this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Alexandrite is slick, gorgeous, and brings a lot to the Lemmy experience. I highly recommend giving it a try.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If it’s also intended for use on iPhone, it’s not ready. Renders too wide on my device.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it is clearly meant for use on desktop

While there are quite a few mobile apps on Android and iOS now, one interesting area gets overlooked: alternative web frontends.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As I said to the other person:

I assume you didn’t read the comment I was replying to, which asks if it can be used as a default ui on a server, which affects everyone, but thank for questioning my comprehension ability.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

asks if it can be used as a default ui on a server

that is irrelevant. the point is, that this is considered desktop solution. it is expected that everyone uses some kind of app on the phone, so the fact that it renders too wide on your iphone is irrelevant.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

“it is expected that everyone uses some kind of app on the phone”

lol ok

lemmy apps are still in development, don’t even reflect some server settings correctly, and the only version of lemmy that works totally as intended is the web portal, but we’re all expected to be using apps for everything?

sure, buddy

edit: also the point is that someone asked if it could be used as a lemmy instance default front end, which would only make sense if only desktop users ever logged in via a browser. How you cannot absorb this detail is beyond me really.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~it is clearly stated this is a desktop solution, so keep complaining it doesn't work on your iphone. i am sure if you add little more sarcasm, it starts making sense.~~

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The comment I replied to clearly asked if they could use it as a default instance front end. I know you want to cast the question I was responding to as also irrelevant, but it just isn’t, when plenty of people log in via a mobile browser, whether you like it or not.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

oh. i think i finally get your objection, although it is still unbelivable to me. are all iphone apps that bad that you would rather use the web interface?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

On Jerboa - probably the most developed/supported Android Lemmy app - text input is so buggy that it's practically unusable for me. Trying to edit the end of a comment will sometimes remove chunks from the middle, backspacing a few characters from the end of a word deletes the space in front of it etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

lemmy apps are still in development and all are subtly buggy, so until those are updated and refined, sometimes the web view is the only accurate one. So yes, at times I prefer the browser.

edit: for another example, see the Reddit app. I entirely prefer the browser over it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Just want to add to my comment that the #1 reason I sometimes prefer the browser over an app is that you can open content in multiple tabs, just like on desktop. I can have several tabs open, each dedicated to viewing one community. Easier to cut and paste urls and other content into other apps. I don’t like being confined to one viewport for everything. It’s nice being able to interrupt reading a discussion to go down a rabbit hole in another tab, then close it and pick up where I left off. Navigation in the apps can be generally unpredictable right now. Or you completely lose your place and have to go find it again. Lots of pros to using a browser for it.

[–] Ghostalmedia 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I assume you didn’t read the welcome note

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I assume you didn’t read the comment I was replying to, which asks if it can be used as a default ui on a server, which affects everyone, but thank for questioning my comprehension ability.

[–] Ghostalmedia 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s intended for desktop use not mobile.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which, again, is why I was pointing this out in reply to someone asking if it could be used as the default ui on a lemmy instance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I get that. Thing is an instance can use multiple alternative front ends, so I don’t want to shut down the question, because it’d make sense to run one for desktop and mobile (voyager for example).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Or possibly just adjust aspects of the responsive design to correctly present for mobile viewports, but the point still stands that having it as a default for an instance is a premature notion right now due to anyone logging into that instance on a mobile browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I also backed up and now see what you meant about being able to have multiple front ends for an instance. I read that as being able to select a frontend, not as having an “instance.com” and a “m.instance.com” at the same time, but that would solve the concern I raised. Yeah, we’re good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

👍

Yea, lemmy.world have m.lemmy.world that provides voyager nee wefwef.

endlesstalk.org have three. m.endlesstalk for voyager, old. for the old reddit web ui and new. for alexandrite.

Kinda cool! I'm not sure many other fediverse platforms are doing it, in part, I'm sure, to the hard separation that lemmy has between its backend and frontend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Interesting, I have a lemmy.world account but I don’t think I’ve seen the mobile view in my browser. At least, the url stays the same for me, it’s one of the reasons I didn’t consider that possibility. I’m used to seeing a m.domain variant on other sites. I’ll have to experiment and see if going to that specific url changes something.

edit: I’ll be damned, it does give me a whole different interface I never knew about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

edit: I’ll be damned, it does give me a whole different interface I never knew about.

Yea ... it's a completely different 3rd party front end!! Their community is at [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well now I have a new “app” to test. I could login with my reddthat account just fine, and it acts like a native app on iphone if I first open it in safari and then add it to the home screen. I can “close” it and it remembers my account just fine on reopen. TIL more things about lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep ... voyager is a PWA!

Personally, I much prefer all of the alternative WebUI frontends to the native apps.

While the native apps can be awesome, and all of their developers are doing great things for the fediverse, right now the fediverse is, IMO, best thought of as a web first ecosystem, just because of how DIY, volunteer/FOSS and non-profit it is. Alternative webUIs seem to me a better and faster way to get flexibility and user options across the fediverse.

They also avoid what I fear is a dark pattern with mobile apps, which is that the platform that gets a good mobile app all of a sudden has a significant advantage and "market inertia". But expecting the creator of a new platform to create two mobile apps is way too much. And so you have to wait for mobile developers, which is almost certainly a popularity contest with a pretty strong feedback loop. This seems to me contrary to the spirit, goals and even health of the fediverse at the moment, which is very much still in an experimental prototyping phase.

Plus, these PWAs work pretty well and seem to clearly be developed faster, and of course, are inherently cross-platform ... because you know, that's what the internet is about.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

well said 👏