Glowforge App Interface Improvements: Latest Improvements 7/30/19

[Rita]

Use your Glowforge from your tablet and phone (7/30/19) - Glowforge - the 3D...

[jbmanning5]

I know y’all did this like a month ago, but thanks for including the dates now on the updates page.

[deirdrebeth]

Ooh - “On phones and tablets, “Add Artwork > Upload” will let you take a picture with the camera” this I gotta play with

[shop]

this would have been really useful when i was at maker fair. my phone camera takes a way better picture of a drawing than the lid camera does.

[darkdesign]

Have not checked the iphone app for a while but has the metric system been added yet?

[jbmanning5]

The app has been removed. I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess that development on it had stopped in favor of this approach. The mobile browser interface allows you to choose the units.

[ihermit2]

iOS App not found on Italian App Store?

We saw that more iOS users were using their mobile browser than the iPhone beta app, so we decided to take it down for now. To use your Glowforge from your phone, just go to app.glowforge.com from your phone’s browser.

The summary shows it all. Or technically confirms your correctness.

[jamely]

Yesterday I thought it would be fun to use my android tablet to send to my Glowforge, I didn’t know about any updates, but I did see the different selection box in the interface ;p

Tablet: Samsung Tab S4, browser: Samsung Internet, Horizontal rotation.

Things that just worked awesome:

• Pinch to zoom
• Rotation
• Panning
• Any time I needed to type in the interface (although my keyboard would initially cover the area in horizontal mode, if I started typing it would scroll it down enough for me to see)

Things I had a hard time with:

• Changing the order of operations (couldn’t select to move, assumed a long hold would grab it)
• Using Set Focus (could not set it at all, pen or finger taps, assumed a double tap in close to the same location would set it)

Overall, it was a nice experience to have the app.glowforge page right next to my Glowforge, as I’ve only ever used my desktop in another room! I’ll have to try a different browser to see if the set focus and layer selection would work there.

Thanks for the “free updates”

[gregg]

• Using Set Focus (could not set it at all, pen or finger taps, assumed a double tap in close to the same location would set it)

+1 to make using Set Focus possible to use with the phone/tablet apps. The iOS app seems to work great except for being able to Set Focus which has me going back to my laptop to send the cut from. Would love to be able to use this magical feature with the native apps.

[christopher_cantrell]

I noticed a couple of new quirks this weekend. If the layer menu is longer than the window height, and I scroll to get to the lower items, I’m unable to select those items to change the settings. I found I could reorder the layers, scroll back to the top, and then I could access the layer settings. Scroll down though, and I can’t click them to adjust-until I scroll back to the top. To put it another way-scrolling down makes the settings menu inaccessible until I scroll back to the top.

One other quirky thing. When mousing over the layers on the left, the art in the preview is highlighted overall, and then clicking on the layer doesn’t seem to highlight the individual elements any more. The whole art stays lit up. It’s like the art in the window reacts to the mouse over the layers panel as though the layers panel isn’t there.

Also, a tiny gripe/suggestion: there is no good indication of which layer is being adjusted. Not sure if that was different before this update.
It’s not always possible to see which highlighted items in the preview are being adjusted in the layers settings (if you’re engraving then cutting in the same area, for instance, and the elements overlap.) It would be very nice if there were some indication which layer the settings panel is currently adjusting - a colored (or just heavier) border around the active layer, maybe? Colors could indicate the operation of that layer- red box for cut, green for engrave, etc., if you aren’t using proofgrade settings. I feel like there was some little visual clue before, to connect the active layer to the settings sheet. Am I crazy? Also,
the speed/power numbers are useful, but not as clear as “Cut” or “Score” in their place with Pg settings. Some indication of the flavor of burning per layer would be nice.

And I think of them as ‘layers’ -I don’t remember what the manual calls them! I’m using fresh Chrome on a MacBook Pro.