Dear open source app user: feel free to improve the README file of the projects you come across by adding a few screenshots you believe are relevant.
Although I understand the OP's perspective open-source is a community effort and people should have a more proactive attitude and contribute when they feel things aren't okay. Most open-source developers aren't focused / don't have time for how things look (or at least not on the beginning). If you're a regular user and you can spend an hour taking a bunch of screenshots and improving a readme you'll be making more for the future the project that you might think.
When the last big Twitter migration to Mastodon occurred there were a lot new users complaining about things like documentation, bugs, etc. Old users and FLOSS supporters kept pushing the "its open source, write a doc or fill out a bug ticket" and evem included documentation on how to do those tasks.
Most people just continued to complain. /facepalm
We just don't live in a world where making the changes you want are encouraged. We have been thought to just accept whatever changes happen or at most file a suggestion that almost noone will listen to. Obviously open source is different but it's still such a tiny minority compared to how the rest of the world functions
As both user and developer - user CAN contribute but the developer/maintainer SHOULD add the screenshots.
This mentality explains a lot of open source.
There's both an ignorance and fear barrier to that.
A lot of people don't know they can, and don't know how. And even the ones that do know, often worry their contributions would be shit.
And there's folks that just don't think the project would accept that kind of submission.
I'm not contradicting your suggestion! It's a great thing to let people know that they can contribute without knowing how to code. Just adding in both an explanation as to why it's so rare, and hopefully allaying some of those worries for passersby.
If the app sucks, few people will add the screenshots. Therefore, most apps without screenshots will suck. So new apps will need the developer to add screenshots, or people will assume it sucks.
And we're back to square one. The developer has extra responsibility to highlight the features.
While we're at it, I love that you let me customize the settings via a config, but for the love of god make the default config the best it can possibly be
This. It should be the most sane configuration and fit most use cases and lead to an experience working out of the box.
I contribute to OS projects and work on one full time. EVERYBODY thinks that their obscure use case is the most common (not saying this is what you are doing).
We get users that are completely flabbergasted that our software doesn't offer some feature that is totally specific to their industry and has never been requested even once by anyone else previously. We'll show them our feature request form on our site where you can also view and upvote other requests, and point out that the feature they want has never been requested. They will literally come up with some bs excuse why that is and then insist that we get on it and build out this custom functionality that they need or else they're going to slander us on social media.
Your app doesn't integrate with "didLr"? OMG any decent app integrates with "didLr"!
There's a real problem here with backwards compatibility. If you add an option for something, it makes sense to make the default match the functionality of old versions, even if it's not the best for general use cases. That way any tools built on top of it can safely update.
Ding ding ding!
That said, the solution is to set new defaults for new installations only and not change existing configs. Users lose their minds (rightfully so) if you modify their existing configs.
Sometimes I'd settled for a simple description of what the tool even is. Sometimes the readme is just straight into compilation steps and I feel like we're rushing into something.
Foreplay is important! Gotta get me excited for that app.
To build the app install the gamete dependencies and run the following
make child
Me, developing a headless component library:
To be that dick, a headless component library is still meant to do something, show an example of it being used!
If you've written a "usage" section that showcases more than one uselessly simple example that doesn't even work in the project's current state, you're already far ahead of the average.
Even for a CLI tool, there should be a real world example showing how it works and what the output looks like. Eg, for jq:
$ cat file.json
{"field: "value"}
$ jq '.field' file.json
"value"
And a few other examples.
Also please begin the Github page or whatever with a description of what the app is actually for or what it does. I know that sounds super obvious, but the number of times I've seen links that are like "I made this app from scratch for fun, let me know what you think!" and then you click through and the app is called Scrooblarr or something and it has no indication of what it actually does is... more than it should be.
Wait what? I thought the read me file was to put as little info as possible to prove how awesome anyone was who can use the program.
Including the documentation link, which only has incomplete getting started section
TODO
Agree, I don't know what's so hard about a screenshot.
I imagine most single developer projects lack any design or UX so the screenshot would do little to encourage users to download.
I can only speak for myself and a handful of other people I know who are into FOSS, but for us we care more about it being functional than looking pretty. I just want to see what I'm getting into, a reference for what a successful install looks like, or just check to see if it's got the buttons I want on it.
Or at least a demo site if it's a web site or self hosted web based app ๐ฅฒ
I wish there was a way to give more props to open-source repos that do this.
I already star the project. But I'd love to say "Thanks for making a demo page it really helped!"
You should open a PR. ๐
As a user, I completely agree. People often make decisions in a few seconds, and you've done all this work developing an app. That little extra step will allow you to make a difference to more people!
As a developer of a Lemmy web UI, I've been thinking about adding screenshots to my README for weeks but still haven't done so ๐
Yup, if I don't see screenshots for a desktop applications, I don't bother since the developer clearly doesn't understand what they're doing. It's especially baffling when it's a WM/DE. It's really trivial effort too. If the devs don't get this basic point, it's going to reflect in their poorly designed UX/UI as well.
Also, installation instructions that don't assume you're already an expert.
100% agree! I always get so frustrated when there are no screenshots in the README.md or on the site.
I think this ties in to the grander idea of: please provide information that is helpful on a nontechnical plane of thinking. It goes a very long way
README is usually a text file. While some platforms can now use markdown, that is nowhere near universal. So it might be better to ask for screenshots to be put on the website / wiki.
GitHub and GitLab both support inserting images into your README.md. Here's the syntax:
Not just a text file, a markdown file. And markdown has supported images since forever
no pics no clicks, as they used to say
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