Alternative UI: Photon
We added an extra UI for our users. Photon by Xylight is an interface with a sleek, modern look and has all the bells and whistles you would need. Moderator tools included! You can access the UI from https://photon.lemmy.world.
Visit Photon's project page on github or get in touch with the developer in the [email protected] community. If you want to use photon on other instances you can do so from https://phtn.app.
Update: @Xylight has set up a donation link so if you like photon as much as I do, show him some love! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/xylight
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Side note, if anyone also misses the Old Reddit style, lemmy.world also has an easy way to do that, just visit: https://old.lemmy.world/
For more info, visit the devs GitHub: mlmym - GitHub
Does old.lemmy.world have a toggle for seeing NSFW posts? I can't seem to find it.
Both Photon and old.lemmy are missing that and the hide scores setting. They're both better but I'm disappointed they don't seem to have feature parity with the default UI at minimum.
You can hide nsfw posts in your profile settings.
Man, its hard to accept I used to interact with content like that
Took a while before we announced it but it was running on photon.lemmy.world for a while already. Love how fast you implemented the changes that were brought up by everyone that was testing. Absolutely amazing job. I think you are the first one to get the admin tools in too!
So where can I donate as a thank you?
I'm a minor and can't set up a donation link legally. Any bug reports are very useful though!
Update: you can now donate here!
Doubly impressive!
Minors can have cash app accounts legally as long as you have an adultโs account approve it
Cash app is only available in the US and UK afaik.
I think crypto wallet is way to go, isn't it?
That donation money would still need to end up in a bank account to be usable in a convenient way IMO, since bitcoin ATMs are a very rare occurrence.
I can't see how a crypto wallet would help otherwise, unless i'm missing something?
You haven't thought about the drugs!
eh, there's places you can spend crypto on the internet these days. But your point still stands
You can now donate here
Done๐ซก
if you're getting a 502 on photon.lemmy.world, you can still try Photon at phtn.app
I love your project so much!
Have been using your app on Desktop. Instantly upgrades the entire Lemmy experience for me. Thanks a lot for building it out.
The fact that the login UI has username, password, and 2FA code all on one screen means this immediately wins. I hate this new trend of "put in your email, now go to another screen, put in your password, now go to another screen...." Ugh. My password manager can autofill more than one box at a time, you know!
I don't know why websites do that, it doesn't look better, is probably more confusing and in general just slower for everyone
It's a small piece of a security gate to slow down bots trying to login
Its probably also more difficult to program the functionality into multiple pages as well.
I've never seen this separated into multiple actual pages. As long the โmultiple pagesโ are done in JavaScript, they don't add much complexity.
Maybe I'm confusing instances but I was almost positive they all have all those on the main screen?
Not 2fa code. The Lemmy apps have all of those on the sign up page, and so do alternative UIs
DAAYYYUUUMMM. That is stunning! Lemmy should make this theme the default across the verse!
Thanks a ton for hosting this!
502 Error but I look forward to checking it out, sounds like its quite an improved interface.
https://phtn.app/post/lemmy.xylight.dev/78503?thread=0.705106#705106
I'm getting 502.
https://phtn.app/post/lemmy.xylight.dev/78503?thread=0.705106#705106
Same here
Same here
Me too
Haven't seen anyone else mention this yet, but this seems to be the only app (installed as PWA) that has mod options. Well done!
Alexandrite (https://a.lemmy.world) has those too
Awesome! For some reason I thought that one was desktop only since last time I tried it, it didn't load well on mobile at all.
Oh yeah actually Alexandrite is not really suited for mobile. The developer is working on improving the mobile experience but it's main focus is desktop.
BIG EDIT: Actually @[email protected] just released an update and it now looks pretty frickin sweet on mobile with a new cards layout.
Good call, that does look quite nice.
100x better than previously
Ah that must be why it looks good on mobile now. I wonder if they'll implement a way to install it as a PWA.
This is probably the closest to new reddit we have so far, lots of people wonโt use Lemmy because itโs โuglyโ so this would be good to recommend
I mean, even with RES, I'd argue that Reddit is also kinda ugly
Most people use new reddit and have gotten used to social media sites prioritizing looks over functionality
I like new reddit because of big pics and videos. Donโt have time for clicking every post. Iโm here for scroll and giggles.
pretty sure the only reason why they didn't go the extra mile to incorporate this to the old reddit is because they (unsurprisingly) want everyone to only browse the new reddit.
yeah, reddit has its own business. why lemmy force us to enlarge every picture in web version? all mobile clients have big pictures by default.
and if people (like me) want old reddit, mlmym exists. nice for people to have options
I think the only thing I find "ugly" about the default Lemmy UI is the green buttons and inconsistent border radii on them. Everything else looks rather decent and very functional.
is that a bad thing?
Not at all
Of all the new test UIs, I've enjoyed this one the most so far
Does it support infinite scrolling?
you could have tried yourself but there is a "Load More" button
Unfortunately no due to an issue with sveltekit's router :/
i might make this an SPA soon which will support infinite scrolling though.
Please keep the paged view as an option though. Helps me keep up with where I was
This UI is very good for desktop users , It solves the problem of official UI . it does not makes sense to not show bigger images in posts in official web UI . Thumbnail views are great when you are searching for stuff , not when you want to actively read posts while scrolling.
Need to add an easy way to open images in full size.
This makes distinguishing between nested comments much easier IMO. That's been my biggest gripe with the default UI so major thanks to the dev!
Ok this is my new main way to access Lemmy on both desktop and mobile. Beautiful job.
*edit: After a little bit of using it, I'll probably stick with it for mobile for a while longer, but I'm going back to the default lemmy GUI for desktop.
Where can I find full list of installed alternative UIs?
I want to know this too, but here are all the front-ends I know of:
https://photon.lemmy.world
https://a.lemmy.world
https://old.lemmy.world
https://m.lemmy.world
Can we just take a minute to appreciate that we're on a platform supporting so many different frontends?
In the sidebar on the LW main page
There's been a lot of lemmy web UIs as of late, but I think this is my favorite so far.
Not sure if I like this or Alexandrite better. Both are better than the vanilla Lemmy look.
Looks fantastic, thanks to the dev for their great work on this!
From what I was able to see it looks good on mobile but of course lemmy world went down before I could fully explore it.
I like that photon doesnโt use the userโs display name in place of just the user name. Thatโs an annoying twitter-like feature.
It's actually because I forgot to implement it :^
I'll make it an option.
Too much text. I much prefer a compact view so I can easily scroll past posts that are irrelevant to me
A compact view is available in settings
Very nice. I've been using the various apps but so far nothing has really stuck so I'll probably just stay with the web version.
Looks great! Wonder is there a way to reduce the size of the sidebar? It takes up a huge amount of the space on web (while still keeping the names visible, the minimized view with icons isn't super helpful)
You can resize the sidebar with the thing on the bottom right of the sidebar.
ohhh thanks - it doesnt seem like that setting saves on refresh of the page though :(
I made it as large as it is because it looks strange if the posts are nearly as wide as your monitor, it's quite hard to read
Okay, now that I can see it, its great! Is there no dark mode though :'(
It does support dark theme, it uses your system theme. Browsers like librewolf will likely force it to light theme for fingerprinting reasons.
That's lame.
I use "light" theme at the system level, but I like to set some sites to dark. And I especially like to manually toggle between them as I feel like it.
This is a deal breaker for me ๐ฅฒ
I'm sure that it will be an option. For now you can force build-in dark mode with this extension
Will add a toggle soon
Update: Manual dark toggle added in v0.5.7!
Update: Manual dark toggle added in v0.5.7!
I can't find any donation links, how can I donate to the work of Photon!? I love it and plan to only use it, when I get the time I plan to launch my own instance with it too.
Update: You can now donate here
GOLD, great work!
I'm a minor and can't setup a donation link legally. You can support me by reporting bugs and sharing Photon though!
Love it. Question: Does Photon not support opening communities link within the web app? When I click on the Photon community link in the post, it takes me to the instance lemmy.xylight.dev page
It does support instance links. It was linked wrong in the post.
Ooooh, this looks great!! Especially on mobile too! Thank you so much!!
Wow! It looks nice!
Looks great! :))
very well
Looks fantastic. Only nag so far is I'd like the side-bar to be resizable as well as collapsible.
Both are possible already! You can resize with the little thing on the bottom right of the navbar, and the collapse button is on the top left of the navbar.
Thanks for pointing out the resize widget thing! I did see the collapse button, just worded that poorly I guess.
Nice UI! I can't view the modlog though...
Ah yeah, I need to add that. The way the API works makes it a literal nightmare to get the modlog working, but I'll get to it.
It looks awesome! ๐๐ผ
Looks great!
Would you consider adding my Lemmy theme as well? https://github.com/pkrasicki/lemmy-modern-ui-theme-addon
Looks nice, clean.
Works great on desktop!
Q: On mobile, how to quickly access subscribed communities?
I pressed the globe top right and then subscribed
It works but there could exist an easier approach like a folded side menu?
Sick!
this is dope. is there a way I can set it as my default so when I go to lemmy.world i'll have this theme?
It's not a theme it's a completely different link. So instead of going to having https://lemmy.world bookmarked, your bookmark to https://photon.lemmy.world
Updated the post to include the new donation link.
Nice to have some variety and choice, and this is certainly a very solid first version! Always room for improvement, of course. :)
I'd prefer to keep the empty circle, but an icon to put there would be better. Should I put the login icon in the empty circle?
Yeah, I think an icon of some kind would be great! Another option is having a text "Login" link visible by default, but once logged in just use the circle.
I've added a hamburger menu icon there. Should hint that it's a menu better
Alternatively you could have the log-in symbolic icon
That wouldn't look great though, as it's a menu, not exclusively a log in button.
oh true, forgot about that
Photon.Lemmy is down
Lemmy.world is having some serious issues lately. See https://lemmy-world.statuspage.io/
I'm seriously considering switching to a different instance.
It's unrelated to Photon.
You do what you want to do, you can still reach the communities here.
But let me repeat that these are DDOS attacks. There are a few who want to see this server go down and/or push us to 'close registrations'. Also the deferation from the extreme right and left instances made us some more enemies.
They're trying to make it look as if we can not handle the load for their own benefit. But it's a targeted attack by people who know the inner workings of Lemmy.
Has there been any posts on this outside of discord? Anything we can do? It's been noticable and I have an alt I can use when lemmy.world is down, but I didn't even realize this was happening.
Neat!
very cool!
UI is nice, but can we please have keyboard navigation in one of these?
nice!
I can login to photon.lemmy.world I can login through the sync app to my lemmy.world account I cannot login into plain ol' lemmy.world
what's up with that?
I had similar problem and clearing cookies in firefox helped.
FEATURE REQUEST, add a hide message option to the โฆ menu of each post, including admin pinned posts
The dev is very responsive to issues in the github, def go and submit this request there. I made 4 issues and they closed them all within 24 hours.
was wondering where the rss feed link is now in the new UI
Liking Photon. There are some good QoL improvements over the default UI, such as easy access to changing the theme.
Seems to be missing some settings available in the default UI. Like the ability to hide scores. Is that being implemented soon?
Never considered that people might want that. Will add soonโข though.
I love your trademark symbol on โsoonโ. Made me genuinely laugh!
Oh yeah, absolutely. Legitimately one of my favorite things about Lemmy over reddit.
After having spent so many years on Reddit I've gotten to the point now where I just don't want to see the numbers anymore. I'm tired of seeing opinions rated numerically, and the dopamine hits that come with it.
@[email protected] I'm seeing error code 500 popups when I try to upload an image in photon. This happens when it's for the post URL, in the post body, or in a comment. When I switch over to plain lemmy.world I am able to create posts/comments with images uploaded.
https://lemmy.xylight.dev/post/114110
thanks
AyOO where is the back button in the web version (I installed it from edge).
Don't say just use Edge or any browser, Please give a proper back button if there is an option to install this as an app.
Use the systems back button/gesture. It's just a web app.
Used Windows?
Used the track pad? There's a back gesture.
Bro... I am on a pc dude. Don't tell me go buy a trackpad now. and yes laptops and desktops are different. This issue really need to be fixed. THERE IS NO BACK BUTTON AND I CANNOT GO BACK.
๐คฃ
I don't hate it but I'm still preferring Sync.
Yeah, this is desktop-first, and meant to be a replacement for lemmy-ui, not mobile apps like Sync.
Actually it looks great on mobile too!
Sure... I get that... I just almost never actually browse the internet from a PC anymore... At least currently...
Unfortunately this is even worse than the default lemmy UI with even more wasted space on desktop. But hey, more options for people is always nice and hopefully some will like this.
My preference is just the default UI with the compact theme, no wasted space at all! But hey more choice is better, the more UIs we have the merrier ๐
Someone else mentioned old.lemmy.world if you like the old reddit UI. That one is closer to what I want personally.
But yeah, options is great. Just need a way to save a preference now so it will use my preferred UI when logged in. Either that or throw together a redirect plugin.
I love the nostalgia of old.reddit as well, but alexandrite.app / a.lemmy.world is a more modern compact desktop interface that I've come to like and use as my default front end now.
If you prefer compact designs, you'd probably like mlmym
I do and it's already available at https://old.lemmy.world for anyone who prefers it.
I am using it now with my local instance. It's a godsend!