Hey folks!

I’ve been steadily working through the roadmap for lemmy-ui-next (which is a new alternative Lemmy frontend), and it’s getting to a point where I think https://next.lemm.ee is becoming quite usable. I’ve been personally using it as my main Lemmy frontend for several weeks now, and I know there are a few other brave users doing the same, so at this point, I’m confident enough to ask the wider lemm.ee population to try it out and share some honest feedback.

If you’re at all interested in this project, I would massively appreciate it if you could spend some time using https://next.lemm.ee and letting me know how you feel about it. I’m interested to hear about things like:

  • are you running into any issues or bugs
  • are there any things that generally annoy you
  • are you missing any features
  • what would it take for lemmy-ui-next to become your preferred frontend
  • anything else that comes to mind

Please keep in mind that this is still a work in progress - some features are planned but not implemented yet (see the roadmap linked above for more details), other features are half-finished and may be a bit buggy still!

Any feedback would really help me out, so please don’t hesitate to share!

  • evlogii@lemm.ee
    10·
    3 months ago

    Cons:

    1. I’m already accustomed to the light theme of Lemmy and can’t find how to switch from dark to light in “Next.”
    2. When I scroll down to the end, there’s 2/3 of the screen that is not being utilized. 2a. The red, green, and blue buttons in the footer seem to do nothing.
    3. The notion on every post that “Your IP is hidden from another Lemmy instance” is kind of annoying and useless. Why is it there?
    4. I dislike a little that it tries to copy the old Reddit interface. Although that interface wasn’t bad, and I’m the one who would first say “don’t fix what isn’t broken,” I’m more prone to seeing something new, some experimentation. Right now it feels more like “next to the old Reddit,” which isn’t exactly bad, but still…

    Pros:

    1. I kind of like how images work on “Next.” It feels faster and more “in place.” It’s simpler for me to distinguish between different types of posts (image, link, video).

    P.S. I’m on the latest stable Firefox (124.0.2).

    • sunaurus@lemm.eeOPM
      9·
      3 months ago

      I’m already accustomed to the light theme of Lemmy and can’t find how to switch from dark to light in “Next.”

      This is planned after the 3rd milestone is complete!

      The red, green, and blue buttons in the footer seem to do nothing.

      They should change the primary color in the UI - are you sure it’s not doing this for you? Maybe it’s just enough of a subtle change that it’s not immediately noticable?

      The notion on every post that “Your IP is hidden from another Lemmy instance” is kind of annoying and useless. Why is it there?

      Most (all) other Lemmy frontends will always leak your IP to external media hosts, I wanted to handle this a bit differently in lemmy-ui-next by proxying by default (to improve user privacy). The message is there to let you know if a specific piece of media is being proxied or not - and the only way for something to not be proxied is for the user to manually approve it first.

      I guess not all users will care about this, so maybe I can add a setting to hide the proxy indicator completely… I will think about it!

      I dislike a little that it tries to copy the old Reddit interface. Although that interface wasn’t bad, and I’m the one who would first say “don’t fix what isn’t broken,” I’m more prone to seeing something new, some experimentation. Right now it feels more like “next to the old Reddit,” which isn’t exactly bad, but still…

      It was an initial goal and guiding principle to heavily take inspiration from the great UIs of existing link aggregators like old reddit and hackernews. At the same time, I realize that this approach is not for everyone, so I am not against adding some different layouts (especially for the post list view) in the future.

      Thank you for all the feedback!

      • evlogii@lemm.ee
        3·
        3 months ago

        The red, green, and blue buttons in the footer seem to do nothing.

        They should change the primary color in the UI - are you sure it’s not doing this for you? Maybe it’s just enough of a subtle change that it’s not immediately noticable?

        Yeah, I totally missed that. It’s actually pretty subtle. Got it now though. 👀

        Oh, and hey, just wanted to drop a quick thanks for putting in the work on this Lemmy instance. 😘❤️