It really isnt bad? Like easier navigation on a phone is always a welcome change.
Dms take a couple extra taps, and I wish we had the option still to swipe right to quickly see who is online.
But the search menu is VASTLY improved, and I like the design in general. I’m hoping we get a few tweaks and then it will be perfect
The new swiping behavior is grinding my gears as well. With so many options for it in the settings, I’m surprised they didn’t just have the people in channel list as an option. I’m also not a big fan of the private message section, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much. Overall a nice update though.
Can someone Photoshop this to say Microsoft because that’s exactly how I feel at work.
I prefer it TBH. things are easier to reach and suit a phone better than what was essentially the desktop app squeezed onto a phone.
One of the biggest issues for me is that you can’t use ‘in:#channel’ anymore in searches for some inexplicable reason. But only on the mobile app — it works fine on desktop! If you could do that it would be fine.
there are now two different search buttons, very intuitive i know, one is channel specific - the one you see when you’re chatting in a channel (basically a pre-set in:channel for dumb people), and a universal server wide one that’s at the very top of the channel list, you can still od in:channel in there, but by default it searches all channels
at least i hope that’s the case, if it’s not i’ll riot
Huh, go figure. Thanks for the info! I honestly never would have found that myself.
I still think it should be possible to use in:channel on the channel-specific search though. One less button press and it can’t be that confusing UX-wise since you have clear intent when doing it (if anything, the fact that the two searches work differently has to be more confusing UX-wise).
Lemmy’s biggest competitor at this point isn’t reddit, it’s Discord, or rather, the monster it has become. It seems to me that instead of creating a subreddit nowadays, every project now wants to use a Discord server for everything.
The problem with that is:
- Asking messages in a big, open chatroom (over, say, 20 people) gets real messy, real quickly.
- Conversations on Discord are difficult to follow when multiple of them are going at once.
- The conversations containing solutions to problems in chat or threads are not search indexable, which is the reason why reddit became quietly dominant in search results, it is simply the biggest centralized repository of organized English language text conversations available.
So why do people insist on using Discord servers to build their community? Simple, it’s the network effect. If somebody wants tech support, it’s way easier to click a Discord invite on an account for group chat you already have than it is to sign up for yet another forum that you only use once. But Lemmy doesn’t suffer from that problem of traditional forums because of federation.
Which brings me to my point, if Lemmy is to grow, it’s better to sell Lemmy to disgruntled Discord admins and forum owners to move their community than it is to get people to move off reddit at this point, since people who wants to leave reddit has all done so at this point.
Discord sucks, but I’ve actually had a 100% successful help rate on it vs Reddit or Lemmy.
Typically Discord servers have specific tech support rooms, and you’ll get help pretty quickly. Only once I have had to ask my question a second time, because it was missed the first time.
Meanwhile Reddit threads just get downvoted, buried, and you’re never helped. Even when I try to search for threads that other people have posted, 90% of threads are just blank.
Lemmy is the worst. Doesn’t matter what you need, they’ll just call you stupid and tell you to use Linux and FOSS alternative, ignoring the fact you NEED to use what you’re asking help with.
A forum should work in tandem with a chatroom in an “ideal” online community, imo. Searchable Q&A with a communication for additional, nuanced interaction. They serve different purposes and can be more powerful when used together, than they could be on their own.
Lemmy does seem to have a bunch of old, crotchety internet nerds on here that like the “old ways” of the webs. But just tell 'em to “go fuck yourself”, if they’re being a dick; and than don’t reply to them again. It’s very freeing. They’re just butt sensitive about linux and foss, cause they were bullied on early internet forums and now act the same way, when expressing their loud-ass opinions. It’s like an unfortunate cycle of abuse that has existed on forums, but don’t let it discourage you from asking anyway… the question might help others
I’m a crotchety old internet nerd… tell me to “go fuck myself”, just for funsies! It’s empowering!
And also… fuck you buddy, get good!
I feel like Discord fills a different need than forum type systems.
The one API I have on discord, likes Discord as a place for casual chat about the system. I think the devs prefer it because it is an active place for the community; to word it better, ‘hey look at this cool thing I did’ > response within a few minutes ‘that’s cool’ heart^5 fire^3 thumbs up^7. Whereas on a forum you’d be waiting for hours, or just not have that casual of a conversation.
It replaces the old usage of IRC servers.
The help channel is highly responsive, and great for things you want a quick chat about, need a response now, or if you get help now great, but if not, you’ll figure it out on your own before you would ever get help on a forum, so it’s not worth posting to a forum.
Threads really do help organize when a discussion is going to be large, and discord is very much searchable, just not from your browser search engine.
For changes to the API, ideas, issues, or bugs, they direct you to github “Discussions” or “Issues”. They do have an idea discord channel, but it’s a more casual thing, or far out there discussions.
Discord does get a lot of hate for it’s searchability, which is valid, but I don’t have a problem with it as long as places like Stack Overflow (or what replaces it) are still around.
Discord is really bad for preservation of information. I can still find forum posts from 10 years ago on a given topic all over, but discord links seem to expire and break all the damn time and it’s hard to search through. It sucks that discord has become the defacto choice for user community space.
Was I the only one that didn’t like having personal chats in the same place as servers?
This seems like a huge UI improvement tbh, and I’ve been using Discord for years on mobile and desktop.
The discord UI has always been confusing hot garbage. If they’ve done anything to address that then weeee!
They essentially took notifications/settings from the bottom corner and the personal chat section and just made a four panel bottom menu with individual icons for each. They’re simple in aesthetic but fairly clear, in my opinion.
So it goes as follows.
Servers -> Private Chat -> Notifications -> Settings/Account
Otherwise it’s the same as far as I can tell, really. I can still swipe to go back in servers, etc.
It’s a departure from the desktop UI and it made the whole thing much clunkier.
I will be fair, moving the button to the bottom row is more convenient if you have a lot of servers to scroll up through and use the DMs a lot, I don’t care about that as much.
What I do care about is how the rest of it changed. Can’t just quickly swipe into the DM list and back any more, if you exit the DM that’s it, you gotta click on it again.
Switching between DMs and servers is more clunky, a bunch of UI I was actively using is broken up. They broke the search function, and the new way to check channel participants (click on the title) is uncomfortable as hell compared to old “just swipe to the right”.
Personally I hate the new UX even if some bits are an improvement. It’s just too much stuff to change all at once and not for the better.
I just hate that I can’t swipe to easily to get to servers from messages anymore. You still can but it takes a second to load now after swiping and it’s not as consistent to get it to do it.
Edit: Also removing the member list for a server being on the right when you swipe is annoying too.
I used the beta UI for a while and imo the new one is worse since it brings backs some of the old UI (i.e. the 1:1 port of the desktop UI for the server sidebar). What they had in the beta UI for server selection was so much better
