I always use the advanced Web interface for Mastodon to do my "boosting thang" efficiently.
Normally I don't comment on the software. But a sudden change to the Notifications tab in the v4.3.0-nightly.2024-03-18 build is really pissing me off.
I can now only choose between viewing "All" and "Mentions." Gone is the ability to easily filter by notification type in the column header.
WTF?!? This is a hostile UI simplification. Please revert this. Thank you.
@lisamelton There are still back buttons, they've just moved to a more natural position at the start of the line. Which notification types were you filtering by?
@dgoldsmith The browser back button has neither the convenient placement nor contextual state of the UI as far as I'm concerned. And the backspace doesn't exist on my iPhone.
@lisamelton@Gargron Swipe from left to right also works on iPhone, but that's just an alternative for the back button. I'm not sure why the back buttons are not showing up at all in Safari; we'll have to wait until morning in Europe.
@dgoldsmith My big complaint, however, is that there was no compelling reason to change this. Why keep the "Back" button in certain contexts and not others. This, like the removal of easy-access notification filtering, seems to be a simplification for the sake of... simplification.
I'm purposefully using the "advanced" Web interface. So it should be, you know, advanced.
Besides my needs, these changes really suck for those with accessibility issues, like Parkinson's disease.
@lisamelton@Gargron Have you tried some of the alternate clients? While I appreciate the client work the Mastodon team has done, they are way behind the alternatives at this point. Elk.zone and phanpy.social are worth a serious look for a serious user like you.
@timbray@lisamelton If we were we not developing an extension that only runs on the core client right now I’d be using them. Now we may have no choice. I just don’t understand this decision at all. Notifications are what power users need more than anything and this just removes granular control completely. Forces me to see things I don’t want to see most of the time if I ever wanted to see them at all. Please bring the old icons back Please.
...why?? I am in no wise a "power user", but I use that constantly.
I mean, I could sorta see that, as it appears the browser's back button is functionally similar. But that does seem like what one could call a "false economy."
@lisamelton@Gargron I didn't even know it existed, now I want it my mobile app! Let advanced interfaces be advanced - users who spend a lot of time with a tool tend to have diverse needs.
If they're just coming to a tool, sure give them a non-threatening interface.
But don't remove tools for power users, they are probably power users because those features allow them to be.
@lisamelton
As a programmer from way back, this seems a stereotypical example of coders deciding what to do with “their” software in a vacuum, or at least a bubble, with little or no regard for what users actually need, or want. I’d’ve thought the universe had moved beyond that by now. I’m mildly curious as to what the alleged justification is.
@qurlyjoe Those changes are not done in isolation or by a single "coder”, and we think quite a lot about them and how they can impact users. Sometime we might miss something, but we also deploy those changes early on our own instances to be able to gather feedback from a larger audience and adjust accordingly.
@lisamelton From what I read, a PR is in the works (but it requires some design).
Also we accept and read feedback, especially when it is not aggressive and provides examples of what it breaks. GitHub issues are the best place for this, as we read them all (which is harder to do with posts).
@renchap Thank you, but I figured a strong but polite public post would be the best way to get my point across. And also show support for that point from others.
No disrespect, but I find that GitHub issues sink into oblivion with a project of this size. This ain't my first rodeo, in software development or Open Source.
Now, is there a timeline for reverting the changes so I can get back to my job?
@lisamelton@qurlyjoe@Gargron We are a very small team and do not have the time to properly triage, reply or process all issues, but we read them.
No timeline, for the reasons above, and also it is evening here in europe.
@renchap I understand your developer constraints and time zone. Thank you.
But please be aware that the current state of the Mastodon Web client severely impacts my ability to curate and augment the feed of over 25,000 other accounts. Most importantly, the speed at which I can do that.
I already donate multiple hours of my day for this task. At this point, I can't really dedicate more time. My apologies.
@lisamelton I do not know what else I can say. This might be fixed tomorrow, or in a few days, and then deployed to mastodon.social. This is not an attempts at breaking the way the you Mastodon, and as I said, we are taking feedback into account. It will be fixed, and I may have more details tomorrow when the team had time to discuss this. @qurlyjoe@Gargron
Are there more details or an update about the fix to the two issues I brought up on Monday, i.e. restoring the "Notifications" column quick-access filter bar and "Back" buttons for other columns to the Web interface?
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. 💖
@lisamelton We still do not think we want the notification filters as they were. Could you please explain a bit more about what you use them for, to see if we have other ways to keep the feature you rely upon, without having all those filters? Also, would notifications grouping help you?
@renchap I use the notification quick-access bar to select between viewing notification types. Quickly. I only ever want to see either all notifications or only notifications of a certain type. The old quick-access bar was perfect for that.
I'm not sure what you mean by "notifications grouping." Can you explain? Is that what the new UI does? If so, I would never use it because it's just too much work to fiddle with since I would have to be changing it constantly.
@renchap BTW, I've been assuming that restoring the old quick-access notification bar would be simple. And not actually change the configuration UI you've created.
All you need to do is replace the "All Mentions" bar with the old quick-access bar.
The new configuration system would then only apply to the "All" view, basically being a filter.
You could even make enabling a the quick-access bar an option in that configuration panel, which it used to be, in fact.
@lisamelton Notifications grouping means that you no longer see individual notifications for each boost/like, but something like “X, Y, Z and 32 other people boosted your status”. We do not have specifics on how it will work in detail (which grouping interval to use for example), but we think it will really help to make notifications more useful for people with a lot of them
@lisamelton I assume you are filtering those because you have a lot of notifications, and want to catch up reading them one kind at a time? Or is it because you want to find a specific one?
We are adding more notification types, and it may be too many for the quick filter thing. So we really want to understand the use-cases to see if there are other ways.
@lisamelton Yes, we know this is an issue and we need to find a design that works. A new kind of notification we are adding is “severed relationships", where you are loosing followers or follows due to a server block. Those are probably not something you want in a quick filter?
Follow requests are also probably more important than follow / fav / boost mentions (do you use quick filters for those?)
@renchap Interesting! Knowing about "severed relations" would be really useful to me. Cool idea!
As for which notification types are most important to quickly see, the old bar was almost perfect. The only one I never cared about was "Poll results."
So, a quick-access bar with:
All
Mentions
Boosts
Updates from people I follow
Follows
... works for me. But I can't speak for others on that.
I'm not sure what you mean by the priority regarding follows. You listed that twice?
(And this isn't my issue; I don't even use the advanced web interface. I just want things to work for Lisa and any others who need the same functionality.)
@jonathan@lisamelton@renchap@qurlyjoe@Gargron totally agree. Wow. I’m baffled over here. So let down. I’m going to assume Lisa is having a bad day and forget it happened. Surely someone with this much experience would never berate someone online like this. 😞
@lisamelton I don’t mean to miscategorize (this isn’t a word?) your tone. Believe me. I have a lot of respect for you and your work. It just seemed a bit harsh. It perhaps that does help you get the results you’d like to see. Which I can understand.
I hope you have a great day tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. 😊
@lisamelton (as a mere bystander, I too read them as aggressive and was also confused which part of the UI has changed from what to what based on your posts) @renchap@qurlyjoe@Gargron
I just had a post with a mere 75 boosts and 125+ likes fill up my notifications to where it was hard to see anything else. I can't imagine what this would look like with 1000s of followers boosting my posts, as Lisa has.
Fortunately because my Mastodon site is not running nightly, I can still filter by notification subtype, and can see actual replies, new messages to me from friends, etc.
@sennoma No! See where it says "All Mentions" in the bar below? That used to be a list of easy-to-access icons that let me filter by notification type. That's what I want back.
@lisamelton If so, I noticed that all the way at the bottom of the filter options is a checkbox for "unpin". I wonder if somewhere in your settings there is still an option to pin the filters to the Notifications tab?
@lisamelton@Gargron Interesting. I’m on the same version and I’m still seeing the tab distinction feature. At least I think this is what you’re referring to.
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