OC Kbin Usability Pack 0.3.6 - Mobile UI and compatibility with next Kbin version

I have now released a significant new update for KUP that introduces a new experimental mobile UI and adds support for the coming release of the Kbin platform.

What is this?

This is a collection of hacks, fixes, enhancements and experiments that I have been tinkering with since I've joined Kbin, neatly packaged into one behemoth of a userscript.

Updates

0.3.0

Support for next version of Kbin.

The next version of Kbin is upon us and is bringing a lot of new improvements. This release of KUP makes sure that everything will still be working smoothly when the next version launches.

Note that there are some additional improvements and bug fixes related to the general layout included in this release, but will not be visible until the next version of Kbin launches.

Experimental Mobile UI

Screenshot (new Kbin)

I have been working hard experimenting with a new mobile UI. Since this relies heavily on functionality in KUB, I've decided to include it into this release. It is disabled by default, but can be activated in the settings panel by toggling "Experimental Mobile UI".

As the name suggests, this is heavily experimental, even more so than the rest, so be prepared for strange edge cases and weirdness, especially if you're using multiple scripts.

The new UI includes a number of changes:

  • Replaced many of the small text elements with larger, more touch friendly icons.

  • Moved media preview to the top of the article and auto expands it.

  • Moved vote arrows to the right for easier reach.

  • Moved meta information and footer above the body of the article for easier access on long articles (touch the comment icon to jump directly to the comments)

Other changes

  • I've fixed a few bugs related to iOS and Safari.

0.3.1

  • Alt. UI Fixed layout issues related to compact mode.

  • Alt. UI Fixed layout issues related to future Kbin version.

  • Alt. UI Fixed layout issue when creating or editing article

  • Preview Fixed not respecting auto preview setting (only media).

  • Preview Added setting to enable auto article preview.

0.3.2

  • Alt. UI Fixed boost icon missing active highlight.

  • Added fallback for compatibility issues with other scripts.

  • Improved notifications for common actions.

  • Added reset button to settings.

  • Preparation for potential future KUP API endpoints.

0.3.3

  • Fixed repeated script initiation when using Greasemonkey.

Please try it out and see if there's anything you like! I really appreciate any and all feedback.

If any of these experiments turn out to be majorly liked, I might try to port it over and make a pull request to the main Kbin project later.

0.3.4

  • Fixed broken hamburger menu in latest release of Kbin. (Enhancement is no longer needed)

0.3.5

  • Alt UI Fixed thumbnail styling in compact mode

0.3.6

  • Added fix for horizontal scroll issue on Mobile Safari.
  • Added option to toggle this off when the issue is eventually fixed in Kbin.

Other projects

If you haven't, feel free to also try out my other project, Kbin Subscriptions Panel.

KUP 0.3 logo
hariette,
hariette avatar

Looks so good!

jared,
jared avatar

With the work you and everyone else is doing I'm cautiously hopefull about the future of the verse. Not to mention the supportive vibes.

akai,
akai avatar

This looks amazing! Can this be installed with Tampermonkey on mobile Firefox?

CodingAndCoffee,
CodingAndCoffee avatar

Yes exactly

Beardedsausag3,
Beardedsausag3 avatar

Yurp, I grabbed Fennec enabled tampermonkey and got the script.

th0mcat, (edited )
th0mcat avatar

When I clicked 'Install' on the GreasyFork page, I get the correct pop up, but the pop up asks me to click "Install", which doesn't appear in the pop up. I try to import the scripts manually but nothing happens.

(Yes, this is Firefox Beta Android)

Edit - Nevermind, switched to Tampermonkey.

ripcord,
ripcord avatar

How do you install Tampermonkey for Android FF? Every time I tried it just told me it wasn't compatible.

YouveCatToBeKittenMe,
YouveCatToBeKittenMe avatar

Try going into the addons manager and searching for it from there. For me, it was one of the recommended addons, but I've got FF Nightly so I don't know if it's available on regular FF.

ripcord,
ripcord avatar

Well, there you go. It was there. Guess I was just trying to do it the hard way. Thanks!!

Muela,

Thank you so much, it looks awesome

Alexmitter,
Alexmitter avatar

My biggest usability issue currently is picture preview. We either get the tiny thumbnail picture in the post, or the giant one in the auto media preview. I wish there was something like how modern reddit diplayed pictures inside a post preview. The thumbnail is fine for link previews, but useless for picture preview while the auto media preview makes everything gigantic and then you gonna have both anyways.

uncivil,
uncivil avatar

I'm enjoying KUP on mobile but I'm not using the experimental mobile UI for a couple of reasons. The thumbnail previews automatically render as portrait even if the image itself is not, leading to a lot of wasted space. In fact I'd love an ultra compact option for KUP to further condense things, as there's a lot of whitespace. The images/icons for going to the comment section and boosting are very nice, but they do take up more space than just the text. I used RiF for reddit partly because of how condensed and clean it looked even with thumbnails.

Also it would be lovely if you could add a quick reply button under the article text when you click on an article, as right now I need to scroll down through all the comments to get to the Add Comment box, and of course having infinite comment scroll on can make that a bit of a chore. I'd argue that's perhaps something to be addressed on the site overall, but since @ernest is working pretty hard on the back end, sometimes you need things like KUP to help out on the front end for accessibility and minor QOL issues.

Fwiw I am using Firefox with tampermonkey on a Galaxy S22 Ultra.

Perry,
Perry avatar

Thanks for the feedback! I actually released an update 0.3.6 earlier today that addressed some issues with compact mode and the alternative mobile UI. Especially the thumbnails should look a lot better now.

Regarding the thumbnails, they didn't actually use more vertical space than in the standard UI as they merely used all the available vertical space. The issue was that since the whole element is larger because of the thicker footer, the background got stretched out to fill out the additional space, resulting in the portrait format you are talking about. That should however be fixed now, but if you prefer the smaller standard UI, that sadly won't help you in this case. I guess that's what makes it an experimental UI :P

Regarding the comment box, I agree completely and before I repacked my scripts into the KUP bundle I did actually have a fix for that. I never included it in KUP though since that feature is already included in the excellent Kbin Enhancement Script plus a number of other improvements. KUP is fully compatible with KES so I felt I should rather focus on bringing new improvements than reimplementing things that others have already solved.

If I get some time over, I might add that however, in order to make KUP more of a complete single package.

onepinksheep,
onepinksheep avatar

Updated to 0.3.3 on Fennec for Android, and now it seems I can't tap on the hamburger menu icon. Disabled all other extensions and userscripts, leaving only KUP, and can confirm that this seems to be an issue with this script.

Thorned_Rose,
Thorned_Rose avatar

Same issue on Firefox for Android with Tampermonkey. Can't use the hamburger menu, it does nothing with this script installed.

Perry,
Perry avatar

I've deployed an update that should fix this issue.

Thorned_Rose,
Thorned_Rose avatar

Excellent, thank you! Working for me 🥂

Perry, (edited )
Perry avatar

Yeah I noticed. I didn’t get a time to deploy a fix yesterday, but I’ll have one out in a moment. Sorry!

Edit: This should be fixed in 0.3.4

onepinksheep,
onepinksheep avatar

That was quick. Can confirm that the fix works.

Also, unrelated to KUP, but for some reason, I can't seem to upvote/favorite your comments in this thread. Only yours, too, since it seems to work fine for others. Weird.

noxis, (edited )

@perry amazing work. thanks a lot!

one thing: at least for me it seems that "Auto Media Preview" doesn't work? i always have to push the little "Picture" button to have the picture visible. i don't mean "Show Thumbnail" that works. Do I miss anything? 🙈

edit: fixed in v0.3.1, thanks!

Perry,
Perry avatar

No, you're right, that doesn't work right now. It's on my list to fix, so hopefully I'll get something out the coming week or so.

Rhaedas,
Rhaedas avatar

Related to those buttons - for a bit now I've been noticing an addition "button" created when I go in to read comments and then return to the list of feeds. It's a smaller circle to the left of the text button, and links to that same function. I included an image I just took. Perhaps you know about this as well, although I didn't see any mention, and I did try the upgrade to 3.2 from 3.0 just in case that was the problem (why doesn't it autoupdate like it's set, btw?). I disabled various other scripts to trace down where it's coming from and it's definitely the Usability Pack.

Perry, (edited )
Perry avatar

Interesting, what browser are you using? It looks like it's recreating the preview button for some reason, but I can't seem to be able to reproduce it in neither Chrome, Firefox, nor Safari. I can try to add an additional consistency check before adding the button and see if that fixes things, but it would of course be a lot easier if I could actually verify it myself.

Just so that I understand the whole flow, is this the interaction where the bug appears (with mobile UI off):

www.kbin.social/ -> Click on article -> Click on browser back button -> An additional button has appeared.

Rhaedas,
Rhaedas avatar

Can confirm, Firefox on Ubuntu also does the same thing. Oddly, it's not happy with running Greasemonkey, says its disabled, yet I could force install the extension fine. I've recently installed Ubuntu, so haven't gotten everything synced up yet. But that's beside the main point.

Rhaedas,
Rhaedas avatar

Using Firefox, latest Windows version. I could test the Ubuntu in a bit.

So starting from a new home page, I can click on a comment link, then use the back arrow to go back. Each time I do this, a new circle is created, so I can literally have two, three, or more circles there if I went back and forth. It's something to do I guess with a refreshing of the button but there's already one present?

Perry,
Perry avatar

Super weird. Which extension are you using? I've only tested it with Tampermonkey (and Userscripts on iOS) so maybe that's where the issue is?

Edit: Aha! It's indeed a bug unique to Greasemonkey for some reason. Not exactly sure what is causing it, but at least I can reproduce it now.

Perry,
Perry avatar

I think this should be fixed now in 0.3.3. There might still be issues related to Greasemonkey, so please tell me if you find anything else.

Rhaedas,
Rhaedas avatar

I can report that I don't seem to be able to make it occur with 3.3, so I'll call it fixed. Thanks. :)

Perry,
Perry avatar

An update to this: I've now released version 0.3.1 which fixes the auto media preview option and adds a new auto article preview option.

Note: I'm trying to be a bit cautious with spamming the server too much, especially since the article preview currently involves downloading the entire article page and scraping the content.

As it is now, the entry must be in view for 1 second before the preview(s) load. This makes sure that people don't load hundreds of articles at once while scrolling through the feed. Depending on the feedback I get, I might decrease it a bit in the future, though.

8BitFriendly,
8BitFriendly avatar

@Perry Thank you!

have been working hard experimenting with a new mobile UI. Since this relies heavily on functionality in KUB, I've decided to include it into this release. It is disabled by default, but can be activated in the settings panel by toggling "Experimental Mobile UI".

I'm fairly new to Tampermonkey. Where do I need to toggle this setting? Can't see it. Or do I need to make changes in the code?

onepinksheep,
onepinksheep avatar

It's not in Tampermokey nor do you need to fiddle with the code. It adds a section to the settings page for the script's various toggles. If you're on mobile, click on the menu icon, then the settings (gear) icon, then scroll down to see the script settings. You may need to toggle open the settings panel.

https://i.imgur.com/wzhRJgK.png

formiga,
formiga avatar

This is great - thanks!

BaroqueInMind,
BaroqueInMind avatar

This is the best userscript I've seen for this website. Good shit!

stephfinitely,
stephfinitely avatar

Installed thank you

Beardedsausag3,
Beardedsausag3 avatar

Amazing improvements. Grabbed Fennec, enabled tampermonkey and installed the script. Loving the experimental mobile UI, would you be willing to explore having thread thumbnails show in a square to the left of the thread title instead of above the thread title in a rectangle. Especially for compact mode, that'd be amazing.

Perry,
Perry avatar

Yeah, I will definitely look into making something for compact mode later. It will most likely be after the new Kbin version has been released since at the moment I'm essentially managing two different stylesheets in order to be backward compatible with the current version.

mizzyc,
mizzyc avatar

YOU'RE AWESOME!

Sam_uk,
Sam_uk avatar

@Perry This is really nice, thanks. I'd like to make the user/magazine icons a little smaller. What line do I need to adjust for that please?

Ashyr,

Okay, can anyone explain how to install this on iOS with Safari? I tried installing Hyperweb then clicked install the script and it just launched a page full of code.

I feel like it should have opened a prompt in Hyperweb and been clear sailing from there.

Perry, (edited )
Perry avatar

There are a few alternatives, but I'm personally using an extension called Userscripts.

Essentially, you install it from the app store, launch it, and then choose a folder in the Files app where you will store the scripts. Any folder will do, but I think a good idea is to choose a folder in e.g. iCloud so that it's easier to manage from a computer if needed.

After that is set up, you need to go to the Greasy fork link and click install. You will probably just be presented a bunch of code now. After carefully reading through the ~1600 lines of code (kidding, somewhat) you can tap on the extension settings on the left in the toolbar (the puzzle piece icon) and tap on "Userscripts". Sometimes, the toolbar button defaults to opening the reader for some unclear reason, whereas you need to tap it again to get to the menu.

You might be prompted to give access to reading the website, and after all that is done there should be a button saying something like "Userscript detected, tap to install". Tap it, follow the on-screen instructions and you should be good to go.

In the future, the script should update automatically by tapping on the puzzle icon again -> Userscripts -> tap on the cloud with a downwards arrow. You might need to be on kbin.socal to do that; I'm not entirely sure, to be honest.

Ashyr,

That seems to have done it, thank you so much! I got sorta close, but never would have figured it out from there.

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