🆕 Apps "Discover" section: Showcasing app ecosystem inside the app store

As we have more and more apps, the app store makes it more and more difficult to find relevant content or featured apps. A mechanism to solve this could be a new "Discover" section as the main entry.

This would be to feature not just apps, but generally content, like the "Today" tab in the iOS app store: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/discoverability/

We already have plenty of content on our blog like interviews, podcasts, developer stuff etc. that we can use.
Similarly we can have "5 recommended productivity apps" etc, just groups of apps with a little text alongside it which can initially be our "app bundles" but presented in a much nicer way
5 top-rated apps (recently and/or all-time)
Much more content

This does not need to always be updated but can be circled around every once in a while (this is done in the iOS App Store Today tab as well).

An example of that was in this mockup for the new online app store where we thought about inserting content like that inbetween the apps. But this would be a full-on way to discover apps.

Also ref related "new in Nextcloud": #9165

@jancborchardt

@jancborchardt I suspect when having to be implemented for the apps / store section within an Nextcloud instance you also want this in the actual store frontend on apps.nc.c - right?

@AndyScherzinger

@AndyScherzinger would be a separate step and not tied to a release, but yes ideally and for more reach, it eventually is also on there.

Already discussed this with @szaimen as well – to keep it in mind, but also to focus on the specs for the internal apps mgmt as that is release-dependent.

From the mock ups I see following needed data:

{
    type: "", // either "post" or "showcase"
    headline: {}, // localized title, maybe an mapping { "de": "Faszinierende Wallpaper", "en": "Amazing wallpapers" }
    text: {}, // localized "preview" text, maybe like headline
    link: "", // to the full blog post / podcast etc
    image: "" // image to show for posts
    apps: [] // for show cases (maybe generic in some "parameters" or "data" property)
}[]

Maybe also an date or expiryDate property to expire content.

So this can be fetched from the app-store, images should be cached by the local Nextcloud instance (just download images in appdata?).

I just created a few more types that we might use in the future:

For the carousel: Only show the arrows on hover?
Should it auto-shuffle after ~5s ~10s?

@jospoortvliet

For the carousel: Only show the arrows on hover?

Yes, if possible and not against a11y best practices.

Should it auto-shuffle after ~5s ~10s?

Yeah, maybe ever 10s? WDYT @jospoortvliet

Yes, if possible and not against a11y best practices.

No I do not think so - as long as they are focusable and the hover box is big enough I do not see any issues.
Asking because I think the arrows are a bit too "prominent" when always shown - but thats just my personal feeling 😉

Instead of hiding we maybw could use --text-maxcontrast for these elements which might already fix the too prominent problem?

Don't switch too fast. 10 sec might already be quite fast, but maybe see what apple does, or google...

But overall, very nice work. I look forward to the first implementation!

Very nice! :)

One main point of feedback: We shouldn’t use carousels so much as they are not particularly discoverable nor accessible. Scrolling vertically is fine, but trying to cram so much in by just hiding it behind carousels makes it obscure.
There’s also a reason why e.g. the macOS / iOS app store uses horizontal scrolling basically only for images on the detail page and reviews, cause those could be potentially a lot. Also there they tease the start of the next element on the sides.

🎉🎉🎉

Reopen due to "show case" type is missing and will be added with the next beta.

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🆕 Apps "Discover" section: Showcasing app ecosystem inside the app store #42547

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🆕 Apps "Discover" section: Showcasing app ecosystem inside the app store #42547

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AndyScherzinger commented on Jan 18, 2024

jancborchardt commented on Jan 18, 2024

szaimen commented on Jan 21, 2024

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susnux commented on Feb 9, 2024

szaimen commented on Feb 15, 2024

susnux commented on Feb 15, 2024

szaimen commented on Feb 15, 2024

susnux commented on Feb 15, 2024

szaimen commented on Feb 15, 2024

jospoortvliet commented on Feb 15, 2024

jospoortvliet commented on Feb 15, 2024

jancborchardt commented on Feb 19, 2024

szaimen commented on Mar 14, 2024

susnux commented on Mar 14, 2024

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