rolle

rolle, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to mastodon

Mastodon favorite star ⭐ interaction is changing to the heart ❤️ in the upcoming Mastodon version.

With Mastodon Bird UI I have already built it with heart interaction support à la the birdie site in the past despite it having the star as default and I'm most often than not going to follow the official Mastodon direction. But I still want to ask, what do you think?

(Reference to the heart change: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/27385#issuecomment-1773117170)

#BirdUI #Mastodon #MastodonBirdUI #MastoAdmin

rolle, 1 year ago to fediverse

I have created a Twitter-inspired UI theme for Mastodon. I call it Mastodon Bird UI.

Demo available on my instance: https://mementomori.social

Background and origin in the blog post: "The day I decided to build my own “Twitter”" https://rolle.design/the-day-i-decided-to-build-my-own-twitter

Source code and installation instructions: https://github.com/ronilaukkarinen/mastodon-bird-ui

#MastoAdmin #CSS #UI #UIDesign #Mastodon #OpenSource #MastodonBirdUI

rolle, 10 months ago to twitter

"There's a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries. https://www.reuters.com/technology/problem-with-x-meta-microsoft-hundreds-more-own-trademarks-new-twitter-name-2023-07-25/ #TwitterX #X #Twitter

rolle, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to opensource

Some people say they don't want to join the Fediverse or Mastodon, because they think the UI sucks. As a front end developer, a designer-kind of a person who creates user interfaces, I agree. Most of the web clients on the Fedi are horrendous, even Mastodon by default. There's lots of room for improvement.

We should really focus on how to make it more pleasing to the eye, more modern and more pleasant. This should not be a nerd network, just for geeks to geek out. This is not IRC or BBS.

As long as Mastodon for instance looks like it's designed by a back end engineer, contains font-awesome icons, looks like 2010, and stuff like that, being open and free is not good reason enough for many. I'm not bashing it, Mastodon is not the worst out there, in fact in my honest opinion Mastodon user experience is far better than Akkoma or Calckey for example. It's also more accessible than many modern UIs, for example my visual impaired wife prefers the Vanilla Mastodon UI over my #BirdUI modifications, she has some small tiny improvements of her own like distinguishing the colors in the action buttons as they have no proper contrast in any of the default themes. But that's it. She likes it as it is. So it cannot be that bad. However, it could be better overall.

#OpenSource doesn't mean the product should look like it's created in a basement by a math teacher. For some people Mastodon UX is sufficient (it even is for me, I like it enough and it doesn't prevent me from using it), but it should be WORLD CLASS. I don't say the answer is #MastodonBirdUI but it should be something much more modern and minimal than the current default UI. Pixelfed's developer is a designer oriented, Pixelfed is indeed an example of an awesome Fediverse app experience throughout the web and apps. That is how it should be.

Just my 2 cents.

#UI #UX #UserInterface #Design #Mastodon #Fediverse #Pixelfed #WebDev #FrontEnd #CSS

rolle, 9 months ago (edited 8 months ago) to mastodon

What is the best iPhone app for #Mastodon?

rolle, 6 months ago to fediverse

Has anyone built Fediverse stats that show amount of people who post in certain language or top posters in the whole Fediverse? I'd be curious to see how many Finnish people there are among all instances.

#Fediverse #Stats #Mastodon #MastoAdmin

rolle, 10 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to mastodon

On desktop computer, do you prefer the single column layout or the advanced web interface? #Mastodon

rolle, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to mastodon

It’s been exactly one year since I joined to the Fediverse. Let me tell you my Fediverse story. It does not fit in 500 characters, but glad I have 10000 here.

It first started with Musk tweeting about the sink. I had already given up on Twitter couple of years prior this, but that was the final straw. I saw people talking about Mastodon and I was skeptical. First I looked at mastodon.social, but quickly noticed the username rolle is taken. "That’s it, then", I angrily tweeted that I do not want to join with another nickname, I’m rolle eveywhere AND THE NICK IS TAKEN. Someone immediately pointed out that I should join another instance. An instance, what's that, huh? I then joined to a Finnish instance mastodontti.fi and quickly learned no English is allowed. A moderator pointed out that I should remove my post. Again, I angrily tweeted THAT'S IT THEN, MASTODON SUCKS, STUPID RULES. Another user politely explained that each instance has their own rules, why don't you create another account. An instance, huh?

I quickly learned about the nature of the service. I vaguely remember favoriting tootsuite/mastodon back in 2017 and thought it was just a forum-kinda software back then, for one small community. I consider myself quite witty but I didn't realize Mastodon servers are interconnected. So I joined mstdn.social. And how fun was that! I was elated! My head exploded when I realized how active it was and how amazing the community is.

But then the sudden influx of users made mstdn.social slow and unresponsive. I was thinking about building my own instance, after all I'm a server guy. During 5th of November, 2022, I got my instance up and running, #MementoMoriSocial was born: https://mementomori.social/@rolle/109293139965069879

I wanted my instance to be well federated and active from the start. I followed everyone, I still do. I use a dozen active relays. I managed to finance the instance through my company and get a bit more powerful hardware than necessary. I was alone on my instance first, then invited my wife, colleague and my company.

What I liked in the Fediverse is that I can build my own tools, I own my data and I can help making things better. I have contributed to things via form of:

• #MastodonBirdUI
• #MastoAdmin
• #FediOnFire
• an idea about #Mastopoet
• #TheMastodonList
• #MastodonLista
• and some other things that have been affecting in the general development of Mastodon.

I'm very pleased I can have fun and make my own things while other people like it as well. I first thought all this would be a huge cause of mental stress but it's been on the contrary.

After a couple of months of successful running I opened my instance to the world. Now there's about 150 active users from companies to regular folk and everything has been running smoothly. I have been able to moderate because I require a reason for joining to my instance, so I really do know who the people are. I also welcome each user personally. I know my shit thoroughly and completely. This is why it has been easy to moderate. I've been able to be mostly absent during regular week days from 8am to 6pm, but still be aware of what's happening via effective monitoring, good apps and infrastructure.

For me the key thing is to optimize everything to the tooth. I also regulate my own social media usage, because I get too easily hooked. Mastodon and all its tools have taken an enormous amount of time, but it's been really fun, didn't even notice a full year has passed.

As for the Finnish community, there were thousands of active users, I kept a list. However, for some reason lately the narrative everywhere about Mastodon is that it is difficult and it has no future and people have mostly left to Bluesky. I kinda get that, because even for me starting last year was messy. But things get better, I wish more people would see that.

Mastodon is special. The Fediverse is special. Here's to another year! 🎉 :neon_skull:

#Mastodon #Fediverse #MementoMoriSocial #MastoAdmin

rolle, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to Finland

Ismo is a comedian from my home town, Jyväskylä, Finland. Couple of years ago he made a breakthrough in the US when he got to perform at Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Ismo’s jokes are literal (often Leslie Nielsen type of stupid-literal-dad-joke level stuff), witty, he rarely uses any profanity in his stuff. Most of all he doesn’t do politics or offensive stuff, he does not need it. He loves to play with words and fuck with the American people. The funniest thing is, in Finland he also has the same setlist, just the words are different, it works surprisingly well in the world as well.

Ismo is unique and truly funny, I often laugh to him just seeing him talk. I mean really, I’ve seen him talking in the morning TV and not even trying to be funny and I still laugh my ass off. If you literally want to laugh your ASS word while getting your mind blown with the world ASS, watch this.

#Jyväskylä #Finland #Videos #Comedy #Comedians #Comedian #Ismo

rolle, 3 months ago to random

I’m sick and tired there is now AI in every app. ”Update: We have now AI in this-and-that feature.”

Fuck that.

Why do humans always feel the need to fix something that is not broken?

#Enshittification

rolle, 11 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to ai

If you are lazy to write alt texts, please use some tools, there are plenty.

Here's some brilliant open source ones:

1. Let AI do the job based on a single URL: https://alt.fairdataihub.org/api/generate?imageUrl=https://dub.sh/confpic (source code: https://github.com/fairdataihub/alt-text-generator)

2. Generate from image file: https://alttext.in/ (source code: https://github.com/adityaoberai/Alt-Text-Generator)

3. Generate from textual image: Use Mastodon's built in feature or ImageToText https://sauravhathi.github.io/imageToText/ (source code: https://github.com/sauravhathi/imageToText) or https://www.imagetotext.io or similar.

#AltText #AI #DescriptiveText #AssistiveText #a11y #Accessibility #OpenSource

rolle, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to Eurovision

ICONIC

#Eurovision #Eurovision2024 #Windows95Man

rolle, 3 months ago to fediverse

Thank you for being here. Remember that you matter. :meow_love:

#Fediverse

rolle, 4 months ago to internet

We have talked a lot about the positive sides of the Fediverse, but not as much about the downsides. For me the top negative things of this free and healthier social web are:

1. People are patronizing. This happens a lot more than in other places. I mostly mean the unsolicited advice: Alt text, don’t post this or that, avoid commercialism, other social medias and use content warnings for everything. While many mean good, it has been often very aggressive. This happened a lot in 2022. For a while it made the bar to post much higher because I was afraid to make a mistake. Today I don’t care as much.

2. Nitpicking. Comments are nice, but not when people are overly criticising about what you do or concentrating in irrelevancies. Whataboutism is the worst side effect.

3. Everyone has their own rules and they are often contradicting each other. Some are extreme and block every other instance, some more allowing. You might accidentally break many rules around the Fediverse without even noticing it (some servers don’t allow posts about meat or alcohol for example).

4. Politically too left. It seems it is not allowed to be very conservative here. People are anti-commercialism, anti-capitalist, anti-anything.

While saying this, I do not stumble upon these downsides very often since I am quite a chill guy and have my own server. I feel like I can post whatever the fuck I want.

However, I do wonder if these things are the ones that make the Fediverse less approachable by new users. On the other hand I believe the new open social web will transform the way we see the social media in general and soon it does not matter, we don’t have to think what is ”here” when the big players like Threads and Tumblr adapt ActivityPub.

#SocialMedia #SocialWeb #Mastodon #Fediverse

rolle, 10 months ago to fediverse

The big contradiction of the #Fediverse is that people want e. g. #Mastodon to be more popular and accepted than e. g. #Twitter or #Threads but yet they are ANTI EVERYTHING; No companies, no this and that, no federation, "I will fucking block you all" for even looking at the mainstream popular culture.

How is that going to work?
Why so hostile?

rolle, 4 months ago to mastodon

It seems max characters and max poll options etc. are finally coming to a configurable options.

https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/commit/805dba7f8d2a2d5f910ec1396247b36417170345

#MastoAdmin #Mastodon

rolle, 4 months ago to instagramreality

I have completely stopped using X and Bluesky for now. My subjective experience: They both suffer from the same issues: Toxicity, lack of features and lack of proper content to follow.

People on Bluesky are fed up with X, but generally don’t like nerding out about platforms and are used to causing controversy. The biggest issue for me has been on Bluesky that I cannot globally mute words or drop out from discussion I do not want to continue. If someone replies to a discussion I’m tagged in, I literally will get every notification from that discussion from there on until everyone stops.

It tells a lot I’d much rather spend time on Threads than Bluesky (Mastodon still being the number one, obviously).

#SocialMedia #X #Bluesky

rolle, 7 months ago to mastodon

Woow, missed the fact that @phanpy has a multi column layout. Not a fan of multiple columns, but this is so chill I might actually want to use it!

#Phanpy #MastodonApps #Mastodon

rolle, 5 months ago (edited 5 months ago) to random

Game Over: The Tech That Died in 2023

• Snap Camera
• Twitter
• Netflix DVDs
• AmazonSmile
• AltspaceVR
• NFTs on Facebook and Instagram
• Google Glass Enterprise Edition
• Subs for Print and Kindle Magazines
• Newspapers on Amazon
• Lenovo's Legion Gaming Phone Business
• Amazon Halo Brand
• Heardle
• PlayStation Plus Collection
• OverDrive
• Alexa Celebrity Voices
• Cortana on Windows
• Neato Robotics
• Google Domains
• YouTube Stories
• TikTok’s BeReal Clone
• Third-Party Reddit Clients
• Stitcher Podcast App
• Verizon BlueJeans
• Google Pixel Pass
• Facebook Messenger Lite
• Google Jamboard
• Gmail's Basic HTML View
• YouTube Premium Lite
• Google Podcasts App
• Microsoft WordPad
• Amazon Alexa Guard
• Mint Personal Finance App
• Apple Music Voice Plan
• Omegle
• Overwatch League
• Tumblr Post+
• E3
• Comixology
• Venmo on Amazon
• Bose Frames
• Google Groups Usenet Support
• Windows Mixed Reality
• Hyperloop One

https://www.pcmag.com/news/game-over-the-tech-that-died-in-2023

rolle, 1 year ago (edited 1 year ago) to fediverse

One of the most popular #Mastodon instances now has my UI theme as an option for users, 'Elephant'. #MastodonBirdUI :neon_skull:

rolle, 11 months ago to mastodon

:mastodon: What's new in the upcoming #Mastodon version:

• Alt indicators
• Threaded lines natively! No more hacks.
• Follow buttons instead of follow icons
• Local and Federated are now combined as "Live feeds", under it there are tabs Local, Remote and All
• Direct messages are now "Private mentions"
• Three dot menu is now a burger
• Context menus are more clear
• Emoji menu is now slightly smiling instead of lol emoji
• Banner notification bars have now border radius and are more clearly visible with bold text
• Lists can now be accessed directly without the frustrating side step
• Admin user interface is more logical
• When replying, compose form has animated focus to clearly state it's appearing there

These are the ones I spotted for now! Perhaps there's more.

Please note the screenshot has #MastodonBirdUI enabled, it's not the official UI.

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin #NewMastodon #MastodonNightly

rolle, 7 months ago to bluesky

Bluesky going to be ”too complicated” soon? 😂

#Bluesky #SocialMedia #Federation #ATProto

rolle, 29 days ago to Finland

:finland: ICONIC!

#Finland #Eurovision #Eurovision2024 #ESC #ESC24 #ESC2024 #Euroviisut #Euroviisut2024 #EurovisionSongContest

Denim shorts lowering from the ceiling, Eurovision 2024

rolle, 2 months ago to mastodon

When the social media conceptualized in the late 2000s, new services started to pop up every other week. Some of them were even popular. I remember being registered to over 160 different social media services. Jaiku, Qaiku, Bebo, Ello, Tsu, Path, PicPlz etc… there were so many. Then they died one by one after Facebook and Instagram took over.

Some people who remember this are saying the same is happening to Mastodon, Pixelfed and Loops. But they clearly do not understand the concept or interoperability and the social web, Fediverse, that is. They think of these platforms as a singlular, centralized services and they are using the commercial mindset.

The Fediverse will last. It will prosper. And it has already. That is what I sincerely believe. Since 2022 nothing has proven otherwise. I like the direction this is heading to.

#Mastodon #Fediverse #SocialWeb #SocialMedia

rolle, 1 month ago to Eurovision

Nothing beats the Fediverse and Mastodon. No other social network today has a real time feed and these network-specific trends like #SilentSunday and #Caturday that are permanent and not dying. I'm eagerly awaiting for the built-in "tweetdeck" realtime #Eurovision rush that is starting soon.

#Fediverse #Mastodon #SocialMedia