As an average OG ex-redditor, Lemmy needs to move away from it's base barebones UI to something like Photon by default, here's why.

I love the Lemmy UI.

But I'm a gen Xer.

There's some great analysis floating around of how different generations actually interpret UIs (and make decisions about how or whether to engage with them) very differently. So there is no "one size fits all" that will make everybody happy. Change the Lemmy UI to something like Photon and I'd be like... "this is dumb." Making a bunch of very different options is a lot of work. If you want to do it... no one is stopping you. The Lemmy project is opensource and you could go start contributing and making pull requests today. You could go run your own instance and make it look like whatever you want and get the average redditors to join that. I run my own instance. We have a whole two users. It works exactly the way I want it to and federates with exactly who I want it to.

Frankly, I'm not sure Lemmy needs to go out of it's way to appeal to the average redditor in order to have a thriving, healthy community. Sure, there are some things I miss about having a giant user base to engage with, but honestly, I'll trade them for the MUCH MUCH lower toxicity. I don't know that "growing Lemmy" should be our focus. It's not like we're getting paid.

Hi everyone, I'm the dev. Reading all these comments really hurts when it's something you've poured your heart and soul into for over a year.

There's reasons I do everything I do in this UI, and my primary goal is to make Lemmy accessible for everyone.

This is the "cozy" view as well, but there's a "compact" view for people like me who enjoy more information density. Again, my end goal is to make Lemmy accessible. I don't do this for the sidebars for convoluted reasons I won't get into.

I'm not the one trying to advertise it, and I've never really tried to because of the fear of disapproval. I think I should advertise it myself now because then I can showcase the best parts and not get misunderstood. This screenshot uses the "list" view, imo the worst one, with some cursed chrome scrollbars.

Now that I see that the majority of users believe this sucks, I'm not sure if my mission is worth it or if I'm even doing it right.

I'm probably being too sensitive to criticism which I should expect from any project. But this project is the only one I used to feel proud of, then people chiming in claiming it's the ugliest thing they've seen. I don't know im blind to design which is the only thing I considered myself "good" at in terms of web dev.

it is clear that its growth is nearing a plateau in its current form.

Good! Lemmy doesn't need to become big, especially since the less techy masses will likely put loads of load on privately hosted instances without bothering to donate.
The growth could actually kill Lemmy.

I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.

Please no!

Nah, the current UI is fine. We don’t need fancy shit on a link aggregator. Reddit went to shit after “updating” the UI.

Your opinions of “good” or “best” aren’t the same for everyone.

As much as i love photon, i don't think it should be the default. The default lemmy ui is pretty slick and lightweight, even if it is kind of bad. Photon can be sluggish, and overwhelming for some.

I think they should just improve the default UI (which they are currently), and leave it for the user to decide.

Lol no. We need a UI that doesn't require JavaScript.

Different OG ex-redditor here. I think Lemmy's UI is vastly superior. But full disclosure, I used old reddit.

How is it clear that Lemmy's growth is nearing a plateau? And why does Lemmy need broader growth? That seems like a solution in search of a problem. A major advantage of not being a corporate social media property is not having to think like one.

I don't think Reddit's redesign is a good thing to aim for.

I know I'm tech-savvy, but I actually enjoy the fact that Lemmy (and the Fediverse) doesn't hand everything to me easily on a plate. The hunt for new interesting communities, my long well curated block list, setting up Lemmy apps exactly to my preferences is part of the fun.

If someone handed me a fully configured Voyager app on day one, I wouldn't have had all the exciting experiences trying a bunch of apps to find the best one for me, learning how to block instances and communities, learning how to correctly link to communities and users, finding new ways to discover communities.

All this stuff is part of why I come back here everyday. A ready out-of-the-box solution is kinda boring.

Lemmy isn't a UI, it's just data. Each app that connects to lemmy (not instances in the fediverse, but apps that let you sign into a lemmy account) has their own interface. A person can (and probably has) made an app with a modern interface for lemmy.

We are not confined to a specific app or interface, anyone can interface with Lemmy and present the data in their own way.

That UI is dogshit. Lemmy is a link aggregator and you're saying it should show 2 links on the screen at a time? New Reddit is shit for the same reason.

Lemmy continues to primarily attract tech-savvy individuals, politically left-aligned users

You say that like it's bad 😊

Your points are valid, but you do run on the assumption that growth is good, which is not an universal truth IMO.

Lemmy will be getting a new, more modern UI sometime soon.

It is being actively developed and you can even try it out today: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui-leptos

That’s too much padding. It needs to be more like Hacker News.

For those who may not be aware there are alternative front ends available for Lemmy.

MLMYM is like old reddit. You can see what it looks like here:

mlmym.walledgarden.xyz

Voyager is multi platform interface that also offers a Lemmy frontend. Our implementation is here:

voyager.walledgarden.xyz

While I do favour that UI improvements are needed - in particular for guest views and community sidebars, I'd say defo chasing the "big social" trends and UIs is not the way to go. Heck, I left Reddit partly because of the new UI (I know about old.reddit, it's just there's no promise of any kind to maintain it).

I personally really dislike new reddit and the Photon theme. I'd say no to any change to my main instance.

I'm on Fedia. It's pretty solid, UI-wise. I actually find it more usable than Reddit and its terrible way of trimming down threads by default.

What I've seen of Lemmy does seem a bit messier to read, though.

I don't use lemmy, so I don't have to suffer it's UI. I use Mbin/Kbin and the UI is almost perfect with the settings I changed, I get like 8-9 posts simply laid out with a little thumbnail and the title, no useless features or buttons. Just like old classic reddit, just slightly less compact.

But this "Photon UI" looks absolutely disgusting, I get it might be how the modern web is, but modern isn't always a good thing, especially when talking about UI/UX.

I'm fine with having less normies and an non-algorithmichal echo chamber of fellow leftists and tech savvy persons. These are my homies.

I might have missed it, but why is it clear that lemmy is reaching a plateau of users?

I don't see any issue with the current UI.

I think we need to actually do some new user testing, instead of endless discussion with nothing to back it up.

I basically only use mobile apps, so I don't even remember what the desktop UI looks like. But if you say so!

The rise of Bluesky demonstrates the importance of ease of use and a user-friendly design. Its polished and familiar interface is a key reason for its growth and appeal as an alternative to platforms like X/Twitter.

I think many people use Bluesky instead of Mastodon because of its UX, not its UI. Both looks great (I think Mastodon even nicer!).

I personally use Mastodon, but I've seen people complain about their experience with it.

Lemdro.id uses Photon as it's default UI, but it's incredibly slow and sometimes it doesn't even load properly. As much as I love the polish, I wouldn't recommend it as default UI. Using photon as an alternative UI is much better option.

Nah

Why photon? alexandrite is insanely much better imho: https://a.lemmy.world

I don't think the problem is the UI. Fediverse is more complex by nature than a centralized platform.

You have to choose a server, then an app to visualize (not only online but on the phone too) and there's plenty of alternatives.

If everybody joined the same server we end up with a centralized system and if every large server has to use specific UI what's the point on decentralizing?

I also thought that fediverse had to try to be easier to use but the point is that it's more complicated precisely because the user has more power and hence has to do more decisions.

And I think people have to understand the basics of the fediverse, otherwise people will not stay precisely because it's more complicated. If I didn't care a bit I would be on Reddit not here and I'm currently using both because there's simply much more content there and hopefully with time I can use Lemmy more and less reddit. I'm willing to do the effort of slowly transitioning because I believe in this but people who doesn't care won't stick around.

Mastodon is easy to use, it had no chance to become neo-twitter for other reasons.

Can you accept organic growth and not being the bestest best with three billions people?

Photon is currently the best and most mature alternative UI, offering a visually appealing, modular design that feels familiar to users of new Reddit.

What about Tesseract?

https://dubvee.org/

This is why I propose that large servers like lemmy.world adopt Photon UI as the default web interface.

That's something to be discussed per server. You should maybe ask LW staff to open a poll on their announcements community

We tried at communick.news a while ago, it didn't work so well. Perhaps the situation has improved, so it's worth to take a look.

/me pines for the days of protocol over interface. NNTP + killfiles were the bees knees. Then we could just all pick our own interface to connect to any lemmy host.

1. With what I think are near enough default settings, Voyager shows me about 9 stories. It doesn't feel cramped and the layout is regular, everything lines up.
2. With what I think are near enough default settings, my browser here shows me 14 stories, with a good accessible font size by default and me easily zooming out to 80%. It doesn't feel cramped and the layout is regular, everything lines up.
3. I can see 2 stories in that screenshot. Why would I want to have something that's at least 5 times worse, it feels cramped and parts of it line up I guess?

Sync ftw

One thing to consider here is that photon as an spa does not offer great support search engines. Which can help drive organic traffic to lemmy. While, some may see it as a net benefit, from your point of view it's an great disadvantage.

I like it simple. I use Jerbora on Android and can't be happier. I use duckduckgo browser and it's YouTube mode, so I have no ads, cookies, trackers or popups. It's actually close to perfect.

Compared to e.g. Discord, I feel like wasting most screen real estate for static eye candy info,... no thanks.

I’m working on my own Lemmy client that I’m hoping will be both a better UI, but also universally better as an app (phone and tablet), MacOS app, and on the web. Voyager provides a web version, but it’s not optimized for larger screens.

My app will deliver the best experience on all screen sizes and will take the best of Reddit, Voyager, etc.

I’m 14 days in lol but if anyone is interested please DM me. I’m happy to share what I’m working on, but I just ask you have realistic expectations as this will likely be 6+ month project to deliver something that can actually compete with existing clients.

I believe adopting Photon as the default UI could make Lemmy far more appealing to the average Reddit user.

How are you supporting that belief? Any data? Any A/B testing?

I don't want to sound too harsh, but you have sort of marked yourself as a representative of "average OG ex-redditor" or "average joe". Actually, you refer to "average" quite a lot. But honestly, without any supporting evidence, it's just words to make the proposal more appealing or relevant. If we remove all this cruft (which might be supported by anecdotal study, but that should barely count, if even), what arguments are here that actually remain?

Don't get me wrong, if you said that you like "something like Photon" more than the current default UI, then great! It is awesome that other alternatives exist and when people find them, it's great to share the review. (It's how I have discovered so much of great software!) But then again, it's all subjective, right? In your proposal, you seem to tend to state lot of these subjective opinions as if they were objective, which to me makes the proposal just far less convincing.

Photon is dope, pretty sure its developed by our very own Admiral Picard. But I haven't seen a Lemmy UI that I didnt like yet.

I would actually prefer this: sacred.computer

But I like the current UI...

I'm new to Lemmy and quite tech savvy.

I'd like to get more people I know to join, but the standard UI really wasn't nice. Thanks for showing me Photon, I like it so much more!!

I'm using Sync on mobile, I miss the Upvote & Downvote bar, any idea how to get it back?

I thought the point of Linux was the ability to customize anything, including your layout?

Not criticizing, just confused as to who this use case would be aimed at.

Huh...?

But the Instances themselves can customize all they like...?

Agreed on all counts.

I've been pretty happy with it as the default on !https://photon.slrpnk.net/

Before that, alexandrite was my go to.

The default Lemmy ui doesn't look good to me.

Every time I see the example of people used to Twitter complaining about Mastodon's UX and UI, the experience of using the Twitter app and the constant struggle of figuring out whether the non-sense anomaly you see is a bug or just a feature to keep you locked in is becoming an even more painful memory...