1y ago

Alternative UI: Photon

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

155 comments

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.

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!
  
  Doubly impressive!
  
  Minors can have cash app accounts legally as long as you have an adult’s account approve it
  
  I think crypto wallet is way to go, isn't it?
  
  Dayum. I'm so jealous of you
- You can now donate here
  
  Done🫡

if you're getting a 502 on photon.lemmy.world, you can still try Photon at phtn.app
- I love your project so much!
- Have been using your app on Desktop. Instantly upgrades the entire Lemmy experience for me. Thanks a lot for building it out.

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.
  
  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

Thanks a ton for hosting this!
- 502 Error but I look forward to checking it out, sounds like its quite an improved interface.
  
  https://phtn.app/post/lemmy.xylight.dev/78503?thread=0.705106#705106

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

I'm getting 502.

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.

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
- 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.
- is that a bad thing?
  
  Not at all

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

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

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.

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!

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?
- I want to know this too, but here are all the front-ends I know of:
  https://photon.lemmy.world
  https://a.lemmy.world
  https://old.lemmy.world
  https://m.lemmy.world
  
  Can we just take a minute to appreciate that we're on a platform supporting so many different frontends?
- In the sidebar on the LW main page

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.

Looks fantastic, thanks to the dev for their great work on this!

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
- It does support instance links. It was linked wrong in the post.

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 🥲
- 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.

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.

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

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.
- It's actually because I forgot to implement it :^
  I'll make it an option.

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)
- You can resize the sidebar with the thing on the bottom right of the sidebar.
  
  ohhh thanks - it doesnt seem like that setting saves on refresh of the page though :(

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.

Looks great! :))

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

very well

Wow! It looks nice!

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 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.

Looks great!
Would you consider adding my Lemmy theme as well? https://github.com/pkrasicki/lemmy-modern-ui-theme-addon
- Looks nice, clean.

Sick!

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

Updated the post to include the new donation link.

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.

this is dope. is there a way I can set it as my default so when I go to lemmy.world i'll have this theme?
- It's not a theme it's a completely different link. So instead of going to having https://lemmy.world bookmarked, your bookmark to https://photon.lemmy.world

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?

It looks awesome! 👏🏼

Neat!

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.

very cool!

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.

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

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.

nice!

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.

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

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

@antik@lemmy.world I'm seeing error code 500 popups when I try to upload an image in photon. This happens when it's for the post URL, in the post body, or in a comment. When I switch over to plain lemmy.world I am able to create posts/comments with images uploaded.
- https://lemmy.xylight.dev/post/114110
  
  thanks

155 comments