I made the mistake of checking Reddit (using my last few days of Apollo) and came across a complaint about Lemmy that flabbergasted me

Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?

To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?

Sarsaparilla,
Sarsaparilla avatar

People saying these things are the summer children of the internet. They are innocently naive and simply don't understand what they saying.

Hawne,
Hawne avatar

Or, they perfectly know what they're doing and are trying to divert people from alternatives. Hanlon's razor does not always apply, stupid can be at either side of the stick/carrot.

Sarsaparilla,
Sarsaparilla avatar

In all seriousness, I agree that is quite likely the case.

WookieMunster,

Exactly, they should search how Reddit’s original frontpage looked like. I have a feeling none of the people saying that even use websites, just apps

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

Reddit is full of people who call it an app in conversation.

I thought they were talking about the reddit app but no, they are talking about the site itself as an app because they found it on the app store like they found tiktok

firebreathingbunny,

This is not incorrect. The site itself is a web app. It has programmatic functionality beyond what you would find on a static web site.

CynAq,
CynAq avatar

Yeah, but these people I'm talking about weren't using the technical but the colloquial definition. They mean a mobile app, which was clear within context, saying things like how it replaced their social media addiction to instagram since they found "this app".

Believe me, people complaining about the lack of fancy interfaces on their "apps" aren't using the technical term differentiating a we app from a static site.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

I think critiques are pretty helpful in the early stages of growth. There's several little UI/UX tweaks we can do to make these places feel more inviting.

Lots of people are listing bug reports or submitting PRs, I've got one going that'll add your profile image next to your name, something simple but nice to have.

image

With time these sites are all going to shine :)

Deceptichum,
Deceptichum avatar

I’d rather see avatars removed entirely.

CosmicApe,
CosmicApe avatar

That's an option on kbin.social. I'm not sure if it's the same for all kbins, still not %100 on how well this works. It was actually on by default and it took me rooting around in the settings to find there were avatars at all

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

There's an option for "show user avatar" and "show magazines icon" in kbin which will shows those images inline when viewing posts like this.

showing icons

I think the idea if showing your own avatar is a pretty decent change.

TweedyImpertinence,

I would love to see the Settings menu and sections achieve the level of UI customization as the Apollo app.

Instead of gripes like “too much whitespace” or “needs more rounded corners” or “text is too small” and committing to a single combination of all these complex conditions as “the official design,” every user should be able to customize the UI exactly how they like it.

I would love to disable everything but text on the page: no avatars; no scores; no icons; no buttons except “Post,” “Reply,” and “Report”; light/dark mode inherited from system/device preference. That’s it. Boom! Done.

But you need robust HTML and CSS for this, and it is insanely difficult to find frontend devs who actually truly deeply know HTML, CSS, and JS. There are plenty of frontend devs making nice-looking sites, but those sites are typically unmaintainable in terms of CSS, are full of inaccessible nested tag soup in terms of HTML, and are locked into unremovable technical debt from the get-go via JS frameworks that will inevitably go out of vogue (as they all do).

Something as simple as native aspect ratios for thumbnail images is broken on kbin, so we immediately know that the HTML and CSS for this site are not in good shape, and until those things are addressed with growth and change in mind (and not just closing out bugs or hitting a launch date), it’s all going to fall apart eventually.

AnonymousLlama,
AnonymousLlama avatar

Yeah there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes because the project is fairly new. There's actually about 60 pending tickets that will be addressing a range of issues.

I'm focusing mainly on the UI/UX in my tickets and there's a few that I'm looking at to improve the mobile experience, definitely the padding and margins are all over the place, it feels a bit disjointed on mobile right now but it'll get better soon

loreasaurus,

The code is open source, right? I’m tempted to go poking at it. I genuinely enjoy writing good front end code and am a fairly design-oriented developer, so it might be fun to put up a PR or two.

Double_A,

They are kinda right though. An appealing design is important for many people. (Except for some reason people involved in opensource and linux stuff... fite me!)

Also a nicer design doesn't mean that it will be cluttered. You're just creating a strawman there.

justcallmelarry,

I’m a self-hosting, linux stuff, user, and HOW DARE Y… No, no, it checks out

Cap,
Cap avatar

Nobody wants to monetize "devoid of style and design"! KISS principle for the win.

open_world,

The color schemes seem good enough to me. I mean, sure it could perhaps be more interesting or vibrant but ehh. There are way more important issues to focus on, in my opinion.

V6277,

Kbin has support for custom CSS. There are still some bugs and plenty of things to iron out, but once the platform matures, expect there to be plenty of color and vibrance haha.

TweedyImpertinence,

In theory, custom CSS is a neat idea, but it’s typically a one-and-done project that is difficult to update, and in most cases, an inadvertent “fuck you” to users who rely on the built-in accessibility of native elements.

Also, custom CSS by users is effectively them placing a code freeze on the frontend.

If a better way of doing things comes along (which is a given in the tech world), you either improve the core site CSS and break the customizations (and hear all about it from your users); improve both (which is a ton of work with no tangible difference in what’s rendered to the page), but now the people who made those customizations need to up their CSS game (which rarely happens); or you do nothing and let entropy run its course and do a total rewrite some day. The last one is literally what happened with new Reddit.

hurricane,

That describes Reddit, back in the old days when it was good.

WillardHerman,
@WillardHerman@lemmy.world avatar

Wait. All it takes is "it's round and not blue or grey"?

dysorder,

Strange, I think Lemmy highly resembles Reddit. Maybe this user is talking about an app? Ironically, the apps are what this is about.

justlookingfordragon,
@justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world avatar

"Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter?" Hell nah! Polar opposite here.

I absolutely hate it when sites randomly redesign to look "modern" and "hip" or whatever you want to call it. Forcefully adding flashy, colorful stuff that you can't turn off again or opt out of is a surefire way for me to dislike the site in question immediatly. Emojis, animated smileys, glitter effects, neon-colored letters, autoplay-animations, and worst of all: sound effects! Nope. Nu-uh. Get that sh*t away from me. I like my black-squared, simple layout and silent browsing experience, thank you very much.

ENEMYGUNSHIP,

I think it's clear that reddit employees are working overtime for damage control, and you can easily tell when they flood a comment section with their identical silly talking points, a bunch of whiny naysayers who never care about anything, except licking boot. they love to cry about UX and protests being an inconvenience, but never about censorship or the fucked up things reddit does. another thing they do is constantly bring up Musk all the time for no reason and distract from spez. seriously those comments are like a plague over there, it's insane. imagine trying to make the crashing and burning of reddit, somehow about another guy, that has nothing to do with any of it. while Twitter is just doing its thing and they don't even give a shit. tl;dr: fuck spez

sparr,

These people are why new paint colors are a major selling point for cars, or new default wallpapers are at the top of the changelist for an OS release. They are why "all new cars look the same" memes have to blank out the rims/hubcaps, because some people think different wheel decorations fundamentally change the aesthetics of the vehicle, and the aesthetics are a primary factor for them.

Labotomized,

I like to watch Brandon Butch on Youtube doing his thing for the beta releases for the new iOS 17 coming later in the year. I understand why he does, but every single time it's "Check out the new wallpapers!" like okay...? That's great, but definitely not a new OS feature 🙄

solrize,

I got a bit confused: is that about the reddit app or themes of particular subreddits or something? When I first saw your post I thought you meant Lemmy was the one with overdesigned clutter. I was using old.reddit.com for web browsing and Redreader as a mobile client, and had subreddit CSS turned off so it always used the plain default theme.

I noticed after a few minutes with a mobile browser on my ultra cheap (limited bandwidth) data plan, that Lemmy uses at least 10x more data transfer than Reddit does. I figure that is a combo of being more pic heavy and having a bunch of javascript bloat. I hope to switch to some kind of plain text client soon. Lemmy is great in many ways but uses way too much dysfunctional web 2.0 tech for my tastes.

Labotomized,

If we could get a vim version of lemmy in some way that would be awesome!

solrize,

Yeah I've been thinking about that, both a gnus.el interface, and a web reader that is text based like lite.cnn.com .

WhiteTiger,

This is an actual use case for 'the customer is always right'. No matter how much you prefer the layout, there will be others that prefer something else. And if we want to attract more users, that's something that we'll need to consider.

By far the most off-putting thing about lemmy is how people think themselves too good to consider the preferences and experiences of the average user coming from reddit.

GoldbergsPants,

"The customer is always right, except in matters of taste" is the full quote I believe.

I love the homogenized look. If any chances are made I would hope they'd be optional so people who want the current look can keep it.

WhiteTiger,

The customer is always right, except in matters of taste

You got the quote exactly backwards

Labotomized,

Personally, I love the clutter-free design of lemmy.world it's a good mix of looking pretty without being too empty.

That being said, this is a refreshing take after reading through some of the top comments. I wish more people were a little more level-headed like this.

Maybe there could be other instances with different themes that appeal more to the casual reddit user? I'm still not sure how the themes work when it comes to Lemmy and its instances.

Guy_Fieris_Hair,

I definitely choose my social media based on round edges and opaque tiles. Don't you? It definitely isn't for the content or discussion.

agitatedpotato,

All the real ones came from old.reddit anyway. Honestly with the amount of projects I see being started for these platforms I'd be surprised if we don't eventually see customization option updates from instances to communities. That complaint has an expiration date IMO.

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