Alexandrite is a Beautiful Web Frontend for Lemmy

Fediverse@lemmy.ml – 248 points – 1 years ago

Alexandrite is slick, gorgeous, and brings a lot to the Lemmy experience. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Looks pretty. I'm not entering my login credentials though. Lemmy needs an app token system or something.

(dev here) I totally understand that, I wish Lemmy had that or oauth, I don't like handling passwords just as much as you don't want me to!

Hi dev! Any plans on a light theme? For me, this is one of the few sort of websites I prefer a lighter theme as I'm coming from old.reddit.

Eventually I do want to implement a light theme, but it'll probably be a bit!

😀 👍

Yeah, I changed my password after trying https://mlmym.org/ bc of this

While looking good on desktop (based on screenshots), it is definitely not designed for mobile. See below

Yes it’s designed exclusively for desktop.

You guys bring your desktops with you when you shit?

Do you really not have a toilet desktop? 🚽🖥️

beat me to it, but it’s apropo this is coming from a shitjustworks account

That's true dedication to shitposting.

Don't you guys have desktops?

https://alexandrite.app/

for the lazy

Is there a way to use this as a total replacement for the lemmy-ui as an instance admin?

(dev here) I hadn't really considered it as a full replacement before, but hosting it alongside the instance like a desktop version of m.lemmy.world is something I think would be neat (at least one instance is doing that, with a custom Dockerfile because I haven't made one yet). I'd need to add some mobile support (which I'm not against doing in the future) and some admin tools probably before it could be a full replacement, both would probably not be for a bit still because I'm still working on feature parity for normal users. Also still waiting on a Lemmy issue to be fixed before I can add image uploading which is the most basic feature the site lacks at the moment.

I'd like to be able to run it as an alt UI on my instance as well.

Wefwef/voyager works well as a mobile interface. It only has an iOS style interface now, but it’s really good, and they’re working on an Android skin if that’s a dealbreaker

True, I've been using Voyager on my phone and it's a big improvement over lemmy-ui in my opinion.

I exclusively use Lemmy via voyager.

A beta version of the Android theme is already in as of 0.24.0! It's still a work in progress, but Wefwef dev seems to move along at an impressive pace.

Settings > Appearance > Device Mode

This is something I'd really love to see, as well. While I'd say that the default UI on Lemmy is "functional", in that it gets the job done...I would love if the backend could support alternative bundled frontends. This is something that Pleroma supports, and it's a great feature. It's something I wish more Fediverse software could officially support.

It's defeinitely possible with lemmy.

Check out endlesstalk.org, they have three frontends!

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

Not to mention lemmy.world that also provide m.lemmy.world for voyager (formerly wefwef).

I think the dev is working on that by making a docker image(?)

the dev is @sheodox@lemmy.world and they have a community for the app at !alexandrite@lemmy.world

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

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.

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.

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.

“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.

~~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.~~

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

I assume you didn’t read the welcome note

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.

lol. Touché.

It’s intended for desktop use not mobile.

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.

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).

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.

Yea … All good.

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.

👍

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.

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.

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 !voyagerapp@lemmy.world

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.

2 more...

You know what's funny? I would never use something like this (my own Lemmy client is absolutely terrible in comparison!). But I'm so happy that Alexandrite exists: it's proof that programming and web development can still be experimental and loads of fun. Congrats to the developers!

Honestly, I think this is the real selling point of the fediverse, at least for developers. There's no incentive to force people to use Official Mobile Clients™. You can literally spin up something (meaning a fediverse server) locally, if you want, and test against that until you have something that works. And as long as you stick to the API, you can build whatever you want.

Woah, is that a Plan9 / 9Front client?! 🤯

Yes - well, almost! I made a read-only filesystem interface to Lemmy then wrote a small program for one of the Plan 9 text editors/programming environments to access it.

The real thing would be to serve that filesystem interface over the Plan 9 file protocol (9P). Not quite there yet!

I really need hoverZoom+ to work on Lemmy. I will use anything that allows that, and this may be great, but I'll never know because no hoverZoom.

hoverZoom+

This is really good feedback. I wonder what that would take? 🤔 Is this something where the app needs to be updated with some property, or does this need to be fixed on HoverZoom+'s side?

I use Imagus and it doesn't work well with Alexandrite, I was trying to find some documentation on if I could support Imagus from the website side somehow, like attributes to provide non-thumbnail image URL hints but I hadn't found documentation yet.

I've been meaning to try building something similar into Alexandrite at some point otherwise.

I don't know, I know it works in a lot of places automatically, but I'm not sure how it works. Maybe if the thumbnail has some sort of pointer to the real image?

Yea, this is definitely going to be the way I use Lemmy in desktop going forward. I actually liked the Reddit redesign so this feels nice to me.

Using this now, and yeah, it's really lovely.

As good as wefwef/Voyager is (particularly in helping to transition from using Apollo to access Reddit), it kinda falls apart on a desktop browser because it's built around swipe gestures, and lives squarely in the middle of the screen. So Alexandrite for desktop, Voyager for mobile seems pretty sound.

Combination of constan tleft sided subscriptions list, and posts in overlay mode, really is a pleasure to use