Sobuu 1.5.1: Now, also offline

Sobuu 1.5.1 is here.

1.5.0 was a big release. Shelves arrived, search changed considerably, the home screen got some new tricks and quite a few parts of the app were redesigned.

1.5.1 is different. There isn’t one enormous feature taking over the entire release. Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time making Sobuu work better in the real world.

And that meant finally tackling something I had postponed for far too long: offline support.

There is plenty more:

• Sobuu works offline
• More stores
• Better shelf discovery
• Better shelf navigation and organisation
• Literary quotes while searching
• Smoother animations
• More avatars and a better tablet layout
• Performance and UI improvements
• A lot of bug fixes

Let’s go.

Sobuu now works offline

This was probably the most technically complicated part of the release, even if the result sounds very simple:

You can use Sobuu without Internet.

Reading on a train? Underground? Somewhere with terrible reception? You can update your progress, manage your books and continue using the app.

Sobuu stores the changes locally and, once an Internet connection comes back, synchronises them with the server.

That sounds obvious for a reading app, and honestly, it should be.

Sobuu has always stored quite a lot of information locally, but that isn’t the same thing as properly supporting offline use. Every feature needs to understand what happens when the server isn’t available, what needs to be synchronised later and what happens if local and remote information don’t quite agree.

So a substantial part of 1.5.1 happened behind the scenes.

It isn’t the kind of feature that produces a beautiful screenshot for an app store listing, but it’s one that should make Sobuu much nicer to live with.

And there will probably still be edge cases. Offline synchronisation has a wonderful talent for finding situations you didn’t know existed. I’ll keep working on them as they appear.

More places to download Sobuu

Sobuu is also travelling.

Alongside the stores where it was already available, this release expands its distribution to the Apple App Store, AltStore and Aptoide.

This also means Sobuu is coming to iPhone. If you’ve been waiting to use it on iOS, you can now bring your books, shelves and reading progress along.

Why expand to more stores?

Partly because I want Sobuu to be available outside the two giant default app stores. Different platforms and stores have different users, rules and possibilities, and I don’t want the project to depend unnecessarily on a single distribution channel.

Wider distribution has been one of the things I’ve wanted to explore for quite a while. 1.5.1 is a significant step in that direction.

Finding better shelves

Shelves were the centrepiece of 1.5.0, so naturally I immediately found a list of things I wanted to change.

First: filters on the public shelves screen.

You can now filter shelves by the books they contain:

• The languages of the books
• The genres of the books

And the filter stays active until you remove it, including after restarting Sobuu.

Recommendations have been adjusted too. Instead of showing the most recently created shelves first, Sobuu now shows the shelves most recommended for your reading taste. If you prefer chronological order, you can turn recommendations off and browse the newest shelves first. The language and genre filters work either way.

There’s still a lot I want to do here, but shelf discovery should already feel considerably more useful.

Shelves inside books are better too

The shelf section on a book page got some attention.

Shelf names are now clickable. Tap one and Sobuu takes you directly to that shelf.

There was another little problem: what happens when a book belongs to twenty shelves?

Displaying all twenty on the book page isn’t exactly elegant.

Sobuu now shows the first five. If there are more, you’ll see a “See X more” button that opens a screen containing the complete list.

Small change. Much cleaner result.

You can also finally reorder books manually inside a shelf.

This one matters to me because shelves aren’t necessarily just collections. Sometimes order is part of the list.

“The ten books I recommend most” isn’t quite the same shelf if number ten randomly appears before number one.

Now the order can be yours.

Something to read while Sobuu searches

Book searches occasionally take a moment.

A spinner spinning by itself is not particularly exciting, so I’ve given it some company.

While Sobuu searches, you’ll now see short passages and sentences from books in the public domain below the loading indicator. A new one appears every ten seconds, fading gently in and out.

It’s an extremely small feature.

I really like it.

If a reading app is going to make you wait, it might as well give you something to read.

Things move a little more now

I’ve also started adding animated transitions between screens.

Nothing dramatic. I don’t want Sobuu to turn into an interface where everything flies, bounces and spins just because it can.

The goal is simply to make navigation feel more connected: you tap something, the next screen arrives naturally, and the app feels a little less like a collection of independent pages.

There are more transitions I’d like to experiment with in future versions.

UI and performance

Then there are all the smaller changes that accumulate until the app simply feels nicer.

Shelf book covers and author information should load faster.

The first launch on iOS has been improved.

Android’s bottom navigation icons are a little bigger.

The public-shelf indicator on the book screen is where it should be.

The public/private controls when creating a shelf have been reworked, including clearer Yes/No information for the option that lets other people add books.

The create-shelf dialog has more breathing room and uses Sobuu’s own fields instead of looking like a generic form.

More ways to make your profile yours

There are more avatars to choose from now. Your profile appears alongside the shelves you create and the books you share, so it should feel like it belongs to you.

It’s a small addition, but having a few more faces to pick from makes that corner of Sobuu a little more personal.

A better fit for tablets

I’ve also spent time improving Sobuu’s layout on tablets. The larger screen gives books and shelves more room, and the app should feel more comfortable to use there now.

This isn’t the final tablet design, but it’s a big step forward if you prefer reading and organising your books on a larger device. Landscape mode got some attention too. I haven’t found another reading tracker with a proper landscape view, and I want Sobuu to make good use of it.

Bug fixes

As always: bugs.

Some text in the shelf creation dialog became ridiculously long in Spanish and potentially other translations. That’s been adjusted.

An iOS configuration string that should have been there was missing.

Several shelf-loading issues were improved.

I’ve also spent time testing shelves that allow contributions from other users, shelves that don’t, following them from another account and particularly ridiculous situations such as adding the same book to more than twenty shelves.

Because apparently this is what I do for fun now.

There are other small fixes throughout the app as well.

What’s next?

1.5.1 isn’t as visually dramatic as 1.5.0, but in some ways it’s exactly the sort of release I want Sobuu to have more often.

Make the app work in more situations.

Make existing features deeper instead of constantly adding new ones.

Make it available in more places.

Remove little bits of friction.

And fix the weird things that only become obvious once real people start using what I built.

Offline support in particular gives me a much stronger base for what comes next.

As usual, if you find something broken, strange or unnecessarily annoying, tell me.

Enjoy the read!