Hey everyone. I've been pretty silent on the state of modsoup over the last few months and I appreciate everyone bearing with me. The truth is, I actually hit a fork in the road with modsoup where I felt the project has outlived it's usefulness. A post made by a user on this sub yesterday really highlighted why I reached this juncture.
The user asked "How do I view comments?"
This is a good question, and the answer is, you can't. That's because of a very specific reason. Modsoup was intended as a moderation companion, never a full reddit client. I actually tried very hard to keep it from turning into a full reddit client. If you could view comments and reply or vote, then it would be a very basic reddit client, wouldn't it? Why shouldn't it be a reddit client? Why should it refrain from becoming one? These are questions I wrestled with a few months ago and I ultimately decided on a solution.
Modsoup, for as amazing as it is, has some design flaws that were my mistake when I first began this app. For example, the way modsoup handles user authentication is pretty terrible because I was rushing the first alpha a year ago, and as a result there's random authentication failures which lead to crashes. Modsoup, to me, feels very unfinished and very unpolished. For those of you who know me, this is absolutely not my style and to be frank I'm not all too proud of Modsoup, even though it's the only app of it's kind.
Therefor, I'm officially deprecating Modsoup. For the foreseeable future I will still patch bugs, maybe implement the occasional feature if it's simple, and help anyone with support.
What does this mean for the future?
I wouldn't deprecate a app like modsoup without offering a replacement. The truth of why I've been on radio silence about the project for the last few months is that I've been working on a new project that I've been playing very close to my chest. A few have heard of it and word got around, but yes it's true I'm writing a full fledged reddit client. This client is intended to replace and be the natural successor to modsoup. I've been taking my sweet time with this to avoid what happened with Modsoup, I want this client to be super polished, refined, and responsive.
This new client:
Will have all the moderation features of modsoup. Usernotes, mod features, toolbox support, etc. This client will have moderation feature parity with the desktop by time it is stable. This was the original goal of modsoup, however, this new reddit client I have been writing from the ground up to be highly modular so I can add additional features with ease.
Will be gorgeous, polished, Material Design 2/Refresh
Will rival Slide and RiF in features (Seriously, hats off to talklittle and ccrama, I understand their pain, writing a reddit app is not easy).
Be beautifully animated (Seriously even upvote/downvote has a subtle animation). However, these animations aren't 'overdone', they are animations to drawn attention to elements and define purposeful transitions.
Will be designed not just for moderators, but for everyone. However, it will stay true to it's roots in being a moderation powerhouse. I personally hate moderating on the desktop because of how terrible the UX is. I'm going to fix that.
I wouldn't tease something like this without sharing a few screenshots, so here you are.
https://imgur.com/a/5QaXwKY
This client is unnamed as of yet, so I am open to suggestions on a name, and more than open to design criticisms. I will be revealing much more about this client in the coming weeks as an alpha approaches.
