I’m using it right now on new.endlesstalk.org
It’s beautiful yes, but it’s also kinda dumb. Lots of page elements (like the community banner and notifications section) need manually refreshing to show anything, and I need to press ‘Go’ after changing view (like Subscribed/All or Hot/New) like the web of ancient times. This may just be how it’s implemented at endlesstalk, but there’s other irritations like not having the option to upload a picture when creating posts, and it not actually doing anything if I change my settings to toggle ‘Show NSFW’
It looks like that instance isn’t using the most up-to-date version since the “press go” issue has been fixed. Try to keep in mind that the initial commit was on June 24 and it’s still very early in the development stage. If you look at the commits, you can see the developer has been very active.
I don’t like webui’s for lemmy. This means they’re getting all your traffic. It’s a mitm situation again, much like google’s amp links.
If I’m running a dedicated app, I can validate that my traffic is going directly to my instance and not being farmed and sold by a 3rd party behind the scenes.
Uhh… not clear on what you’re claiming here… you can validate the traffic is going to the expected instance using a web app, without requiring any special software by running Developer tools and heading to the network tab.
Web front ends currently require a backend service that then routes to your intended destination because Lemmy servers by default are configured with cors to only allow requests from their intended domain. There is a PR to fix it but I don’t believe it’s been merged in. This may be out of date but that was true as of a few weeks ago per the dev of Voyager which is the web frontend I use
edit: this is no longer true. A PR 2 weeks ago fixed this issue and web front ends are able to work just as well as a native app now.
I’ve looked at the traffic, and all calls go directly to the API of my instance. I don’t think Alexandrite even runs a backend.
I see, but how is this different in a phone app? Wouldn’t the request still be made to a backend?
That checks it only for the current session, though. The app might do nefarious things only on new moons, or on a specific date. It might also get updated at any point with completely new code without you noticing.
Not only does the app not have to be open source, your don’t even need root access on the device it’s running on. As long as you can see the packets being sent, you can see what servers it’s talking to.
Not so when going though someone else’ website tho. It does look like there are direct connections to the selected instance happening, but also obviously there is data being sent and received from alexandrite, and there’s no way to know what they’re doing with that info. For all you know, they’re fingerprinting you for Meta. (I don’t think that’s happening, but there’s no way to know).
I’ve been planning a frontend a bit like this. I’m glad I’m not the only one that wanted a solid, widescreen friendly, single tab interface… because I was unlikely to ever work on the one I was thinking of.
Using it right now and I’m astounded by how smooth it is. Will be using this for the desktop from now on.
Wow, that is much nicer. Though I would have settled just for “default opening links in new tabs”
you can do that with a userscript if you want to keep the lemmy interface
although i do not understand why people like this. just middle click instead?
It’s such a sensible and common default that I’m unused to being required to middle click.
i personally think it’s a terrible default. a normal link i can easily choose to open here, in a new tab, or in a new window. target=“_blank” removes that choice, and forces me to open it how the site dev wishes
I’ve always seen it as a dark pattern to keep users on the site (like bing uses it[1]). it was really nice to see lemmy not doing that. it’s weird to see people calling it sensible
see also old reddit doing the user friendly thing of same tab, new reddit opening a new tab ↩︎
I don’t use mouse so no middle click.
Where is the userscript option? Using a browser extension?
this is a userscript that i’m using, and has the option to enable open all links in new tab. i also found this whilst searching for it just now, but i haven’t used it
but what device are you using that doesn’t have a mouse, trackpad, or ctrl key?
