RateBeer Mobile 1.9 Release Today

The first time was as soon as I’d entered the attribute values on a beer. All the subsequent times, it seems to have gotten past that to the point where I would at least see the textbox to add a full rating and the new button to add a place. Tapping on the button to add a place would cause the snowstorm.

Did you also Clear the cache on Your phone before reinstalling? Might help, maybe…

Still the same.

So I go to rate a beer, write and text and all, end up being annoyed again because of the app forcing me to score before writing anything, but get it done anyway. I try to click on the Submit button, the app won’t let me. On a perfect connection. Doesn’t say I’m not connected. I click on “back” and on review again, my review is gone.

Insult added to injury salt was already sprinkled on. Not a good idea, not a good concept. Make it save unfinished text, at least temporarily. I know that’s likely that “offline rating” that’s apparently tricky to implement, but the app really, REALLY needs this. Especially if it’s going to be finicky about letting you upload a legit review or not.

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Yeah this is one major reason i love erics app. Back button does not lose the rating.
If i want to throw anything I’ve typed away i need actively delete it

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It boils down that in this iteration it treats proper. actual ratings people actually put effort into like disposable shit. The design cripples you and makes the procedure irrational, overwrites irrevocably attribute ratings if you misclick (which is quite easy), messes with submitting text, doesn’t keep the text if you have to back out or accidentally do. To quote a friend who rated far more on Erik’s app and lost most of his will to rate because of all the shit that happened when that was killed for him, “I would have thrown my phone into a wall if that had happened to me.”

There’s still a ton of work to be done if it’s to be actually useful and non-frustrating to people who actually contribute to the site. Sorry but if I’m to use the app like an app is supposed to be used, outside of one’s home, it needs to create less frustration and avoid unnecessary waste of time, which is already borderline in social situations. If I’m forced to write quick notes outside of it since it’s too risky to use on the fly, then the app’s only worth is checking whether I’ve rated something or not.

You’ve improved the app immensely since the first iteration and good job on that, even if we needed to scream at Joe ceaselessly because of plenty of crap that should not have even been considered as a good idea in the first place at times. It seems to be going in the right direction and since recently I can see myself and others I know actually using it at some point. It’s getting closer to the level where I can recommend it wholeheartedly to someone who’s not an user. But it’s still far from that. I hope that some of the obvious glaring flaws people have been pointing out since that quasi-1.0.0. pile of manure will get fixed/added soon enough. Keep at it, and be sure that every good and helpful thing you add will be much, much appreciated.

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This happened to me A LOT of times while beer hunting this week. It just wouldn’t let me submit reviews for certain, random beers. And sometimes you have to tap the text box 20 times before it actually lets you insert any text - just randomly. I started typing reviews into Google Docs, then parsing them into the app. Some of those are still not submitted, and I’ll get to it in the next hours or days. Totally what the app should make you do.

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I’m sending this as website feedback and posting it in this thread rather than sending it through the app because when I clicked “send feedback” in the app it opened an email reply from the email address I downloaded the app with rather than the one I’ve always used and am logged in on RateBeer and the app. (Of course) I don’t want this.

The tldr: I wanted to know something basic when shopping. Having failed to find it on the mobile version of the main site, I tried the app. Things didn’t go well and now the main site seems worse on mobile too.

Here is my user experience:
I went to a market and on my way to get what I wanted, passed a market stall that had a beer or two I thought I hadn’t had. One was a beer by Red Duck that said it was a barrel aged quad. Since it was near closing time at the fresh produce section I thought I’d get what I needed, have a coffee and a quick squizz at RateBeer to discover:

Is this beer in the database? Have I had it? Did I like it/ has anyone whose opinion I think is worthwhile rated it?

These are pretty basic questions. And whilst I didn’t have the exact name, I knew the brewer and the style. And it was probably new or newish.

So on the full non-mobile site this is easy: order by date or (for a quad) ABV will get you to the answer (which is no, btw) very quickly.

But on the mobile version of the full site (at least this afternoon) I couldn’t see these columns. I can see what I have rated in some order or other but since I’ve rated 87 beers from this brewer it’s hard to find the information (you’d have to scroll all the way past what you have rated, then read all the entries you haven’t. I understand it looks less cluttered with less information than there used to be but the information was useful.

So I decided to give the app a go. It downloaded and installed fine, even on 4g. And login was fine. But fully half my screen was taken up by a photo and my avatar - with no obvious way of hiding it. And then searching for Red Duck gave me their most rated beer (Red Duck quad gave nothing, but that means nothing) and clicking on the brewer’s name gave me not a list of beers that I could manipulate or sort, but the text of my ratings of all the 87 beers from that brewer in order of number of ratings. Again, no answer to: Is this beer in the database? Have I had it? Did I like it/ has anyone whose opinion I think is worthwhile rated it?

So at that point I gave up and found the information elsewhere. (I bought the beer, but haven’t added it - it has 44 checkins on Untappd fwiw).

Now I’m home and go to write feedback and decide to check whether what I recall is what I see now. When I open the mobile site Safari knows I have the app and suggests I open it there. I open it on both. Now search on the mobile site has changed: it logs me out and I therefore can’t see which beers I’ve had, or when they’ve been added, their ABV or style. I dunno, do I log out and log back in again and/or uninstall the app to go back to the unsatisfactory but better version I saw earlier today? Is it a site change and a coincidence? Either way, there’s nothing at all making me think “keep the app”.

I hadn’t installed the app before today and haven’t really followed its travails, so apologies if this is all known stuff.

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App crashes when trying to add a beer spot to troegs Brewing co. Probably the umlaut?

Yeah, the app’s inability to store a part-written review is still maddening.

It’s bad enough when I accidentally hit the back button, and suddenly realise it’s just deleted my magnum opus without so much as a “Delete yes/no?” pop-up. :confounded:

But when there’s a connection error, or a friend comes over and asks a question so I flip to my diary, and when I flip back to the Rb app - all gone… :angry:

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Also I can no longer submit feedback through the app because I uninstalled mail on that iPhone. I used to not need the mail app to send feedback but something must have changed.

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People still use the iOS Mail app? :open_mouth:

Thanks @egajdzis. Looks like we’re having a couple of issues with the umlauts. Can you update to the latest and try this again? Should be fixed.

Thanks @hawthorne00, this is really useful. It makes sense that you want the ability to sort the beers by newest and/or ABV. Out of curiosity, why didn’t you search for the name of the beer first to see if it’s in the database?

@adamnowek just released an update. Can you check if it’s fixed?

Looks fixed!

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because as described, I walked past the market stall, noticed the style of beer and the familiar brewer but not the name and went on to do my other shopping with the intention of coming back.