What’s New¶

Back in the version 5.3, we introduced a way for members to customize their profile by uploading a background image.

Later, in the version 7.3, we added the possibility to edit some of the personal profile data; and naturally, some members have asked for the possibility to update their photo as well. But for all these years, this feature was not implemented as the councils of governors of the various Multiple Districts using LionsBase were preferring to ensure that the photos of their members were consistent and of good quality.

Since end of 2024, Multiple District 110 (The Netherlands) has joined the LionsBase community and has expressed the wish to allow their members to update their photo directly in the application, just as they were used to do in their previous system.

As a result, we have implemented this feature similarly to the update of the background image, and made it available through the profile page by tapping on the camera icon:

Once the photo has been chosen, it is uploaded to the server. Technically, the photo is resized to a maximum of 1920 × 1920 pixels and stored along with other assets in the directory of the corresponding member’s club. If not already present, the directory photos/ is created automatically. The former photo will be removed from the server, if and only if it is not used by any other record in TYPO3 (e.g., a news, a block of content, etc.).

Hint

In order for members to be able to edit their photo, their DLBM should first enable that feature by editing the club record and toggling the corresponding switch:

Enhanced security¶

On June 10, 2024, Apple presented the upcoming iOS 18 at the WWDC 2024. One of the new features is the ability to require Face ID for enhanced security.

For times when a user shares their device with someone and wants peace of mind that private information remains unseen, applications can now be locked with Face ID, Touch ID, or the device passcode, and information from these applications will not surface in search or notifications.

We tested that new feature with the LionsBase Mobile application and we encourage all users to enable it for enhanced security.

To do so, long tap the LionsBase mobile application icon and select “Require Face ID” (or “Require Touch ID” if you have an older device):

Other Changes¶

In addition, a few bugs have been squashed and minor enhancements integrated:

• the rendering of the key properties of a member could be cropped on some devices and/or languages such as German; this has been fixed;

• the additional information of an event was wrongly “editable” by the user (locally, nothing was saved on the server); we found a way to make the content selectable but not editable, thus only allowing you to copy/look up/translate and share the content;

• if a PDF file was attached to an event, a fairly unobtrusive entry was displayed with a small text saying “Open attachment”. This entry has been enhanced to display the title of the corresponding document so you know what you’re about to open (paving the way for possible support for more than one attachment in the future);

• the camera icon in the member/club profile pages has been slightly enlarged and changed to be both more consistent with the rest of the application and more visible;

• similarly to what we did for grouping awards in the version 11.0, we have grouped the various certifications of a member in single entry, with all the years of validity displayed in a single line;

• the radio buttons for multiple choice questions are now properly styled;

• the badge showing the number of unanswered events in the menu is now properly visible;

• the border showing your status in the list of upcoming events is not black anymore, but the same color as the status itself;

• the LionsBase “banner” on a black background (when not authenticated) has been replaced by a similar version with a gradient background based on the blue colors of the Lions Clubs International branding;

• we were pointed out that members with a very small screen could not properly show their Lions Business Card because the QR code was too large; its size has now been constrained to fit the screen;

• we switched the barcode scanning library to another one that is based on the native platform APIs (Apple Vision framework) as it is more reliable, faster and better maintained;

• sending a message does not make the application crash anymore;

• the app would crash “spontaneously” when putting the app in the background (like switching to another app); after quite some debugging, we found that it was related to a compatibility library we use for caching the various external images in the app and thus to save bandwidth. That library had no bug tracker thus no way to report the problem, but fortunately we found a fork of that library with a fix targeting exactly that specific bug. We thus switched the underlying library we use;

• various internal libraries have been upgraded.

Footnotes

1

App Store Connect from Apple Inc. explains that compatible iOS apps are automatically published on the App Store on Apple Vision Pro unless we explicitly opt out. We have not opted out and therefore the LionsBase mobile application is available on Apple Vision Pro, although we did not have the opportunity so far to test it. Do not hesitate to drop us a message if you have tested it; we would be happy to hear from you!