Make it Easier to Share Pistons

#1

So, I would like to share a bunch of pistons that the group may like BUT I find it a bit too cumbersome. Here are the steps:

  1. Go into the dashboard and select the piston;
  2. Hit the green button;
  3. Right click the file to save;
  4. On Mac saving does not save the file as a .png;
  5. Open the file on Mac and rename the file to .png extension because you must upload a .png to the community;
  6. Go back into the community;
  7. Post and upload.

Please don’t take this as criticism. Webcore is awesomely epic, but to share a single piston takes too long when I think of sharing 20 - 30 of them.

_Is it possible to simply create an export button out of WC to import/upload the piston directly to the community as an example?

_

#2

I don’t have a Mac, but can’t you just save the generated Image to the paste buffer? Are you forced to save it to disk? I mean, I never save any of mine to disk. I just copy the image to the paste buffer and paste it in from there.

#3

After #2, clicking on the green button you can change #3 to press and hold the control key and click on the screen of the piston presented, you can then use save image as from the menu and you can add the extension .png. This will remove the need for steps #4 and #5. Or as @Mike1616 stated, you can select copy image to buffer if you do not want to save it.

#4

Maybe I struck a nerve with my comments. Putting aside my own technical challenges, I simply think creating a method to more easily share your working pistons would encourage more users to share their perfectly working pistons.

#5

Not at all. I just disagree with your premise. You outlined a seven step process, I get it done in three.

#6

Same here, I was simply giving you an alternative where you could go from having steps 3,4,5 into only one step - control and saving/naming or copying to buffer and pasting it to your post. :wink:

#7

Being able to share pistons like we do currently is a fantastic feature - something I’ve not seen of before.

Personally I open the piston, click the green button, right click the image and hit ‘copy image’, then just paste it into my post. Takes me 5 seconds tops. That’s pretty decent in my eyes!

#8

Great, a fellow Mac user! I ran into this frustration as well. I discovered that if you click “Save As” instead of “Save to…”, it will then properly allocate the file as a .png. This seems to be a Safari issue, not WebCore. I save the image to the Downloads folder so that when you click the uploads link, it brings you there by default.

Seems sharing the piston is already simple enough, anyone else can just import using the 5 digit code, right?

#9

What would you suggest as a better method?

#10

Not to jump in this. But I do most of my stuff on my 1st gen iPad Pro. If I click on green share button, I can’t copy it or save it to photos. I only can share by doing screen capture and then resize it. If it’s a long piston it will take 2 or more screen captures. Not sure why. I am using the mobile app for all of turn s btw

#11

@Robin. I’m not sure in the internal s of webcore. But since you can share a code for them to import the piston, could we just share the code and the forum find that piston and post the pic?

#12

It’s theoretically possible (I think) but it would take one hell of a lot of customisation on the discourse side to make it work… @ipaterson is the forum guru.

In regards to iOS screenshots… they don’t work in Chrome but in Safari you can click the screenshot, it loads a second tab with a screenshot image which you can click and hold to save or copy.

#13

Yeah since those screenshots are generated in the browser without ever being uploaded or having a URL to load from (the reason it doesn’t work in iOS Chrome apparently) it would be very difficult and potentially costly to offer screenshots as a service.

#14

FWIW and speaking from one who has about zero knowledge of coding my thought was simple on how to share.

From webcore you hit a share button and a pop up appears with two fields to complete: a title and a description.

After completing the two fields a post would be created with the title description and the code for rhenpiston and thats it. Not having a screen of the piston wouldn’t be the end of the world as most example pistons are edited (and re-edited).

Again, webcore is amazing and you all are geniuses for creating it and I completely understand if the labor/cost to create such a feature makes it prohibitive. But I happened to notice the few example posts on the board and I can’t help but think that almost every piston design/help post should ultimately be an example and maybe a simpler method of posting your creativity would help us all along.

#15

@ipaterson but I really don’t use a true browser per say. I do most if not all my webcore stuff from the mobile app. And the issue with saving a piston image is not functional from there. What browser is the mobile app using?

#16

If people were sharing multiple pistons a day, then the need would be great.
How often do people share pistons?
Once a day/week /month.
Is it that great an overhead?
Just my 2 pence worth.

#17

The dashboard and the discourse powered forum are testing completely different entities and would be very very difficult to link in that way… the developer workload would not be worth the effort.

As @ipaterson stated, the snapshots don’t reside online… they are generated locally on your browser so need to be manually copied to the clipboard or saved.

#18

I am not sure what the issue is… I am on a Mac, I use Chrome, my green screenshots are saved as JPEG which has never been an issue on the forum. I’ve pasted dozens of pistons.

I can see if you are on a mobile device, but is that the main usecase or outlier for this activity?

#19

It’s only Chrome on mobile that won’t work for snapshots. AFIK Chrome on Mac should be fine.

#20

Chrome mobile works for me if I tap the screenshot first then save. No luck in the webCoRE mobile app, however.