Lemmy is going to look more appealing as time goes on.
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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Lemmy needs to drastically improve the UX before it'll become big
What would you like to see improved ? This could be great contributions to the codebase :)
I mean, the downsides of the Fediverse have been discussed at length.
Here's a routine occurence: i'm browsing around, opening new tabs and such; then i go to upvote something, and it tells me i'm not logged in. This is how i find out i've accidentally left my instance. It's cooked at that point, i'm not going to post that comment, if i really wanted to i'd have to carefully replace the relevant parts of the URL. This keeps happening in both Lemmy and Mastodon.
I need to 1. Not fall out of my instance as easily, and 2. if i've opened a page outside my instance, i need to be able to open the same page in my instance in one click. Anything else is is annoying to me and a complete deal breaker to most new users.
I don't doubt that there's loads of work done in the backend that i don't see, but from my point of view as a user, Lemmy still has the same problems it had when i joined two years ago. That's right, it's been just about two years, the Reddit API debacle was around April-June of 23, and i haven't seen glaring problems adressed.
Yeah, that's annoying.
There is a universal link system (example), so someone could write a browser plugin but it demonstrates that this can be done by Lemmy itself and you see this in the links next to usernames and posts where you get the option of two links: local to you (a chain) and canonical (Lemmy pentagram). The problem is, the system would need to identify that the link goes to Lemmy instance and parse it accordingly and there is no standard URL. However, if you held, say, the top 40 instance URLs in an array and ran a quick check when rendering the page it would solve 99% of these problems overnight and you could flesh the link out a bit later on. The extra processing would be minimal.
edit: I asked @flamingos@feddit.uk (as they know more about the Lemmy code) and they pointed me to this which would resolve many of those issues, but also that using Photo gives you a "remote" and "local" version link at the top of the page to switch you back if you ever wander off instance.
That's great! Good to see that these issues are being worked on.
I would have thought that the solution would involve checking the cookies to see which instance the user is logged into?
That may require a browser plugin but if all links between Lemmy instances were rewritten to point to the version on your own instance, that would solve the problem of suddenly finding yourself off the reservation.
Even when I do stay on my instance, I randomly get logged out every few minutes. Only happens on my iPhone, never my computer, but it heavily discourages me from upvoting let alone posting.
Also the fact I have to select the language every time is really annoying. When have I ever posted something not in “English”?
I see, I really need to get started using the official front-end more to understand UX problems :)
The web UI is pretty bad IMO. We need to get some serious designers on that.
Are you aware of old.lemmy.world ?
lol, that's cool! no i wasn't
There’s some other ones too, but it’ll vary from instance to instance.
Hah, that's dumb, and also cool. I might end up actually using it..
AFAIK you can change the UI style a bit in your profile settings, but yeah, i guess more variants in appearance could help.
Just use a 3rd party app and pick the experience you prefer.
Which 3rd party app?
The average user needs to be spoon fed, choosing between 5+ different apps is confusing and takes mental load etc.
Everything just needs to work, with barely any thought put in (defaults for everything)
And once they're using the platform they can change defaults if they like.
Currently there aren't defaults, or the defaults suck (Eg lemmy.world web UI)
"Lemmy has 42k monthly active users
Feel free if you have any questions"
Believe it or not, a lot of people use it on an actual computer.
I mostly use desktop to browse and have been using the default shitjustworks site, but someone posted phtn.app above and it looks pretty nice. Discuss.online also looks just like old reddit. Looks like phtn.app works with any instance login.
So does https://oldsh.itjust.works/ :)
I've found a good 3rd party web app, Alexandrite.app although that's just another hurdle to entry like picking an instance. The official web UI should be much better.
Yea there are just way too many hurdles
Try a.lemmy.world
Nice, that's actually exactly the UI alaxandrite.app gives lemmings.world
How many of these alternative UIs are there?
From LW sidebar
Loads. I don't know if there is a list anywhere.
Could probably drag up DNS records or cert records, if it's not all wildcards
Not sure. old. seems to work on a lot of them.
The frontend and the backend are separate, so people can design new ones and many instances run alternate frontends, we do here:
The default needs to be nice, most users would get frustrated and give up before discovering a. Or p.
Thanks for that. It's a good point. There's no reason we couldn't run something like Photon as the default, which would be a smoother user experience. Might see what I can do about that.