After the disruption from the nightly build on Monday, I began experimenting with both @phanpy and @elk, alternate Web interfaces for Mastodon.
While #Elk is quite nice with always-available mouse-based back navigation, it doesn't seem to support either multi-column views or auto-refreshing timelines.
So, #Phanpy is a much better fit for my use case. However, it suffers the same limitation sorting notifications as the current unfixed nightly build, i.e. no quick-access filter bar.
And while #Phanpy allows creating a shortcut/pinned column for most views, including an individual List, for some mind-numbing reason Phanpy does NOT allow the Lists view itself (i.e. the view of all your lists) to be a shortcut/pinned column. 🤦♀️
Why is this important? Because if you have a shitload of lists like I do, then going back and forth from the master Lists view is something you do A LOT. And you don't want to shortcut/pin that many single List views.
With #Phanpy, liking or boosting posts---as you know, something I might do once or twice a day 🙄---requires multiple clicks since Phanpy's timeline post preview tiles don't have affordances for either task. 🤦♀️
You need to right click on a post preview for a context menu or left click to get an enlarged view in order to like or boost. And for boosting you need another click to select between a normal boost and a quote post. This dance is... very inconvenient. 😬
@nxskok I don't use keyboard shortcuts. And I think it's a bad design pattern to "downgrade" mouse-based interaction that people might be used to in the default UI you're trying to replace. 🤷♀️
This could also bad for people with motion-limiting disabilities.
@lisamelton if you use the keyboard shortcuts then that is just a simple keypress away, I navigate with j/k and then b or l for boost/like … very smooth and natural if you're so inclined ;) If you've not discovered the shortcuts, just type ? to see the map
@craigmorgan I don't use keyboard shortcuts. And I think it's a bad design pattern to "downgrade" mouse-based interaction that people might be used to in the default UI you're trying to replace. 🤷♀️
This could also bad for people with motion-limiting disabilities.
@lisamelton ah, ok, no go then. Personally I like the clutter free experience, but understand that it does obscure UI that some might want to see on each post and be direct to utilise.
As to disabilities I'd hazard its a wash as there are probably as many people with preferred keyboard interaction (ie. visually restricted) as motion-limited for mousing.
Maybe an option to fatten the UI content might be in phanpy's future with the appropriate cajoling.
Ah, yes, I recall you were involved with Apple, Lisa, so it's not surprising that you prefer the mouse/graphic paradigm though I personally prefer keyboard.
I envision your fingers wiggling your mouse in precision movements whipping out clicks and drags at superhuman speed. The movie camera pans up to your face showing that you're sipping your coffee, not even looking at the computer but just staring at the weather outside while you're doing 1.2kbps (kiloboosts/s)
:)
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