It has polls, it supports push notifications so phone apps can immediately tell you about notifications, you can write remarks about users that will be shown to you only next to the user’s name, and what I actually find the biggest usability improvement is that I can turn on notifications for any post or any community so that if anyone writes anything to that community, I get a notification. That’s awesome with groups that get like one post every two weeks but where those few posts are all very interesting!
Some people also like that you can group a bunch of communities into one feed that you can view as if they were together just one community. Meaning, if there are copies of the same community on five instances, you can opt to merge their content when viewed from your user account.
I’ve personally been happy with it, and I would guess the maintainers are used to the way it works and might be blind to things you notice! But, there’s a real good chance that if you can point out specific details that could be improved, they indeed will be improved. At least they’ve done awesome job handling suggestions I’ve made!
I think just general UI stuff across at least the homepage
Some buttons that wrap touch each other
There’s a banner at the top (since I don’t have an account) that has weird, off-center margins
When I first went to the site I guess the Explore dropdown didn’t load so it was an empty dropdown (though it’s now populated so that may have been a one off network request issue)
If I have scrolled down the page a bit, every time I click an item in the main nav (like Explore) the page scrolls up by about 15 pixels for some reason
The Piefed logo isn’t horizontally centered with the actual nav items so the text doesn’t line up correctly
This is obviously using Bootstrap to handle the UI, and that’s fine. I’m not knocking that necessarily. But it’s a little jank and rough around the edges. These are things I noticed in, like, 30 seconds.
And this isn’t to say that Lemmy.world is perfect or anything. And I don’t really use the desktop site for Lemmy. I just use Voyager on my pc. But even the Lemmy site feels a little more solid, if that makes sense (even if Lemmy.world is also using Bootstrap).
I was only able to reproduce one of these with some local testing (the not-logged-in banner). What browser are you using? As for the Explore dropdown (and most dropdowns in the web ui), they use htmx to populate, so if there is a network hiccup, then it will just show up empty. Lastly, I believe you on the buttons wrapping weird. I have caught and fixed a lot of those in my time contributing to piefed, so would always appreciate help identifying where it is happening.
A big priority for rimu when making piefed is to keep the request size small to accommodate very poor network connections. From talking with him, he has historically had to deal with extremely tenuous internet access in the past and wants to be able to still function in those environments (a user setting can also enable low bandwidth mode to disable things like images). That is just really hard to do using the javascript frameworks that a lot of modern web interfaces use these days. So, we have compromised and sprinkled in some interactivity where it makes the most sense using tools like htmx or vanilla javascript. However, it can make the site feel a bit like internet 1.0 at times.
With the piefed api maturing, there is now the option to simply use an alternative frontend (photon, blorp, etc.) or a mobile app (voyager, interstellar, etc.) instead. The main area of the site that we have not included in the api is the admin area, so managing things like defederations would still have to be done through the web UI.
Incredible optimization! I don’t think Blorp will ever be able to deliver a web experience as low data as the official UI. However, if you download Blorp (or any of the other apps) then you no longer have to send frontend code over the network. The only data that needs to be downloaded at runtime is API requests. Suddenly the network usage looks a lot more similar to the official UI (though I should test to confirm).
At least the Codeberg git repository is called pyfedi, which I think could be the original name of this? Py comes from the programming language used, Python. And Fedi is, well, Fedi :)
And then maybe PyFedi became PieFed because Rimu is from New Zealand and those DAMN KIWIS are SERIOUSLY MAD ABOUT PIES! 🤣
This is the first I’ve heard of piefed, and so I’m just browsing the desktop site. It’s kinda jank, to be honest.
I looked at it when it came out. Seems ok to me, but there wasn’t a reason to migrate from Lemmy.
It has polls, it supports push notifications so phone apps can immediately tell you about notifications, you can write remarks about users that will be shown to you only next to the user’s name, and what I actually find the biggest usability improvement is that I can turn on notifications for any post or any community so that if anyone writes anything to that community, I get a notification. That’s awesome with groups that get like one post every two weeks but where those few posts are all very interesting!
Some people also like that you can group a bunch of communities into one feed that you can view as if they were together just one community. Meaning, if there are copies of the same community on five instances, you can opt to merge their content when viewed from your user account.
Nope, I’m out. Lemmys fine thanks.
Tbf I don’t think you have to have it on.
No worries :)
In what way does it feel jank, in your opinion?
I’ve personally been happy with it, and I would guess the maintainers are used to the way it works and might be blind to things you notice! But, there’s a real good chance that if you can point out specific details that could be improved, they indeed will be improved. At least they’ve done awesome job handling suggestions I’ve made!
I think just general UI stuff across at least the homepage
This is obviously using Bootstrap to handle the UI, and that’s fine. I’m not knocking that necessarily. But it’s a little jank and rough around the edges. These are things I noticed in, like, 30 seconds.
And this isn’t to say that Lemmy.world is perfect or anything. And I don’t really use the desktop site for Lemmy. I just use Voyager on my pc. But even the Lemmy site feels a little more solid, if that makes sense (even if Lemmy.world is also using Bootstrap).
I was only able to reproduce one of these with some local testing (the not-logged-in banner). What browser are you using? As for the Explore dropdown (and most dropdowns in the web ui), they use htmx to populate, so if there is a network hiccup, then it will just show up empty. Lastly, I believe you on the buttons wrapping weird. I have caught and fixed a lot of those in my time contributing to piefed, so would always appreciate help identifying where it is happening.
A big priority for rimu when making piefed is to keep the request size small to accommodate very poor network connections. From talking with him, he has historically had to deal with extremely tenuous internet access in the past and wants to be able to still function in those environments (a user setting can also enable low bandwidth mode to disable things like images). That is just really hard to do using the javascript frameworks that a lot of modern web interfaces use these days. So, we have compromised and sprinkled in some interactivity where it makes the most sense using tools like htmx or vanilla javascript. However, it can make the site feel a bit like internet 1.0 at times.
With the piefed api maturing, there is now the option to simply use an alternative frontend (photon, blorp, etc.) or a mobile app (voyager, interstellar, etc.) instead. The main area of the site that we have not included in the api is the admin area, so managing things like defederations would still have to be done through the web UI.
Thanks for the feedback!
Incredible optimization! I don’t think Blorp will ever be able to deliver a web experience as low data as the official UI. However, if you download Blorp (or any of the other apps) then you no longer have to send frontend code over the network. The only data that needs to be downloaded at runtime is API requests. Suddenly the network usage looks a lot more similar to the official UI (though I should test to confirm).
Can I also say, as a somewhat normie human, that it’s called PieFed? I might need a little background information on this one.
Though I do participate in a group named Lemmy.
I believe the origin is a portmanteau of python (the language piefed is written in) and fediverse. The pie imagery is more for fun.
Fun fact, the dev server that lives at the bleeding edge of the codebase is called crust.
At least the Codeberg git repository is called pyfedi, which I think could be the original name of this? Py comes from the programming language used, Python. And Fedi is, well, Fedi :)
And then maybe PyFedi became PieFed because Rimu is from New Zealand and those DAMN KIWIS are SERIOUSLY MAD ABOUT PIES! 🤣
It has its rough edges, but I do like it overall.
Does it federate with Lemmy?
Yes.
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