Alternative UI: Photon

Antik 👾@lemmy.world to Lemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.world – 982 points –
photon.lemmy.world

We added an extra UI for our users. Photon by Xylight is an interface with a sleek, modern look and has all the bells and whistles you would need. Moderator tools included! You can access the UI from https://photon.lemmy.world.

Visit Photon's project page on github or get in touch with the developer in the !photon@lemmy.xylight.dev community. If you want to use photon on other instances you can do so from https://phtn.app.

Update: @Xylight has set up a donation link so if you like photon as much as I do, show him some love! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xylight

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Side note, if anyone also misses the Old Reddit style, lemmy.world also has an easy way to do that, just visit: https://old.lemmy.world/

For more info, visit the devs GitHub: mlmym - GitHub

Does old.lemmy.world have a toggle for seeing NSFW posts? I can't seem to find it.

Both Photon and old.lemmy are missing that and the hide scores setting. They're both better but I'm disappointed they don't seem to have feature parity with the default UI at minimum.

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Took a while before we announced it but it was running on photon.lemmy.world for a while already. Love how fast you implemented the changes that were brought up by everyone that was testing. Absolutely amazing job. I think you are the first one to get the admin tools in too!

So where can I donate as a thank you?

I'm a minor and can't set up a donation link legally. Any bug reports are very useful though!

Update: you can now donate here!

I think crypto wallet is way to go, isn't it?

That donation money would still need to end up in a bank account to be usable in a convenient way IMO, since bitcoin ATMs are a very rare occurrence.

I can't see how a crypto wallet would help otherwise, unless i'm missing something?

eh, there's places you can spend crypto on the internet these days. But your point still stands

The fact that the login UI has username, password, and 2FA code all on one screen means this immediately wins. I hate this new trend of "put in your email, now go to another screen, put in your password, now go to another screen...." Ugh. My password manager can autofill more than one box at a time, you know!

I don't know why websites do that, it doesn't look better, is probably more confusing and in general just slower for everyone

It's a small piece of a security gate to slow down bots trying to login

Its probably also more difficult to program the functionality into multiple pages as well.

I've never seen this separated into multiple actual pages. As long the “multiple pages” are done in JavaScript, they don't add much complexity.

It allows you to direct users with specific usernames/domains to specific login pages. For example for Single Sign on.

Maybe I'm confusing instances but I was almost positive they all have all those on the main screen?

Not 2fa code. The Lemmy apps have all of those on the sign up page, and so do alternative UIs

DAAYYYUUUMMM. That is stunning! Lemmy should make this theme the default across the verse!

Haven't seen anyone else mention this yet, but this seems to be the only app (installed as PWA) that has mod options. Well done!

Alexandrite (https://a.lemmy.world) has those too

Awesome! For some reason I thought that one was desktop only since last time I tried it, it didn't load well on mobile at all.

Oh yeah actually Alexandrite is not really suited for mobile. The developer is working on improving the mobile experience but it's main focus is desktop.

BIG EDIT: Actually @sheodox@lemmy.world just released an update and it now looks pretty frickin sweet on mobile with a new cards layout.

Ah that must be why it looks good on mobile now. I wonder if they'll implement a way to install it as a PWA.

This is probably the closest to new reddit we have so far, lots of people won’t use Lemmy because it’s “ugly” so this would be good to recommend

I mean, even with RES, I'd argue that Reddit is also kinda ugly

Most people use new reddit and have gotten used to social media sites prioritizing looks over functionality

I like new reddit because of big pics and videos. Don’t have time for clicking every post. I’m here for scroll and giggles.

pretty sure the only reason why they didn't go the extra mile to incorporate this to the old reddit is because they (unsurprisingly) want everyone to only browse the new reddit.

yeah, reddit has its own business. why lemmy force us to enlarge every picture in web version? all mobile clients have big pictures by default.

and if people (like me) want old reddit, mlmym exists. nice for people to have options

I think the only thing I find "ugly" about the default Lemmy UI is the green buttons and inconsistent border radii on them. Everything else looks rather decent and very functional.

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Of all the new test UIs, I've enjoyed this one the most so far

This makes distinguishing between nested comments much easier IMO. That's been my biggest gripe with the default UI so major thanks to the dev!

This UI is very good for desktop users , It solves the problem of official UI . it does not makes sense to not show bigger images in posts in official web UI . Thumbnail views are great when you are searching for stuff , not when you want to actively read posts while scrolling.

Need to add an easy way to open images in full size.

Does it support infinite scrolling?

you could have tried yourself but there is a "Load More" button

Unfortunately no due to an issue with sveltekit's router :/

i might make this an SPA soon which will support infinite scrolling though.

Please keep the paged view as an option though. Helps me keep up with where I was

Ok this is my new main way to access Lemmy on both desktop and mobile. Beautiful job.

*edit: After a little bit of using it, I'll probably stick with it for mobile for a while longer, but I'm going back to the default lemmy GUI for desktop.

Where can I find full list of installed alternative UIs?

There's been a lot of lemmy web UIs as of late, but I think this is my favorite so far.

Not sure if I like this or Alexandrite better. Both are better than the vanilla Lemmy look.

I like that photon doesn’t use the user’s display name in place of just the user name. That’s an annoying twitter-like feature.

Looks great! Wonder is there a way to reduce the size of the sidebar? It takes up a huge amount of the space on web (while still keeping the names visible, the minimized view with icons isn't super helpful)

Very nice. I've been using the various apps but so far nothing has really stuck so I'll probably just stay with the web version.

Love it. Question: Does Photon not support opening communities link within the web app? When I click on the Photon community link in the post, it takes me to the instance lemmy.xylight.dev page

Okay, now that I can see it, its great! Is there no dark mode though :'(

It does support dark theme, it uses your system theme. Browsers like librewolf will likely force it to light theme for fingerprinting reasons.

That's lame.

I use "light" theme at the system level, but I like to set some sites to dark. And I especially like to manually toggle between them as I feel like it.

This is a deal breaker for me 🥲

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Update: Manual dark toggle added in v0.5.7!

I can't find any donation links, how can I donate to the work of Photon!? I love it and plan to only use it, when I get the time I plan to launch my own instance with it too.

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Too much text. I much prefer a compact view so I can easily scroll past posts that are irrelevant to me

From what I was able to see it looks good on mobile but of course lemmy world went down before I could fully explore it.

Ooooh, this looks great!! Especially on mobile too! Thank you so much!!

Looks fantastic. Only nag so far is I'd like the side-bar to be resizable as well as collapsible.

Both are possible already! You can resize with the little thing on the bottom right of the navbar, and the collapse button is on the top left of the navbar.

Thanks for pointing out the resize widget thing! I did see the collapse button, just worded that poorly I guess.

Nice to have some variety and choice, and this is certainly a very solid first version! Always room for improvement, of course. :)

  • How to log in the first time is not at all obvious. If that empty circle was not in the corner where most Lemmy instances have a login link I would never have found it. At least this is only necessary to find once, but still, there's room to put "Login" text in that space.
  • I like that the left sidebar with my subscribed communities is collapsible, but the community sidebar on the right is not collapsible. I think the latter is much less useful or commonly used for most users, so this is an odd choice IMO.
  • Three vertical scrolling areas is not super great. I also get a horizontal scrollbar in the community list when collapsed. Why make the left and right panes "sticky" and scroll with the main column, then remain in place with further scrolling. If the right sidebar was collapsible, I don't see why scrolling with the main column would cause problems.

I'd prefer to keep the empty circle, but an icon to put there would be better. Should I put the login icon in the empty circle?

Yeah, I think an icon of some kind would be great! Another option is having a text "Login" link visible by default, but once logged in just use the circle.

Works great on desktop!

Q: On mobile, how to quickly access subscribed communities?

I pressed the globe top right and then subscribed

It works but there could exist an easier approach like a folded side menu?

Nice UI! I can't view the modlog though...

Ah yeah, I need to add that. The way the API works makes it a literal nightmare to get the modlog working, but I'll get to it.

This actually isn't half bad. I've been using a.lemmy.world as default for now, and it been really solid

Photon.Lemmy is down

Lemmy.world is having some serious issues lately. See https://lemmy-world.statuspage.io/

I'm seriously considering switching to a different instance.

It's unrelated to Photon.

You do what you want to do, you can still reach the communities here.

But let me repeat that these are DDOS attacks. There are a few who want to see this server go down and/or push us to 'close registrations'. Also the deferation from the extreme right and left instances made us some more enemies.

They're trying to make it look as if we can not handle the load for their own benefit. But it's a targeted attack by people who know the inner workings of Lemmy.

Has there been any posts on this outside of discord? Anything we can do? It's been noticable and I have an alt I can use when lemmy.world is down, but I didn't even realize this was happening.

FEATURE REQUEST, add a hide message option to the … menu of each post, including admin pinned posts

The dev is very responsive to issues in the github, def go and submit this request there. I made 4 issues and they closed them all within 24 hours.

was wondering where the rss feed link is now in the new UI

UI is nice, but can we please have keyboard navigation in one of these?

I can login to photon.lemmy.world I can login through the sync app to my lemmy.world account I cannot login into plain ol' lemmy.world

what's up with that?

I had similar problem and clearing cookies in firefox helped.

Seems to be missing some settings available in the default UI. Like the ability to hide scores. Is that being implemented soon?

Never considered that people might want that. Will add soon™ though.

I love your trademark symbol on “soon”. Made me genuinely laugh!

Oh yeah, absolutely. Legitimately one of my favorite things about Lemmy over reddit.

After having spent so many years on Reddit I've gotten to the point now where I just don't want to see the numbers anymore. I'm tired of seeing opinions rated numerically, and the dopamine hits that come with it.

Liking Photon. There are some good QoL improvements over the default UI, such as easy access to changing the theme.

AyOO where is the back button in the web version (I installed it from edge).

Don't say just use Edge or any browser, Please give a proper back button if there is an option to install this as an app.

Use the systems back button/gesture. It's just a web app.

I don't hate it but I'm still preferring Sync.

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Unfortunately this is even worse than the default lemmy UI with even more wasted space on desktop. But hey, more options for people is always nice and hopefully some will like this.

My preference is just the default UI with the compact theme, no wasted space at all! But hey more choice is better, the more UIs we have the merrier 😁

Someone else mentioned old.lemmy.world if you like the old reddit UI. That one is closer to what I want personally.

But yeah, options is great. Just need a way to save a preference now so it will use my preferred UI when logged in. Either that or throw together a redirect plugin.

I love the nostalgia of old.reddit as well, but alexandrite.app / a.lemmy.world is a more modern compact desktop interface that I've come to like and use as my default front end now.