This is nothing new, but just want to re-iterate some well known issues in the Connect IQ app (which is supposed to be the preferred way of configuring and installing CIQ apps, afaik).
These points refer to the iOS version.
1) App Store Page: URLs are no longer rendered as clickable links in the latest update. This makes it hard to link to external documentation / forum threads in the store description. There also doesn't seem to be a way to copy and paste text from the description, nor is there an easy way to open the app page in a web browser. Sure, you can press the Share button, then copy the "Check this app out in the store! <URL>" string to your Notes app, then manually copy and paste the URL into Safari....
2) The app settings page still doesn't render newlines for settings labels. Any settings labels which contain newlines are instead rendered on a single line. This makes it very hard to have explanatory text of any complexity, when a list of 5 bullet points (for example) is rendered on a single line. This problem affects some very popular apps (~400k downloads) on the store.
(Imagine if this entire post was just one run-on paragraph...)
Furthermore, newlines *are* rendered in the Windows Garmin Express app (which I'm sure most people don't use), as well as the simulator app settings dialog. It would really be nice to have some parity / UI consistency here. As it stands, I have no idea what the status of the Android app is. I think at one point, help links were not clickable in the Connect IQ app / Garmin Connect app for Android, but I don't have a way to actually know that for sure without hearing it 2nd hand.
These things may not seem like a big deal, but tbh quality of life issues like this really discourage me from developing CIQ apps more complex than "Elevation Change" (which literally subtracts Total Descent from Total Ascent).
Some other observations:
3) Both the Connect IQ app and the web version of the CIQ store still change the aspect ratio of non-square listing images to make them square via stretching, which distorts text, screenshots and art. Personally, I think this gives users a bad impression of the store. Non-square listing images should either be automatically cropped (with preview for the dev) or non-square images should be rejected.
4) In the Connect IQ App, the "More From This Developer" list is not in alphabetical order.
Having said all of that, I'm still grateful that Garmin provides a platform for apps, both as a user and a dev. I just wish that some of the quality-of-life issues would be solved. I also appreciate the help from Garmin employees in this forum.
But to me the state of CIQ is a lot like this forum -- as much of an improvement as it is over the previous iteration, it still has issues which make me not want to use it:
- During the transition of old content, all URLs changed, making external links useless, and breaking internal references to images
- It's useless for long discussions (e.g. app support thread)
- Can't edit posts in the bug report section
- Bug report section allows you to both like AND upvote a comment
etc.
I just don't get why well-known and popular alternatives such as Discourse or NodeBB weren't used. (As much as ppl complain about those platforms, at least NodeBB supports long discussions with the ability to jump to *anywhere* in the middle of a long thread, even in mobile.) With this forum, good luck navigating a long thread unless you only want to see the first or last few posts....