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The Fediverse deserves a dumb graphical client

72 points by speckx

by ndegruchy

0 subcomment

In addition to this guys app, there's also brutaldon[1]. A web1.0 client that serves as a web interface for mastodon.
[1]: https://brutaldon.org/about

by not2b

0 subcomment

I looked at it and it is impressively lightweight. It would help if it could collapse duplicate notifications, right now the notifications page is filled with repeats even though I'm not all that popular on fedi.

by floren

4 subcomments

Sidebar, am I alone in absolutely hating "smol"?

by butz

0 subcomment

I think Dillo developer will love this.

by AlBugdy

0 subcomment

Might be unrelated to the specific GUI discussion but I absolutely hate how there is no threaded discussion on Bluesky or Mastodon (or Twitter which they desperately try to mimic for some reason). You have to use "@username" which does nothing useful when clicked.
You can barely select text on a post. If you click on it, you lost your place and go inside the post?
Why aren't comment GUIs like those of HN, lobsters or the old reddit-style not more popular?
I think I understand why YouTube, Facebook and Twitter intentionally cripple usability by only allowing 1 level of replies and (ab)using the @username way to discuss things - to cater to stupider people with less attention span, to keep discussions lighter and broader and to show more of the top level comments. But all of these would've been accomplished if there were more "show more" buttons, like new reddit does it. It's still dumb as hell but at least it keeps the discussion threaded/nested.
Off topic, but I just realized when I collapse something on HN, it sends a request to HN telling it it's collapsed. Useful for when reloading a page, but I would love a setting that makes the collapse client-only with no requests (and maybe no persistence on reloading).
Anyway, I never used any social media, including Twitter, save for the occasional link I found that I use Nitter or XCancel for. I was really hoping to finally participate in the new fediverse but when I saw the UI decisions, I don't see a point. Twitter clones and alternatives can still be Twitter-like without the dumbing down of the threading/nesting of the comment sections.
Edit: Forgot to mention both Bluesky and Mastodon load much slower than HN or Lobsters or reddit with or without Tor.

by alsetmusic

0 subcomment

Are there any plans to add support for Lemmy?

by kogasa240p

0 subcomment

What about Akkoma?

by prmoustache

0 subcomment

Adële is building and hosting small but really nice things in the spirit of the internet as I knew it before the Great Enshitification Malaise Era we are living in.
Thank you Adële.
Note to myself: stop commenting and update your damn gemini capsule

by superkuh

2 subcomments

It really does. But also, having to do this points out a glaring flaw in the design of the fediverse websites. They're applications and not documents. They require executing complex code from unknown third parties just to show a bit of text and some multi-media. This isn't needed at all. And it wasn't like this till mastodon v3 when they broke it.
Despite requiring Javascript execution mastodon actually does have the post contents of a URL in the hidden meta-content HTML header on the page where it scolds you and blocks you for not executing their arbitrary code. All they'd have to do is put that same text in the HTML as actual <p> text. And it's not just mastodon instances, the other fediverse "applications' are just as silly in their intentional breaking of accessibility for no reason.

by righthand

0 subcomment

Wouldn’t removing the dumb excessiveness of most graphical clients, make it a “smart” client?

by mindslight

1 subcomments

First, I take issue with the idea of calling something "dumb" for trying to avoid modern app bloat, even as marketing. I understand the precedent of a "smart" device being something that backhauls your personal information to the surveillance industry (decidedly not smart!). But still, can we find a better name for the concept? "Native" ? "Lean" ? It shouldn't be about giving up some purported betterness of bloaty software, but rather about the benefits we get by doing so.
Second, it's kind of depressing that this is still tying itself to web technologies. What about a straightforward desktop client that uses a native desktop toolkit? I get that this is a difficult problem because a lot of protocols bake in reliance on web technologies and whatnot, but if I am looking for a simple graphical client I would expect something that aims to not simply dump content into webviews, nevermind still being dependent on an actual browser!

by guywithahat

1 subcomments

Somewhat unrelated but these sorts of clients are becoming great targets for AI coding. I've been able to create minimal gtk C++ apps for small sites with good API's in relatively little time, and they run beautifully since they're native apps.
I like the project though, it'd be cool to have a picture of what it looks like either on the git page or the blog article but I like the spirit of the project.