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Open source devs: please, please add screenshots... (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by mypasswordis1234@lemmy.world to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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I beg you, if you are a developer of an open source app or program - add screenshots of your app to the README file. When looking for the perfect app, I had to install dozens of them just to see what the user interface looked like and whether it suits me. This will allow users to decide if the app they choose will suit them... Please, don't think about it, just do it....

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[-] crate_of_mice@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's an awful lot of comments in this post from people complaining that developers aren't making their projects attractive and user friendly enough, or the READMEs descriptive enough.

Can I just say, as a developer with some open source projects on github, I don't care; you're not my intended audience.

[-] mbw@feddit.de 14 points 1 year ago

I find this unnecessarily derisive. There are good reasons for a UI or README not being user-friendly, the top-most one being (imo) that it is really, really hard to get right, takes a lot of time and doesn't primarily solve the problem the project was started for.

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[-] flop_leash_973@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Don't forget to assume what works on macOS also will work fine on a Linux server deployment.

[-] Gallardo994@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

To be fair, most of time you can just Google %appname% screenshot. I understand that this is not as convenient as having screenshots in the readme, but eh, it's not as big of a problem when you realize this.

P.S. I do actually add at least one screenshot for my software. Maybe because sometimes UI is one of the main focus, idk. I just feel like it.

[-] CoderKat@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

I think that doesn't work for most smaller projects. That'll work for something like Firefox, but there's little reason for random, unheard of tools to have an image on the web. Plus the naming of some projects is super generic, which can make it hard to find correct images.

Some software changes appearance often, too, and google is bad at knowing what up to date is. It can be really easy to find wildly out of date images as the top results.

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[-] Winn_Addison@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

TURE...👍

[-] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 1 year ago

A README file is usually comprised of text.

Other than that - usually if it has a webpage, it has some screenshots.

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[-] 13@calckey.world 6 points 1 year ago

Where should I store the screenshots? In a screenshots folder in the repo? Should I update them at some time? Should I screenshot both light and dark theme?

[-] moritz@lemmy.deltaa.xyz 9 points 1 year ago

Where: In the repository, most projects seem to use media or screenshots as the name of the directory.

How often: Whenever a big change happened or many small changes have accumulated.

What: Light theme suffices. I only care about the general look and feel, not about specific colors.

That’s how I would do it for my own projects.

[-] moritz@lemmy.deltaa.xyz 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

As an example, an old Android project of mine: https://github.com/moritzruth/JamRSS

I showed one screen in both the light and the dark variant to demonstrate that the app generally has support for dark mode.

[-] xamboni@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That’s one option, or use imgur.

Update them if your UI has significantly changed or does not adequately represent the final product.

If having a light/dark theme is an important feature or highly requested feature for your project, it would be nice to show it off.

Screenshots can, most of the time, get away with showing just the default configuration. Share what a user would see when opening your project for the first time, and assume they used the default configuration. Optionally, if you offer a lot of customization, show what it could look like if someone spent a good amount of time personalizing things!

[-] jelloeater85@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Please don't use a external image host, have it live with your code in /docs

[-] CoderKat@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

Yes. Git can store binary files fine. It's not the most efficient for storing them, but it works, especially for a small number of screenshots. For updating and theme, that's entirely up to you. It's all a judgement call. If you want to show off your functionality (like a dark mode), I encourage you to include screenshots of it. If you substantially change your UI, update the images.

You don't have to update for every new button you add. It's more about giving a general impression of the UI. Is it minimalist? Is it a chaotic mess? Does it look like it fits in naturally with whatever OS appears to have been used? Does it look like any thought was put into UI and UX? Those are the kinds of things you're trying to answer.