Photon (moved to lemdro.id)

i wonder if i should copy alexandrite

if i do this we get infinite scroll

Lots of updates were pushed today, here's the changes since v1.10.3:

v1.12.0

• feat: multiple removal reply presets
  • you can now have multiple presets for removal replies/messages.

v1.11.2

• feat: add voting animations
• misc: add warning toast when trying to vote while not logged in

v1.11.1

• feat: add a route indicator in the top left

v1.11.0

• Center images and set max height by @sant0s12 in https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon/pull/153
• Show "hidden" for missing mod names in modlog by @sant0s12 in https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon/pull/156
• Added photon.zhenyapav.com as a public instance by @ZhenyaPav in https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon/pull/154
• Better images
  • Show a blurred background behind images
  • Use a default width to decrease CLS
• Add an option to limit layout width for better readability

It improves readability quite a lot

edit: it's been added as an option. "limit layout width"

I forgot to make the site actually accessible for keyboard users sooo

• added a "skip navigation" button
• trap focus inside modals

Yet another view type has been added: cozy

It is essentially just the card view, but without a background. I quite like it.

• feat: made images slightly more round
• feat: add lemmy version to site card
• upgrade: mono-ui: 0.3.3 -> 0.3.5
• feat: copy community id to clipboard when clicked
• feat: only show comment form when you click "create comment"

This is a request for a UI change for consideration if the community isn't against it.

IMO the UI for opening a thread to view comments could be better. Right now when scrolling through the feed, I have to click the tiny comments icon to open the thread, and it soft-navigates to the comments thread. Clicking back (in the browser, or using the button in the thread UI) takes me right back, which is great, however, it seems like I sometimes lose my place in the feed. The problems here are: 1. the link to open comments is tiny, and 2. the thread takes over the feed.

It would be great if the experience could be a bit more like Alexandrite, where clicking on the post opens the thread in a panel in-place, which you can click outside to close without losing your place in the feed. Just feels a bit more intuitive IMO. If this is a controversial change, it could be a configurable option.

Thanks for considering this feedback!

I saw someone ask what Photon is, so I decided to make a sticky post for this.

Photon is an alternative client for Lemmy.

You probably have heard of "clients" like Sync for Lemmy and Jerboa, Connect, etc. Photon is another client, but instead of being an app, it is a web app. You can essentially use it as a website, by going to https://phtn.app . It's like the client Voyager.

The part that confuses a lot of people is that some people self-host Photon for their instance. Instances can host their own version of Photon if they wish, and can set a setting to add some flair for that specific instance. This is still "photon", it's just on a different domain and linked to that instance essentially.

Photon is currently one of the only clients with full feature-parity to the default interface, lemmy-ui.

Link to this post if someone asks what Photon is.

Lemmy v0.19.0 is introducing some breaking changes that, if I add support for in Photon, will break compatibility with instances before v0.19.0. If I don't add support for v0.19.0, instances with that version or higher will break. How should I proceed?

A: Keep an old version of photon available for people who need to use a pre-0.19.0 instance (medium difficulty)

B: Add a message to login saying the instance must be v0.19.0 or higher, nuke all backwards compatibility (easiest solution)

C: wait until most instances are on v0.19.0 to proceed with B

D: Add code to handle different versions (hardest solution)

I'd prefer that people be able to rely on Photon, and anything that prevents them from doing stuff on photon I see as a catastrophic issue. A looks the most appealing right now.

typing this from my phone so not the highest quality post but I've added some little tweaks since last update:

• fading out text now uses background clipping (no more janky transitions when changing background color)
• on a post page you can press the community icon to subscribe to it
• urls are now visible in list view
• fixed a few crashes

Versioning later

The community search system needs a default sort order by participation. There are far too many small communities that are showing up in a search. Do a search for "3d" and "3d printing. Look at everything that pops up. There is only one regularly active community in that list and at least for me it is down near the bottom. I moderate it and I was just trying to find it quickly to review new posts and that was very mildly frustrating. If I know what I am looking for and it feels this way, I can only imagine how it feels for new users. In fact, as someone that has been daily active since June 9th, finding new and engaging communities has become...less organic and more of an uphill struggle.

As far a searching, I was going to post something on Lemmy Support for .ml but I couldn't even find it in the first couple of pages by searching with and without my subscriptions.

I'm not here to complain. This is just straightforward feedback. I was using Photon for this experience. The shorter card style search results of a search with photon are largely what made this issue IMO. I need a better default sort priority to make such a short list seem natural as a UI; to feel like the results are relevant. IIRC I tried searching the following with no results on the first page after setting the search to communities: support; Lemmy support; Lemmy support .ml

• Respect profile "hide scores" setting
• Disable downvote button on instances with it disabled
• optimizations
• fix crash when switching post page
• misc design tweaks

v1.8.0

• feat: completely rewrite report and inbox handling system, codebase is much cleaner
  • Private message reports are now visible in the moderation menu
• private messages are more consistent with other inbox items

Full Changelog:

v1.8.1

• comments and posts are finally consistent in compact/list mode
• added an option to align post thumbnails to the left in compact mode

I've implemented nearly all of the stuff I can think of. What should I add now?

I've tweaked the colors for light theme quite a lot. I think they look nice. It means I can make the background of buttons white, giving a clear separation.

• Tweak light theme colors
• Overhaul community page
• Add Inter font
  • I kept the default as System UI. You can enable Inter from the settings.
• Upgrade to Mono v0.3.2

I could try and find a way to condense crossposts in photon into single posts in your home feed.

(For example, if you see post x, and then later see post y, which is a crosspost of x, it'll be hidden. A little crossposts icons will be visible at the bottom of post x.)

I can't find an easy way to do this without a crossposts property in PostView though.

I'm probably gonna add a date picker component to Mono, as the current system for ban expirations has you manually type in a date an then have it be parsed by native JS. I'm gonna make a date picker component where you can select time from a clock and a date from a calendar to make this easier.

What's new:

• feat: Add ability to manage federated instances
  • You can even upload a CSV!
• feat: Add markdown to post titles
  • Since this is a rare occurrence i didn't turn the title input into a markdown editor.
• feat: Use notification date instead of submission date for inbox
• feat: Expand images on click
  • I've made this an option since some people might dislike it.

Other stuff I haven't mentioned from previous updates:

• fix: Subscribed text being cut off
• change some wording
• Add a back button and reload comments button to post pages
• Add error handling to RelativeDate

Thanks for all your support on Photon! I'm still working on localization.

Should I post every single release here (there's 1-2 per day) or keep the minor ones on GitHub? I'd pin the major ones.

I've finished switching Photon to the Mono design system.

(Mono is basically just Photon's design converted into a library following decent practices)

You can checkout the design system here.

With this comes a few updates:

• No longer using the awful MultiSelect component for everything
  • Instead, we're using select menus now!
  • You can actually tell what each thing means.
• Design tweaks
• Much better codebase
  • Over 1,800 lines have been nuked
• Change view style from the main page
• Rename "Compact" view to "List"
• Default view style is now "List"
• View admins of instances and moderators of communities
• You can also view the communities a user moderates!

I don't know if this has been asked for before, but i would prefer to keep scrolling, instead of having to tap for the next page. I'm sure having to click 'next' is useful when you want to portion out a scroll addiction, but if people are divided between scrolling or not, maybe it could be an option in the settings?

And it would be nice if i could choose how much to narrow the side bars, so i can decide how much room to give the middle column where the posts are listed. Just like you can in for instance a file explorer.

I really like Photon a lot by the way!

I'm working on turning Photon's design into a UI library called Mono. You can see my progress here.

It's being made from scratch so that it's the highest quality UI library possible. It will also make it very simple to implement new features, and will make Photon's UI overall look better.

It's also technically usable currently, but you do have to do some setup for it to work that I haven't written in the docs yet.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fmhy.net/post/233127

• old-lemmy.fmhy.net - mlmym frontend
• a-lemmy.fmhy.net - Alexandrite frontend
• m-lemmy.fmhy.net - Voyager frontend
• p-lemmy.fmhy.net - Photon frontend

If you don't like the layout of regular Lemmy, feel free to use these :) (They can also be used for instances other than ours. Except for mlmym, they only have a single instance mode and no default instance config)

And in case you're wondering why we aren't using old.lemmy, a.lemmy etc instead...

...it's because CF wants money for that and I'm not paying for that shit lmao

You won't notice much on the cards design, except that body text is no longer in its own container, and it fades out.

The compact design was completely overhauled though, to look much better.

I used to only use cards but I exclusively use compact now.

Notice

I'm not translating them right now, I'm preparing Photon for actual native speakers of languages to translate. I plan to make it as easy as possible for people to contribute. These likely butchered translations are just for me to test if it's working.

You can view progress here