1/ After having tested it for some time, phanpy.social ( @phanpy ) is now my one and only #Mastodon client. The interface is sleek, and you can tell there's clear intentionality behind every single design choice.
First, look at how gorgeous nested replies look! I no longer struggle trying to decipher who's replying to what. And when you reach too many nested levels, a button gives you the choice to deploy them or not, to keep things clean.
@astro_jcm@phanpy
Just tested it with a local webserver, not impressed. Unnecessary waste of screen estate (empty space around posts), all sorts of distracting animations (the image panning is particularly annoying), boost asks for confirmation, and none of that is configurable. I'm gonna stick with the default client.
@astro_jcm@phanpy Thank you for such a detailed write up. I have it bookmarked and I am impressed with the UI/UX so far. I love a good web experienced versus the app jungle. One feature I regularly use that I did not find is the ability to schedule a post, which is great to setup a daily or weekly series of posts when time allows.
4/ If a toot contains a hashtag you follow, it will be highlighted in green on top of that toot, but only if you don't follow that person, otherwise the toot will appear just white.
This is extremely useful to identify new people to follow! With other apps I often found myself in situations where I thought I was following someone just because I kept seeing their toots via a hashtag I follow. Now I can instantly tell without having to manually check if I'm following them.
5/ Threads look great. Phanpy automatically numbers your toots! I'm manually numbering them here just for the benefit of people using other clients.
Only the first and last toots are shown in full. The other ones are shown with a smaller font and abridged, thus saving screen real state.
Sometimes people might add a toot to an older thread. That's ok! That toot will appear as a standalone one, but Phanpy will still label it as part of a thread with the corresponding number.
6/ Consolidated notifications also look gorgeous, very similar to Elk if you've used that client.
And yes: the "boost" icon is a cute little rocket. And when you boost someone's toot that rocket will lift off! Phanpy gets bonus points from me just for that :D
7/ While there isn't a native mobile app as far as I know, there is a progressive web app that works very well (at least on Android, I don't have an iPhone) and is just as customizable.
For instance, while you can still have multiple columns and switch between them by swiping horizontally, I always worry that while doing so I might accidentally like or boost someone's toot. So on mobile I access these multiple feeds via a menu bar rather than swiping.
@astro_jcm Reporting users is in regular phanpy.social now. (Just noting it here because I’m using your excellent thread to recommend phanpy to others.)
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