from TheArstaInventor@lemmy.world to fediverse@lemmy.world on 12 Dec 07:25
https://lemmy.world/post/23047126
As a strong supporter of open-source and community-funded projects like Lemmy, which prioritize serving users over investors, I believe Lemmy has significant potential, and that’s why I am here. However, it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form. Despite the surge in users following Reddit’s API changes, Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users, and those accustomed to old Reddit. For Lemmy to reach the broader average general audience, meaningful changes are necessary.
The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter. This same ease of use is what Mastodon lacked, leading to its initial hype fading quickly. The average user is unlikely to adapt to something that feels complicated or unfamiliar, and this challenge also applies to Lemmy.
As someone who started as an average Reddit user and became more tech-savvy over time, I can confidently say that first impressions matter. When users first visit lemmy.world, the default UI is often enough to discourage them from staying. Most will not explore the homepage sidebar to explore, figure out and switch to one of the alternative UIs available, which is unfortunate because a better UI could make a huge difference.
This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface. Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit. It makes excellent use of screen space and provides customization options like compact and cozy views. Unlike some other alternative UIs, Photon is actively maintained and ready for widespread use, although in no way is it perfect, this can also help bring in more contributors to the project development.
While it is important to continue offering other UIs as options, I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user. First impressions are crucial, and the current default UI has turned off many potential users. If we want Lemmy to succeed as a true Reddit alternative, we need to prioritize user experience and accessibility. Thankfully today, Lemmy still continues to be THE biggest Reddit alternative, while our userbase is still considerably smaller than Reddit, it’s the biggest of any alternatives, and Lemmy continues to somewhat be in the spotlight for those seeking alternatives, we can’t let growth stagnate, it’s high time we make the platform more welcoming and appealing for the average joe.
EDIT: The image I attached is from photon.lemmy.world, which I just realized is using the outdated version of Photon, I have updated the image to the updated current photon version from phtn.app. There are a lot of improvements made.
threaded - newest
As much as i love photon, i don’t think it should be the default. The default lemmy ui is pretty slick and lightweight, even if it is kind of bad. Photon can be sluggish, and overwhelming for some.
I think they should just improve the default UI (which they are currently), and leave it for the user to decide.
People who prefer old Reddit often say the same thing about new Reddit. While old Reddit, or in this case a barebones, simpler UI, is lightweight and “slick,” the reality is that if we want Lemmy to grow beyond its current base of tech-savvy users, we need to consider a different perspective, one that focuses on the needs and expectations of the average user.
For example, despite old Reddit being lighter and having its loyal supporters, 80 to 90 percent of users still prefer new Reddit. As someone who used to moderate on Reddit, I can confirm that the majority of traffic came from new Reddit, even though old Reddit was still available. This highlights how a more modern and user-friendly interface is often what appeals to the majority.
From my personal experience as someone who primarily used new Reddit, Photon feels far more intuitive and familiar compared to the default Lemmy UI. That said, I am not claiming Photon is perfect. However, considering that most alternative UIs are currently niche and their development relies heavily on a small group of contributors, Photon stands out as a mature and robust option.
While it is encouraging to see Lemmy’s developers working on improving the default UI, the project is still in its early stages and may or may not succeed. Why start from scratch or bet on something that is just beginning development when we already have a well-developed alternative like Photon? By adopting Photon as the default, we can take advantage of an existing solution that is in good shape, has significant potential, and can continue to improve with more widespread adoption and contributions.
This approach would ensure that Lemmy becomes more accessible and appealing to the average user, while still leaving room for users to choose other UIs if they prefer. First impressions matter, and adopting a polished and familiar UI could make all the difference in attracting and retaining new users.
BTW those who want to can still change to alternative UIs, nothing will stop them from doing so.
Also that lack of polish reads as sketchy to a lot of people with only basic tech literacy. I’ve had trouble getting other Healthcare workers to join and they always look at me sideways when they first glance at the layout. I actually agree that making something slicker looking the default would pull more normies without having to sacrifice a customizable interface for the people with enough know-how that they’re probably already modding it anyway. A big part of reddit for me was commiserating about my Healthcare job and while some of us are tech literate a lot just… aren’t.
I also prefer the new (new-old, the current one sucks) reddit UI and love photon, and i don’t think it’s too far fetched of an idea to want it as the default UI. I think it should be left to instances, so for example, lemmy.world could use photon for the default, yet lemmy.ml could use the default lemmy UI.
I’m still a little concerned over first impressions of a new lemmy user, when they try to use lemmy.world on a weak device, and realize it is slow, or laggy, and could sour their opinion on lemmy as a whole. A non tech savvy user might not completely understand the idea of lemmy, or clients, or even instances. They’d just blindly choose lemmy.world and assume that’s the “main” instance. (I also could just be underestimating the average user’s intelligence, lol.)
That’s why i brought up performance as a main point to why we should keep the current lemmy UI. Maybe if photon is optimized and is more stable, i could completely agree that it should be the default.
I’m fine with the UI filtering out the riffraff
Not sure where you’re getting that 80 to 90 percent figure, but most users being on new reddit is not at all a reflection of preference, it’s of new being the default option
I just use the Voyager app, which has a great UI, with no need to visit the website at all.
I should mention this is mainly for desktop users :), but even for mobile users, people usually check the website first before downloading apps.
Voyager also has a web version web version
.
Voyager FTW, imo
I love Voyager on mobile but feel constrained by it on desktop. (It reminds me of using Gnome, which is not my personal preference.)
I don’t think it was ever supposed to be used on desktop, it is made for touchscreen so the experience is suboptimal on desktop
Agreed. It’s touch optimized, not mouse and keyboard. That’s not a criticism!
Good! Lemmy doesn’t need to become big, especially since the less techy masses will likely put loads of load on privately hosted instances without bothering to donate.
The growth could actually kill Lemmy.
Please no!
Eh, i agree that lemmy shouldn’t grow too big (Reddit is an example of why, feels like a circlejerk of bots and reposts), but the userbase feels too small currently. On a lot of communities, The activity is 1-2 posts a week, which makes it feel quite dead. And I especially miss the niche communities that you could join on reddit, for small games or obscure topics.
I think the goal should be slow continuous growth. It’s a social media tool and that requires enough engaged users so it doesn’t feel dead. As you pointed out, we’re not there yet. I also think a huge jump in new users would be detrimental. Without central leadership of traffic and hardware Lemmy requires longer to respond to changes in user load. Nothing would be more detrimental to adding long term engaged users than an influx of new users that caused infrastructure overloading.
We’re very spoiled with reliability these days. People are not interested in unreliable access to their doom scrolling (myself included, unfortunately).
Yeah I remember instance hopping when I first joined Lemmy, part of the flood of new users when Reddit announced the API changes that killed mobile apps. Not one instance was working 100% of the time; I signed up on at least 4 different ones and had to keep swapping between them.
Oh, definitely. Lemmy may be smaller than most communities, but it feels organic, and more tight-knit. You see many recognizable users, there are a lot of great threads, and i think the community is pretty healthy. Other social medias may have millions of active users, but they are more focused on collecting as much internet points as possible and making their post hit off, instead of interaction with people. And it makes it feel repetitive and artificial. Main reason why i quit twitter, tired of seeing the most subpar posts from a random user with 100k likes.
And yeah, we’re more spoiled nowadays, unfortunately. When i joined lemmy, i was bored due to the low amount of daily posts, unlike reddit. I still think it’s a problem and we need more MAU, but we should also somewhat get used to it, too. Probably healthier for all of us.
Niche communities happened naturally over time on reddit as well. You need to grow the larger base communities first, since you’ll be gathering the numbers there. Then you branch off. The only other option is for you yourself to build up the niche communities by posting more often, it’s a lot of work.
Yeah, i think in general even the big communities aren’t too active, but they are the most active. We aren’t ready for niches and such. Such is the life of a lemming :(
I mean, yes. And I also like the oldschool interface, it does have its iffy corners but the overall layout and UX is great.
That said, there’s a difference between “avoid (success at all costs)” and “(avoid success) at all cost”. We should be making lemmy better for the purpose of making lemmy better, we shouldn’t be changing it just to please random people so they come over.
We’re at 44k monthly active users lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
100k or 200k wouldn’t kill the platform
I disagree. We want all people and all perspectives. Federarion needs to become the default to put enough pressure on the big tech companies to get all people on a common protocal. It is the ideal that web3.0 promised to be.
Also we need to monitise lemmy so that running an instance is profitable enough to support the usrload. I think we can do this via lemmy gold make it monero based where a golded post/comment get split between instance/community/post/comment. Align profit incentives with making federated media better for everyone.
For many users (including me), monero / crypto / web3.0 integration would be an immediate red line.
Regural payment methods would work just fine, this is a mere forum after all. If you are that concerned about people linking your username with your identity, then you might as well just skip gold / silver.
Ik people hate crypto and thats valid but monero is an objectivly better way to tranfer value than fiat currency.
Federation is literaly web3 philosophy. Fiat will destroy the decentralisation we have tryed so hard to create.
Your statement regarding monero is objectively untrue. It is far easier to use real currency. This is just objective fact.
My intention wasn’t really to argue for/against crypto. Just pointing out that for me and many others crypto integration is a no go. Take that as you will.
When the front page doesn’t have posts from over 2 days ago on it then I might say Lemmy is a good size, but it’s a pretty stagnate site.
Fucking capitalists will enshitify this also.
How will they? A new UI adaptation won’t change the fact that Lemmy is community-run, federated/decentralized and not owned by a corporation?
That’s quite a novel way of saying “I don’t know what enshitification is actually about, nor do I understand why broad adoption is critical for protecting the long-term existence of community maintained software”. Kudos on your creativity!
Seriously though, “keeping good things small for the sake of keeping them free of interference by capitalist interests” is misguided. Quite the contrary, leaving a large audience on the table is a surefire way to guarantee that an opportunistic capitalist will capture that market and drive community maintained options into obscurity.
That’s quite a novel way of saying, “I don’t know what capitalism is actually about, nor do I understand why broad adoption destroys individual choices.”
Kudos on your capitalism. Hopefully, we don’t extend our violent means to neoliberals.
Yeah, its sad that wikipedia becoming one of the biggest sites in the world turned it into a over monetised hellscape, but that’s just what happens inevitably when you grow big, the capitalists get you.
So, why in the everliving fuck would anyone rationalize a UI change with appeal to a broader audience?
Even after all this time very few seem to understand what happened between hexbear and almost all other instances: They didn’t want neoliberal drivel to destroy what they’d built. They even made the vast majority think it their own idea to leave them alone.
I agree on the UI front, making things more like reddits awful new ui is just a bad idea. Just that your premise for justifying that is wrong.
Weber’s Iron Cage and the history of enshitification of technology beg to differ.
“A philosopher said it” is not an argument for something being guarunteed to happen, especially when said philosopher said it 120 years ago and we are talking about the evolution of the internet and doublly especially as I have already given you a counterexample.
If you need help applying the core concepts governing our paradigm then perhaps you should ask questions
Feel free to enlighten me how a 19th century philosopher who likely hadnt used a telephone dictates how a federated social network is vulnerable to capture by capital and squeezing first a captive userbase for the benifit of advertisers, then captive advertisers for platform profit.
Take your time.
That’s not a question.
You’re the one name dropping a philosopher saying that his work proves that growth of lemmy will result in its inevitable enshittification, give your reasoning connecting the two ideas.
If you don’t know what Weber’s Iron Cage is or don’t know how it applies, then perhaps you should ask a question.
Lovely debating strategy, name drop a philospoher, pretend thats an argument and then instead of saying how said philosopher actually supports what you are saying accuse others of ignorance.
A well earned block for you :)
I give what others are prepared to receive. If you wanted to know then you’d ask. You’re not asking so I’m teaching you how to learn. You’re not learning that. I’m not the one to teach you or you’re just not ready, yet.
I can’t afford to care about you personally any more than I’ve already.
Good luck and goodbye.
LMAO this chump thinks hexbear is a good example of…well, of anything, really.
Go circlejerk in your little group of isolationists if you want but please stop telling the rest of us about it. You sound like a weird voyeur
LMAO this chump can’t get past the ad hominem and learn… well, anything really.
Get ratiod and blocked, weirdo. Go try to impress someone else with your misuse of logical fallacy terminology. Some people might be convinced you’re smart but probably only on hexbear lol.
Buh-bye, chief 👋
What is the difference between
If you trying to protecting a small community, but your solution somehow requires that community to be more like the big ones, then I guess you don’t understand the point why small communities even exist in the first place.
It’s like coming to a small coffee shop somewhere in a side street of Prague and arguing that the shop should be more like Starbucks, because if you don’t become more like Starbucks, Starbucks will win. Win what? If all you care is money then yes, but again, that’s not why small businesses exist. (Which is what (pseudo-)capitalists and tech bros find so impossible to understand.)
Human greed is not inherently bad, greed can often be legit justified as attempt to safeguard for future. That’s fine, we should do that, but it becomes destructive when it’s not balanced with the reasons behind why things are the way they are now.
If the goal of Lemmy - and specifically lemmy.world is to be a boutique, niche aggregator then fine. But that is explicitly NOT the goal. That may be what some users want but they are free to go form their own small servers and isolate as much as they want
I am not suggesting that every community needs to be growth-oriented. Small groups are great.
But they are also weak, and virtually incapable of creating and maintaining the systemic change required to protect themselves long term.
If the attitude is “let the capitalists take over everything else, I’m happy with my underground movement that struggles to survive” then that’s honestly bordering on selfish. “I’m happy so I don’t care about what happens to others. They can figure out how to find us and do what we do or get fucked” kind of energy. It’s privileged in the extreme
The best way for small communities to thrive is through collective action. And in order for that to happen there need to be enough small communities to have any sort of influence as a collective. And in order for that to happen, there needs to be an entry-point into the collective that is accessible to newcomers.
That is what Lemmy - and especially lemmy.world - have positioned themselves to be. It’s not dissimilar to Mastodon(.social)
I think a good attitude is “let there be a thousand boutiques” and “let everyone know there is choice, and let’s work together the choice is real (ie. as little lock-in as possible)”. It’s not necessarily bad if there is one or few big ones. I’m perfectly fine with people going to Starbucks (heck, even I used to, before I moved to a place where there’s a superior small coffee shop right next to my house).
I don’t think the point about “weakness” of small groups is a very strong one. (No pun intended.) What other types of small groups are weak? Are music bands also weak? Maybe not Metallica, but what about your local alt rock band? What about families, are they also weak?
The “weakness” is relevant if we’re thinking about the potential of other subjects abusing or exploiting them (an boy do we know how capitalism excels at this game). That’s why we should have systems in place which serve to protect them: not just merely on the basis that they are weak, but on the basis that the diversity is good, if not necessary, for the society as a whole.
But back to Lemmy: well, I agree with basically all your points, but do we agree on what constitutes “accessible to newcomers”? We might not.
Personally I think current UI is pretty close to perfect: things like zoom, middle click (to open new tab) just work, it does not run too much Javascript, the text editor is responsive, layout of the page is obvious and efficient, overall there is not too much clutter–for me those things are SO much essential in how welcome I’m going to feel here.
And well, people will often say that maybe my tastes are niche because I’m a tech-savvy user or whatnot, I’m tired of that BS already. I don’t think my mom would prefer cluttered, unreliable page which breaks or loses focus the moment you dare to zoom or change width of the window (eg. by flipping phone on a side). (Here I’m not at all describing Photon at all, I’m merely listing things that annoy me on so many other pages, while current Lemmy UI just gets them right.)
If people want change, they should back it up with more than what I see in this thread, most of which boils down to
I think we have far more that we agree on in this conversation than we disagree on. We can get into the minutiae of specific UIs but that probably misses the point.
Where I agree with OP is on the first impression of the default Lemmy UI to users trying to migrate from big-corpo products
For better or worse, these folks have come to believe that “slick looking” = thoughtfully designed = featureful and advanced. And that “sterile/boring looking” = amateur UX design = complicated and difficult
We can’t break that mentality in the general public by simply repeating over and over that they’re wrong. It just doesn’t work that way, sadly.
On my Mastodon server, we have the Elk frontend available and have it listed prominently right next to the sign-up/sign-in button as a “Twitter-friendly UI experience” (also on our About page). Then, we periodically throw up an announcement telling users that apps, Elk, etc don’t provide all of the features available on the modified webUI/PWA, along with a list of what they’re missing and how to learn more.
It’s an “abopt, extend, extinguish” approach and it works. There’s a reason corporate enshitification pioneered that strategy. We can use it too, but for good :)
👍
Well that’s a good point, I’d say if someone’s attention cannot be captured by the content, then that’s a different kind of audience.
I’m probably the opposite: my favorite chat technology is (you guessed it) IRC. (Not despite, but, among other things, because of its minimalism making it much more accessible, since with clients like control over color themes is a non-issue, as well as over distractions such as pictures, website previews or animations.) It’s a learned lesson though, I’ve just been using computers for long enough that I’ve simply learned that things that are full of whistles and bells are almost always ADHD minefields, if not outright waste of time. I’ve learned far, far, far more from man pages in terminal than Stack Overflow (and that’s not even whistle-bell-ey thing.)
Human preferences can be mind-boggling. For f-'s sake if there’s anything that traumatized me more than having to use threads in Google Chat, it’s that I’ve heard people say they liked it. Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever recovered from that. It’s like clicking the really wrong link on p
||nhub.That’s why I’m not suggesting to do that.
The right way is just to do the right thing and let the users find out that (or whether) the stereotype is wrong. It’s an uphill battle but IMO that’s just how it works; the good forms will win over long time; they just need to be maintained with patience and honesty. That’s why I’m against this proposal which seems to be just guessing what some unspecified (but large, trust me) group of users surely want.
I guess my point is that you taking it on yourself to distinguish what is “good” or “bad” – that’s the problematic part. (I see that you did not mean that seriously, though…)
One thing to consider here is that photon as an spa does not offer great support search engines. Which can help drive organic traffic to lemmy. While, some may see it as a net benefit, from your point of view it’s an great disadvantage.
I know I’m tech-savvy, but I actually enjoy the fact that Lemmy (and the Fediverse) doesn’t hand everything to me easily on a plate. The hunt for new interesting communities, my long well curated block list, setting up Lemmy apps exactly to my preferences is part of the fun.
If someone handed me a fully configured Voyager app on day one, I wouldn’t have had all the exciting experiences trying a bunch of apps to find the best one for me, learning how to block instances and communities, learning how to correctly link to communities and users, finding new ways to discover communities.
All this stuff is part of why I come back here everyday. A ready out-of-the-box solution is kinda boring.
A lot of the comments including yours sound gatekeep-y to me but I have to say I kind of feel the same way.
Everyone who has come here and stuck around found their way through the jank and is joining an exclusive club of high-quality discussion. Like Linux, once you can get past the basics, you can customize your experience nearly limitlessly, but it takes effort, trial and error to get to something you like.
I’m not at all tech savvy[1], but it’s not that hard, honestly.
[1] context: I know that when a steam game doesn’t work, sometimes I need to reinstall a driver, but I never remember how or where to do that. I use an iPhone from 2016, and I unlock it with my fingerprint.
I'm on Fedia. It's pretty solid, UI-wise. I actually find it more usable than Reddit and its terrible way of trimming down threads by default.
What I've seen of Lemmy does seem a bit messier to read, though.
Yeah that's the Mbin UI in general as opposed to Lemmy's. Mbin is definitely taking its own approach UI-wise.
I love that the compact mode fills out the thumbnails, no unnecessary extra padding to waste space and make them smaller.
I love the Lemmy UI.
But I’m a gen Xer.
There’s some great analysis floating around of how different generations actually interpret UIs (and make decisions about how or whether to engage with them) very differently. So there is no “one size fits all” that will make everybody happy. Change the Lemmy UI to something like Photon and I’d be like… “this is dumb.” Making a bunch of very different options is a lot of work. If you want to do it… no one is stopping you. The Lemmy project is opensource and you could go start contributing and making pull requests today. You could go run your own instance and make it look like whatever you want and get the average redditors to join that. I run my own instance. We have a whole two users. It works exactly the way I want it to and federates with exactly who I want it to.
Frankly, I’m not sure Lemmy needs to go out of it’s way to appeal to the average redditor in order to have a thriving, healthy community. Sure, there are some things I miss about having a giant user base to engage with, but honestly, I’ll trade them for the MUCH MUCH lower toxicity. I don’t know that “growing Lemmy” should be our focus. It’s not like we’re getting paid.
I love the Lemmy UI, and am a Gen Z. There’s nothing worse than a UI that’s slow, takes more time than necessary to load and is overloaded. I would much rather have bare HTTP forms or just make curl calls than using (new) reddit or Photon.
Millenial here, Fuck Brutalist Modern and Responsive Web Design! If they ever dumb down the interface: I’m out of here.
genz here too, lemmy ui with the thumbnail (if explicitly posted, not auto generated from an article) full screen size by default would be the best of both worlds
I don’t love the default Lemmy web UI, but I agree with the sentiment of preferring a lighter, faster UI…Which makes me surprised to read that you love it.
I don’t know why, but it occasionally slows way down for me when signed in and browsing. It’s nearly driven me to switching interfaces to see if they’re any better with performance.
This is a good take.
Speaking from the same neutral pragmatism, it makes sense to let the default Lemmy web UI be a lightweight, actually-mobile-friendly derivative of old.reddit, rather than a more committed default like Alexandrite or Photon.
Keeping things similar is a good jumping-off point, and if we do want to make some large change, different generations and cultures have heavily varying default preferences. Wouldn’t it be wiser to pick a common ground, something these differing peoples have grown used to, as opposed to some new style A or B or C likes?
(Fun fact: if you think that ppl sticking to old designs is silly, Panasonic has a whole $$ niche in Japan selling modern-internal, vintage-external laptops with DVD drives and old-style keyboards. old.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/v0t06p literally has both a VGA and a thunderbolt lol)
Just in Japan?? I’ll buy one of these right now!
So what?
I’m sure you know that the value of a user or an opinion has nothing to do with their age.
Why be ageist to yourself?
I think you badly misunderstood my take.
Nah I just responded to a minor part (which I might have misunderstood). Sorry … 😈 🤣 .
I actually agree with everything in your post.
I mostly agree. Maybe a nice idea to make it opt-in by default, with the option to switch back to the ‘old’ UI
Perhaps a modal the first time someone visits that shows the different UI options and directions on where to switch
I might have missed it, but why is it clear that lemmy is reaching a plateau of users?
lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
First graph
Lemdro.id uses Photon as it's default UI, but it's incredibly slow and sometimes it doesn't even load properly. As much as I love the polish, I wouldn't recommend it as default UI. Using photon as an alternative UI is much better option.
Lemdroid uses an ancient version of photon, it’d make more sense to try it on phtn.app, also, the dev is doing a full rewrite to make it faster
Looks nicer indeed phtn.app
Ok yes. I just checked and the new version is very fast compared to the version lemdroid uses.
Mastodon is easy to use, it had no chance to become neo-twitter for other reasons.
Can you accept organic growth and not being the bestest best with three billions people?
Why photon? alexandrite is insanely much better imho: https://a.lemmy.world
What about Tesseract?
dubvee.org
That’s something to be discussed per server. You should maybe ask LW staff to open a poll on their announcements community
I think many people use Bluesky instead of Mastodon because of its UX, not its UI. Both looks great (I think Mastodon even nicer!).
I personally use Mastodon, but I’ve seen people complain about their experience with it.
The ootb experience is what matters to most. As people seem to just want it to work. I personally love the bare bones… but most users don’t really customize much or want to conduct a whole study on alternative apps or settings. I would be fine with polished and basic settings complemented with an advanced settings menu and other apps.
Usually I just recommend
They can figure the rest themselves later, but that’s usually a good way to set people up
Great advice, didn’t know about discuss.online.
Is there any other “human-readable” instance out there?
The question I usually get is “what is Lemmy?” when sharing a post
jlai.lu is basically reddit (as “read it”) but written in French
Indeed, so I wouldn’t recommend it to non-French-speakers
Probably reddthat.com
Be cautious, downvotes are disabled
What’s the consequences with disabled down voting? Is there any difference on how the post displayed ?
Yes, downvotes will be ignored. On the other hand, you can’t downvote any post. This comes from a time where there was no option to disable downvotes display at a user level (came in 0.19.4 I think, LW is still on 0.19.3, so you probably never tried it out).
Got it! Thanks.
I’ve been planning to move from world but apparently there’s no easy way to migrate with everything intact yet afaik.
You can keep your subscriptions and blocklists using the import export feature in the settings
You can link your old and new accounts in your bio, and keep the same username so that people can recognize you
I’ve been pretty happy with it as the default on !photon.slrpnk.net
Before that, alexandrite was my go to.
The default Lemmy ui doesn’t look good to me.
solarpunk seems to just use the default lemmy ui with some custom css
Sorry, I linked the wrong one. It’s fixed now.
right, thank you.
that is an outdated version of phtn though
I personally really dislike new reddit and the Photon theme. I’d say no to any change to my main instance.
I feel like this also was reddits main issue. I started occasionally using reddit way back, probably around when I was also heavy on slashdot. I hated reddits website. Honestly even old is crap. There used to be a simplified app like version of the website you could access, forget what it was though. That was at least user friendly and functional. When I found sync is when I actually got heavy into reddit because something had solved all of reddits glaring issues.
Have you tried next.lemm.ee ?
I always forget about it. The speed is impressive!
Yeah. I haven’t used it in a few months, but i did use it for a long time. I like it.
I believe it’s still missing moderation tools, but I could be wrong. Im not sure which update it’s at now.
Personally it misses the comments view, but I know that one is not that popular
The information density in the UI is crazy high.
I’ve only used it on mobile. I don’t know what the desktop looks like. But i like the smaller font. It’s more “crisp” than the default UI.
I’m new to Lemmy and quite tech savvy.
I’d like to get more people I know to join, but the standard UI really wasn’t nice. Thanks for showing me Photon, I like it so much more!!
I’m using Sync on mobile, I miss the Upvote & Downvote bar, any idea how to get it back?
I would actually prefer this: sacred.computer
Cool aesthetic. React kinda defeats the point though
The Lemmy UI is easy enough to use IMO. Where the problems show up are:
Unreliable linking to other comments and posts. It is annoying to no end to receive a link to someone’s comment and be unceremoniously ripped out of your home server and put onto the federated one no longer logged in etc… This behaviour should somehow be prevented
a quick reference to the text commands easily found somewhere (ie: sidebar)
I’d prefer more theme and colour options
Fix the text interface so it respects carriage return entries properly. If I want to start a new line directly under the current one (edit: AFI knew after 4+ months of use) there is
no way
to do
it.
Make it so a single carriage return is acknowledged and correctly starts a new line right underneath, or automatically forces a blank line between. This needing double entry is unintuitive and wrecks many new user’s first hundred post’s appearance.
Finally, the premise: Lemmy.world should be more welcoming is itself undesirable. That instance is already taking up an inordinate number of users so IMO every other instance (except the awful ones, we all know who they are) should be using a better UI, not L.W
your can use
two space at the end of the line
to achieve this
For the links, it’s being worked on, should be part of 0.20: lemmy.ml/post/23245384
It’s been standard since the late 70s. Markdown inherited it from TeX. Actually the convention should go back even further, roff etc. and of course plain text files themselves. It is perfectly intuitive if you understand what a text file is. “Text file”, not “word document”. What’s next, using > to indicate quoting is suddenly unintuitive? Again: That convention is older than the internet.
It also works exactly like reddit. They use a slightly different (and I think non-standard) markdown version over there. If you want to change anything about it then you’ll need to write a whole wysiwyg thing because otherwise everyone that’s perfectly used to and comfortable with markdown, me included, is going to be utterly, utterly, confused.
…if you want, you can now imagine a rant about the youth nowadays with their smartphones and tablets unable to understand markup languages or type. On a keyboard. With ten fingers.
Btw have you noticed the “preview” button? The ?⃝ symbol on the top? There’s even a bloody tutorial.
While I am not old enough to have experience with typing in the 70s, in my decades of experience with text input methods I cannot ever recall one using this method of 1 carriage return being ignored. No forum, email or word processor (even WordPerfect for the c64) or Notepad uses this, so my guess is your experience is in some niche technical field which does not apply to what the general population expects.
Most UIs don’t even have a preview option, let alone need one, because they don’t require you to have a stick up your ass to ‘get’ using them.
I think the convention of 2 newlines for each paragraph is a longstanding norm in plaintext. The old Usenet, list servs, plain text email, etc., was basically always like that, because you could never control how someone else wraps their text. 2 new lines would be a new paragraph no matter what, while single new lines could create ambiguity between an author’s intentional line break versus the rendering software’s decision to wrap an existing line.
For lists and the like, you’d want to be able to have newlines without new paragraphs, but you’d generally want ordered lists or unordered lists at that point.
For an obvious example of markup languages where newlines and carriage returns don’t have syntactic meaning, look at literally the most popular one: HTML.
So markdown was essentially enforcing the then existing best practices for pure plain text communication, to never use single line breaks except in lists.
It was pretty common before Markdown took over that forums and other user-input rich text fields used raw html (or a subset of html tags), or something syntactically similar to html’s opening and closing tags (BBcode, vBulletin markup, etc.).
Markdown was basically the first implementation that was designed to be human readable in plaintext but easily rendered into rich text (with an eye towards HTML). It’s not a coincidence that it took off in the early days of the “web 2.0” embrace of user-submitted content in asynchronous forms.
I get the complaint. But I think markdown makes a lot of sense as a way to store and render text, and that one compromise is worth it overall.
I already mentioned reddit. bbcode does it differently, yes.
Random mail off the LKML. What you see there is standard formatting established back in the days of 80 column terminals. Also have a (not so random) RFC.
Inherently wysiwyg.
Is a text editor, not a format.
Reddit, discord, discourse are neither niche nor aimed at a techy audience. Markdown is everywhere nowadays. It’s a standardised, machine-readable format picking up all those conventions of ole. It’s 20 years old by now.
The standard lemmy UI does. Those wysiwyg-style UIs also require you to point+click a thousand times to get what you want because there’s no way to markup your text by typing – because the markup is not textual. Have you ever tried doing actual formatting by using those formatting buttons in the lemmy UI. Do you select a word, then hit “bold”, or, noticing that all it does is put asterisks around the word, type *word* instead?
I don’t have a reddit account so I can’t verify, but IIRC it doesn’t ignore single return commands, and for certain Discord pushes the message immediately on hitting enter. This is closer to what most modern interfaces use, and what anyone using SMS is used to. Shift+enter allows the user to force a new line and 2x gives the paragraph break.
I’m not saying markdown isn’t a thing, but it isn’t used nearly as often (edit: as in Lemmy’s particular implementation) as being described and setting up Lemmy’s interface to require it feels clunky. My specific issue is the handling of 1 enter being ignored. Everything else makes sense because I too use markdown manually quite often.
I do, and can verify that it does ignore a single return character.
No, it doesn’t.
Lemmy will be getting a new, more modern UI sometime soon.
It is being actively developed and you can even try it out today: github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui-leptos
Has anyone deployed it yet? Curious to see what it looks like, but too lazy to deploy it myself
Apparently lemm.ee has it deployed: next.lemm.eeedit: though I’ll keep using this UI or Photon if it stays like that. It is, at the moment, very ugly.edit 2: wrong information
Wait, are you sure? I thought it was only a project by @sunaurus@lemm.ee : lemm.ee/post/27356044
Oh lol, my bad. Didn’t see that.
You really trying to convince us with a screenshot of the ugliest ui i ever seen huh
Yeah I used old Reddit. I don’t want something that looks like new Reddit
.world in a nutshell
better than whatever the fuck .ml in a nutshell is.
You both aren’t wrong… But this isn’t about you.
If it’s not about me then why does it exist.
Personally, I think this looks great. I love the command palate and the display modes, and it checks the other boxes, for me at least.
BTW I actually used an outdated version of Photon on the screenshot, looks like lemmy.world haven’t updated their photon version, I have updated the post with the updated current Photon UI, I think more people will like it. It’s an improvement from the older version.
I absolutely hate it so much
The void at the center of the page is whispering things to me.
That’s too much padding. It needs to be more like Hacker News.
Are you aware of old.lemmy.world ?
Oh nice. It’s like reddit with res. I like that a lot.
Glad to hear!
Is it still developed?
Not so much unfortunately
Bluesky looks like old Twitter and was even “created” by the former head of Twitter.
It’s not surprising such a guy knows how to succeed.
Lemmy could use a face-lift, sure, but since Lemmy is largely centralized now with Lemmy.world, I’m not sure I care so much about it. It was more fun when Lemmy was started and we had a dream of an distributed network of interesting instances. That didn’t happen and like-minded instances shut off federation with the others.
It’s like children in a sandbox. “That guy said this, I will tell on the teacher”.
The fediverse really is best viewed as a local-first space. Everything just works better if your primary focus is on the people or communities on your local instance. But people keep trying to think of it as primarily about the space in between, because that’s what’s novel.
But most people do not give a shit about that novelty, and we “market” it terribly.
“Lemmy” doesn’t exist like Reddit does. It’s not a place people can go to talk about shit. It’s a website engine. It exists like WordPress does. One of its features just happens to be “can pull content from other websites”.
If we want this space to grow, we need to focus on building community websites that stand on their own. Then we can market it as “hey, you love it here on MyInterest.social, but did you know you can also talk to people from SomethingElse.social? Pretty cool, huh??!?” Nobody seems to want to do that, though. That means we’re totally at the mercy of places like Twitter and Reddit, waiting for them to fuck up badly again and hoping more people just kind of land here, in some cheap and uncanny knockoff of where they really wanted to be.
Languages-focused instances like feddit.org or jlai.lu are quite good at this. Aussie.zone is also good, their daily threads are very active.
Isn’t the ability to defederate a key point of having federation in the first place?
I personally do want to see word salad from supporters of russian genocidal imperialism and or the CCP.
Nah, the current UI is fine. We don’t need fancy shit on a link aggregator. Reddit went to shit after “updating” the UI.
Your opinions of “good” or “best” aren’t the same for everyone.
I literally hate the new reddit UI, as do most peeps I’ve spoken with…
The new reddit UI is designed to push ads, and push premium subs.
/me pines for the days of protocol over interface. NNTP + killfiles were the bees knees. Then we could just all pick our own interface to connect to any lemmy host.
That UI is dogshit. Lemmy is a link aggregator and you’re saying it should show 2 links on the screen at a time? New Reddit is shit for the same reason.
I see this issue through so many newer UIs. Sure it looks nice in a way. But it looses all functionality. We have an info dense application, pairing that with a infosparse UI just causes frustration and excessive scrolling and clicking. Info density matters.
Yea, I hate that trend. Especially when it’s used for information pages about products and you have to constantly scroll around and deal with weird slideshow things to find what you’re looking for (if useful information is even present at all).
It’s got a compact view that is pretty much why I’d be using if I started. I think it makes sense to default to the “cozy” view, even if that is the most bass ackwards naming I’ve seen. The reason being is that “most” people prefer that view and are the same people that wouldn’t bother looking for a setting to change, they’d just nope on out because they got overwhelmed.
Default “cozy” in desktop mode
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/76a886d6-5e52-4213-b189-b056515cc059.jpeg">
“compact” in desktop mode
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/43f25b07-cb56-41e1-9bef-725e11222e4c.jpeg">
I think compact looks decent in mobile view as well, but since the parent post is about desktop UI that’s what I’m showing.
Compact is certainly better than what OP showed. Frankly I’m fine with driving everyone that thinks the “cozy” view is acceptable away from this platform. I’m not interested in whatever other terrible opinions they’d be sharing here.
Huh…?
But the Instances themselves can customize all they like…?
Nah that looks like convoluted shit. Simple is better. Like old Reddit. Your screenshot looks like new Reddit dogshit.
People have their preferences, and that's fine. I certainly think we would benefit from different instances making use of different user interfaces by default, appealing in return to different kinds of people.
I've heard some people are not into Piefed because it's too bare bones or something. For me, that's exactly why I love it. Besides, they have even added (optional) support for decorative drop shadows - it's futuristic as fuck, as far as I'm concerned.
Definitely personal preference. I prefer minimal interfaces and logical layouts. This becomes even more crucial for mobile.
I don't think Reddit's redesign is a good thing to aim for. <img alt="Personally I really like mbin's interface in compact mode." src="https://i.imgur.com/HVRdLCZ.png">
We tried at communick.news a while ago, it didn’t work so well. Perhaps the situation has improved, so it’s worth to take a look.
Hey, how are you doing?
phtn.app has the latest version, seems quite faster
I’m working on my own Lemmy client that I’m hoping will be both a better UI, but also universally better as an app (phone and tablet), MacOS app, and on the web. Voyager provides a web version, but it’s not optimized for larger screens.
My app will deliver the best experience on all screen sizes and will take the best of Reddit, Voyager, etc.
I’m 14 days in lol but if anyone is interested please DM me. I’m happy to share what I’m working on, but I just ask you have realistic expectations as this will likely be 6+ month project to deliver something that can actually compete with existing clients.
While I do favour that UI improvements are needed - in particular for guest views and community sidebars, I’d say defo chasing the “big social” trends and UIs is not the way to go. Heck, I left Reddit partly because of the new UI (I know about old.reddit, it’s just there’s no promise of any kind to maintain it).
Eww. I don’t like that screenshot at all. I vastly prefer the more info dense version I use that looks like classic reddit.
I mistakenly used the old photon version, I have updated the post with the image of the new current updated version of Photon.
You can customize photon’s post layout to make it more info dense, even more than the newer image I have attached on the post.
While that is preferable to the previous one, it’s still only showing 3 posts with tons of wasted space. This is putting an infosparse UI over an infodense application/platform and when you do that you lose functionality and make using the platform more tedious and time consuming. In a way it’s nice but it loses too much function to be appealing in this application. I could see that being an acceptable UI for another platform but not a link aggregator where the whole reason for existing is to gather a lot of information together.
I thought the point of Linux was the ability to customize anything, including your layout?
Not criticizing, just confused as to who this use case would be aimed at.
I don't use lemmy, so I don't have to suffer it's UI. I use Mbin/Kbin and the UI is almost perfect with the settings I changed, I get like 8-9 posts simply laid out with a little thumbnail and the title, no useless features or buttons. Just like old classic reddit, just slightly less compact.
But this "Photon UI" looks absolutely disgusting, I get it might be how the modern web is, but modern isn't always a good thing, especially when talking about UI/UX.
Lemmy isn’t a UI, it’s just data. Each app that connects to lemmy (not instances in the fediverse, but apps that let you sign into a lemmy account) has their own interface. A person can (and probably has) made an app with a modern interface for lemmy.
We are not confined to a specific app or interface, anyone can interface with Lemmy and present the data in their own way.
The most used UI for Lemmy is developed by the Lemmy project. Lemmy UI is modular, but Lemmy is definitely also a UI.
I forget people look at Lemmy on desktop/laptops. I just assume everyone has 15 minutes to kill and picks up there phone and opens the app they prefer, that they put on the second screen, 3rd row, 3rd column from the bottom where it belongs. If you have it somewhere else… Well maybe you have 5 columns instead of 4, or are wrong. But never on the first page … that would be obsessive. It has to hide, lurking on that second page laying in wait. For its 15 mins to shine
Lol no. We need a UI that doesn’t require JavaScript.
can we be best friends please?
I disagree. I spent some time earlier this year working on a BlueSky client that would work completely without JavaScript. Working without JavaScript means it has to run on a web server somewhere. Using JavaScript means the client can run entirely on your computer with the only dependency being the Lemmy server you connect to. And since there are many Lemmy servers, this means no single entity that can pull the plug on you.
The only alternative I see is a native app that runs a non-JS client on your computer, or maybe WebAssembly? Seriously though, modern JavaScript is actually very capable. You might be dismissing it only because it’s popular to hate on JavaScript or maybe the current Lemmy clients aren’t good. That doesn’t mean the underlying issue is JavaScript.
I’ve abandoned my BlueSky client to work on a Lemmy client that will be written in JS but can run entirely on your computer.
This is a design flaw. The service that your JS queries can return HTML just as easily as it can return json that gets rendered on the page with JavaScript.
Write a letter to the lemmy devs and ask them to rewrite the backend to use htmx.
Everyone who has actually interacted with the Lemmy devs knows that they’re rude assholes that dont listen to their community.
Apparently butthurt as well if you check out the UI developer response.
And in doing so it would lock everyone using that service into a single UI. Structured data is better. You have an irrational fear of an extremely basic web technology.
I think we need many UIs to cater for lots of different types of users and then you just choose the one you want.
Everyone having to use the same thing is what killed reddit for most of us.
Agreed, but we dont have a UI for users without JS
Yeah I mean if you really want a UI with no JavaScript you can still use one, it’s really just a case of better defaults here (and I totally agree).
Can you link me to a Lemmy UI that doesn’t require JS?
I don’t think it’s possible to have a Lemmy UI without JS because it serves up JSON not rendered pages. You could sign up on a kbin/mbin instance though to get a static frontend.
Of course its possible, but Lemmy needs to fix this design flaw first
I don’t see any issue with the current UI.
Sync ftw
We need to be better than Reddit in every way!
I think we need to actually do some new user testing, instead of endless discussion with nothing to back it up.
Different OG ex-redditor here. I think Lemmy’s UI is vastly superior. But full disclosure, I used old reddit.
How is it clear that Lemmy’s growth is nearing a plateau? And why does Lemmy need broader growth? That seems like a solution in search of a problem. A major advantage of not being a corporate social media property is not having to think like one.
lemmy.fediverse.observer/dailystats
Nice! But the average users graph shows continual staggering growth, no sign of a plateau.
45k monthly active users on 14 October
44k monthly active users on 11 December
The first graph is generally considered the most relevant to assess the activity on the platform
On a longer time scale the monthly active users has been steadily trending down for 4 months, from 48k to 44k. But the users per day has been steadily growing - apart from whatever TF happened on Oct 14 when it suddenly dropped by 50k if I’m reading it right. Database problem?
I’m kind of curious how these readings are taken. The Fox News claim of being “America’s most watched cable news network” is based on a Neilson rating that records TVs multiple times a day, which heavily overweights ones people keep on it all day whether they’re watching or not. Fox does much worse on another Neilson stat called the “qume” which only records one hit per day per TV if that TV was tuned to a channel at all during that day - a much better indicator that people deliberately switched to a channel to watch it for a while. I don’t suppose we know how these Lemmy averages are arrived at.
Anyway, the posts and comments per day - which to me defines “activity” better than number of users, are both steady upward lines - unless fewer users who are more active is a bad trend.
There’s a lot of discussion about the “comments and posts per days” metrics, the consensus seems to be that they should be “total” rather than “per day”
lemmy.world/comment/13761285
People are posting the same, the graphs just go up because they are about the total number of comments and posts, not daily.
Meaning that we indeed have hit a plateau of 44k monthly active users.
Photon is dope, pretty sure its developed by our very own Admiral Picard. But I haven’t seen a Lemmy UI that I didnt like yet.
That’s Tesseract.
Photon is developped by @Xylight@lemm.ee
Ah, both are dope though. Can’t say I hate either one for their modern looks. Though the only UIs I have ever hated have all been ones I made.
Agreed on all counts.
For those who may not be aware there are alternative front ends available for Lemmy.
MLMYM is like old reddit. You can see what it looks like here:
mlmym.walledgarden.xyz
Voyager is multi platform interface that also offers a Lemmy frontend. Our implementation is here:
voyager.walledgarden.xyz
I am not as tech savvy as most people on Lemmy and I use voyager without any issues. I thought it was quite easy to get up and running.
Hi everyone, I’m the dev. Reading all these comments really hurts when it’s something you’ve poured your heart and soul into for over a year.
There’s reasons I do everything I do in this UI, and my primary goal is to make Lemmy accessible for everyone.
This is the “cozy” view as well, but there’s a “compact” view for people like me who enjoy more information density. Again, my end goal is to make Lemmy accessible. I don’t do this for the sidebars for convoluted reasons I won’t get into.
I’m not the one trying to advertise it, and I’ve never really tried to because of the fear of disapproval. I think I should advertise it myself now because then I can showcase the best parts and not get misunderstood. This screenshot uses the “list” view, imo the worst one, with some cursed chrome scrollbars.
Now that I see that the majority of users believe this sucks, I’m not sure if my mission is worth it or if I’m even doing it right.
I’m probably being too sensitive to criticism which I should expect from any project. But this project is the only one I used to feel proud of, then people chiming in claiming it’s the ugliest thing they’ve seen. I don’t know im blind to design which is the only thing I considered myself “good” at in terms of web dev.
Hello @Xylight@lemm.ee ,
First of all, really sorry that you took it that way. A few comments were indeed harsh, and I guess people were just focused on the interface and forgot that there’s actually someone behind it.
I personally value Photon a lot, it definitely helps a lot of people who prefer this type of interfaces.
I think you don’t even need to advertise it that much. We have Photon as an alternative frontend on one of the instances I follow, and people regularly bug the admin to update it because they like it!
The negativity this post received is probably because interfaces are a very personal matter, and trying to uniformize the default interface is always going to lead to heated discussions
Take care, you are doing an amazing job.
FYI @TheArstaInventor@lemmy.world
I assume you mean the dev of Photon UI?
An important thing to remember when it comes to feedback is that there are different audiences. The only feedback you’ll get here is from Lemmy users, the people already here, the grognards, the Linux heads who don’t understand why anyone would need a GUI at all when the terminal is right there! All to say, a bunch of wads who would rather leave a big community for a smaller one that suits their preferences. They don’t know jack all about jack shit when it comes to designing for a general audience.
All to say, if what you want to design is accessibility… solicit feedback from people who need and understand accessibility features. I have no idea where those people are but I bet you’re savvy enough to find them.
If you can design something that looks like OP’s screenshot (and better, based on your comment), you straight up need not concern yourself with the negative feedback on this thread. Bunch of wankers. Continue being awesome and making awesome stuff!
Never used your project but don’t let this thread get you down.
Clearly OP loves it - don’t let those who don’t know it or don’t like it be the voices that ring loudest in your ears even if they hurt the most.
I worked professionally in open source at a company with lots of funding. The tools I worked on were used by millions and millions.
Every negative comment hurt so much. Every angry user I wanted to talk to. Most of them wanted to TALK AT me. It all hurt. And I was being paid. The engineers on my teams were burnt by the community time and time again.
If you love what you’re doing and you have a growing or happy audience - stay the course. Listen to criticism, decide if you agree (and maybe take some time when it hurts because the criticism might be valid), make a decision and move on.
Also, and this is going to be tough, maybe think about expanding or modifying what you mean when you say making Lemmy accessible for everyone.
Do you mean making a UI that will become the majority default or making a UI that brings some features (or perspective) for users who see value in those features? Trying to make something for everyone in a pond as small as the fediverse, where there are already a plethora of options is a big lift.
Above all, do you. And that includes this comment which I encourage you to promptly ignore. ;)
Well said.
Don’t take it that way. I find the default UI horrible and primarily use Lemmy on Voyager on my phone because of it. Finding this thread let me find that I can comfortably use Lemmy on desktop too! 🥳
I didn’t join Lemmy for a while because I liked the “new” reddit UI better and found Lemmy too different to use easily. I tried all the different options and I didn’t like them. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED ON DESKTOP!
And remember survivorship bias. The ones that can put up with the Lemmy UI, or switch to something they like better, are (for the most part) the only ones here now giving feedback.
Dude UI (and anything to do with looks) is always a subjective thing. Some people will like it and some people will hate it. I know every dev wants their UI to be loved by everyone but that’s a fools errand as there are always people with opposing opinions. What matters is that
thatyou like what you have created. Also know that there are people like me and many others who use photon daily and love the design. Don’t let subjective opinions get you down..
Yeah Lemmy has an unfriendly community. UI is really hard and I know exactly what you mean when you say everything has a reason behind it.
FWIW, Ima migrate my personal private Lemmy to photon because I think it looks great.
The reason why Reddit killing third-party apps is an issue is that everyone has an opinion on UI, and all of them are correct. The perfect UI for one person will be terrible for another. Don’t take what others are saying too harshly. Make the UI that you think is best and there will be other users who agree and want it too. If you make something where you’re trying to please everyone you’ll end up making something no one likes.
Photon is amazing, and I use it daily. I love it. I’m sorry about the users in the comments that don’t understand what “subjective” means.
Thank you for all your work, and keep doing what you’re doing!
I for one am a fan of everybody doing UI Fediverse improvements. It is very literally paving the future of the internet, because the future of the internet is not corporate bullshit. The Fediverse needs to be as slick as possible, and more people working on that is sorely, sorely needed!
I haven’t met a single person that didn’t like Photon. Photon is the only reason I started browsing on desktop regularly. It’s lean, clean, and packed with gorgeous transitions; I’ve rarely ever found a project that gets form and function right.
The internet is a shitty place. I’m not surprised that on Lemmy we have shit like
The troll energy is strong, but it doesn’t change that this is a great project. Alternative UI’s are what make Lemmy unique, and you’re doing your part. That’s appreciated.
That’s indeed unfortunate
My other comment was blunt so here’s my attempt to be more constructive, this is all my personal opinion and my reaction was in response to making it the default I don’t think that you should stop working on it or even that I am objectively correct.
There is way too much empty space. I don’t use it but from OPs screenshot it appears this is to allow for larger thumbnails. It would be better to have them smaller and expandable if someone finds one interesting. Moving the thumbnails to the left of the text would eliminate all the blank space your eyes have to travel across to view them as well.
Shitty microsoft paint edits to demonstrate what I’m trying to say:
<img alt="" src="https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/a02c4439-75d3-445d-a221-bd05d7e4faa2.png">
Freed up space in green:
<img alt="" src="https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/e6c572a7-8b23-4ddf-9c90-ec90009f905c.png">
That’s an option. You can change the thumbnail alignment to the left, then use compact instead of list mode. OP is using bad settings.
Just played around with it a little and it is much more tolerable than OP makes it look like. I wasn’t able to get it as compact as the default view but I don’t hate it.
That’s very important
don’t worry, you’re doing fine
Don’t be disheartened. You did a great job with your version.
People complain about Apple and Google UIs that they spend hundreds of millions on creating and user-testing. There’s no one-fits-all in UI or UX.
Hey man you and the team did a great job. Love the default UI. It’s all open source yeah? So they can change what they want. Kinda like what semaphore social did with mastodon.
I’m on Eternity for lemmy. Best app cause I came from Infinity for reddit
Nah
This UI is so beautiful
I basically only use mobile apps, so I don’t even remember what the desktop UI looks like. But if you say so!
Yup. Voyager/Wefwef is basically the new Apollo. It’s not 100% there in terms of feature parity, but it’s damned close and is being actively developed.
I like it simple. I use Jerbora on Android and can’t be happier. I use duckduckgo browser and it’s YouTube mode, so I have no ads, cookies, trackers or popups. It’s actually close to perfect.
Compared to e.g. Discord, I feel like wasting most screen real estate for static eye candy info,… no thanks.
You say that like it’s bad 😊
Your points are valid, but you do run on the assumption that growth is good, which is not an universal truth IMO.
As someone trying to keep the non-tech communities active, having a few active posters would definitely be an improvement
Yes, I just want to point out that opening the floodgates will get you the fish, but also a lot of mud.
What communities do you manage?
Personally I think the day to day UX is fine, but finding communities is the real mess.
To find communities: !newcommunities@lemmy.world
Thanks!
About link for finding new communities, I worded my request badly, I am not interested in finding new communities, I’m interested in finding specific communities. Thanks though!
Newcommunities has posts where the active communities on a topic are posted, so that can help
Also lemmyverse.net/communities
Sure, but it’s impractical when you search for a community.
Edit: tried your link, but the search function doesn’t seem to work. I searched for “art” and got technology, world news & shit post.
I just tried, art indeed seems too broad for some reason.
I just tried “television” and got relevant results. “video games” and “trains” work too
There was this post from 4 months ago, I’ll start a new one today: lemmy.world/post/19101266
Maybe “art” is just too short a search keyword, but some longer gave quite wonky results too, or just nothing.
Good initiative! (Still doesn’t help how to quickly find a community though).
What did you try?
Also, the art post for today: lemmy.world/post/23089448
Thanks, I appreciate it but it’s still the hassle to find communities IMO. The (my) first post was about UX and how hard it is to search and find communities, I hope people try to improve that before improving the general UX.
Yes, it’s far from perfect. Nobody is really working on this unfortunately as far as I know
I tried to scan the lemmyverse by checking out known instances on my instance, and then check out instances on them and so on, pinging communities for descriptions and posts, but suddenly my instance knew way too many communities and swell up until it went basically unusable so I had to wipe it clean 🥲.
So I tried, but stopped :-p
Ah, too bad 😅
There was a tool developed some time ago but I can’t find it at the moment
And on Lemmy’s side: github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2951
Interesting, thanks!
I’m fine with having less normies and an non-algorithmichal echo chamber of fellow leftists and tech savvy persons. These are my homies.
I don’t think the problem is the UI. Fediverse is more complex by nature than a centralized platform.
You have to choose a server, then an app to visualize (not only online but on the phone too) and there’s plenty of alternatives.
If everybody joined the same server we end up with a centralized system and if every large server has to use specific UI what’s the point on decentralizing?
I also thought that fediverse had to try to be easier to use but the point is that it’s more complicated precisely because the user has more power and hence has to do more decisions.
And I think people have to understand the basics of the fediverse, otherwise people will not stay precisely because it’s more complicated. If I didn’t care a bit I would be on Reddit not here and I’m currently using both because there’s simply much more content there and hopefully with time I can use Lemmy more and less reddit. I’m willing to do the effort of slowly transitioning because I believe in this but people who doesn’t care won’t stick around.
Every time I see the example of people used to Twitter complaining about Mastodon’s UX and UI, the experience of using the Twitter app and the constant struggle of figuring out whether the non-sense anomaly you see is a bug or just a feature to keep you locked in is becoming an even more painful memory…
But I like the current UI…
How are you supporting that belief? Any data? Any A/B testing?
I don’t want to sound too harsh, but you have sort of marked yourself as a representative of “average OG ex-redditor” or “average joe”. Actually, you refer to “average” quite a lot. But honestly, without any supporting evidence, it’s just words to make the proposal more appealing or relevant. If we remove all this cruft (which might be supported by anecdotal study, but that should barely count, if even), what arguments are here that actually remain?
Don’t get me wrong, if you said that you like “something like Photon” more than the current default UI, then great! It is awesome that other alternatives exist and when people find them, it’s great to share the review. (It’s how I have discovered so much of great software!) But then again, it’s all subjective, right? In your proposal, you seem to tend to state lot of these subjective opinions as if they were objective, which to me makes the proposal just far less convincing.