posted. I know there's another way to add photos like uploading them to other sites like imgurl but I feel more comfortable using what's available onchain.
I don't know about the others, but it would be nice if we could drag and drop images without clicking on the 'upload photo' icon. That will allow us to add 2 or more photos by dragging them at once. It would save time and be more user-friendly than adding images one at a time.
Errors or Bugs on Threads and Other INLEO Pages
Threads had some downtimes this month. There were issues of longer threads disappearing, polls not working, embedded videos not indexing, upvotes not going through, the inability to upload photos (both on threads and long content), and what else. Even so, people are persistent on using the UI.
In my case, there were a few days when replying to comments under my long-form posts always ended with persistent errors I had to refresh the page each time a reply was sent. Some replies were not indexed either.
I truly appreciate that Khal and other INLEO team like Jessica are checking out the 'feedback' hashtag on threads. Some of my threads were recipient to their attention which I'm grateful. That shows their commitment to solving issues in the UI.
And guess what? A few days after Khal acknowledged my feedback, the error was no more! One bug successfully squeezed hard so I could interact or engage with those commenting on my posts conveniently.
I couldn't be happier and gave good feedback on threads to inform them that my concern had been solved, and of course, to thank them too!
Things are getting better. I wrote this whole post on INLEO's publishing UI without encountering any issues. Photo uploading worked like a charm too. It's all good, at least based on my experience today.
And if you're wondering why I insist on using the UI even when it is wonky, the reason is simple and brutally honest - I want to earn LEO and distribute some too through my curation. If you didn't know, publishing your long-form content via the UI gives you chances to get curated by leo.voter and its curation trail. That means increased post rewards (HP/HBD plus $LEO). Of course, threading makes you earn LEO too.
And yes, I like the initiatives being carried out here, the collaboration between communities, among other things, so utilizing the application is the least I could do to support it.
While we want the UI to be kept stable and with no downtimes or issues and the UX improved, there are still glitches and such. It may take time for things to become very reliable, but I believe Khal's team is working on that. Until then, let's keep pushing until they squeeze 'em all!😉
Lead image created on Canva. Screenshots from threads. 29042024/20:16ph