2y ago

Alternative UI: Photon

photon.lemmy.world

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 !photon@lemmy.xylight.dev 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

70 comments

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
- Man, its hard to accept I used to interact with content like that

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.
  
  It allows you to direct users with specific usernames/domains to specific login pages. For example for Single Sign on.
- 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

I'm getting 502.

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

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.

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!
  
  Minors can have cash app accounts legally as long as you have an adult’s account approve it
  
  Doubly impressive!
- You can now donate here
  
  Done🫡

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.

This is probably the closest to new reddit we have so far, lots of people won’t use Lemmy because it’s “ugly” 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 or functionality
- 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?

Looks fantastic, thanks to the dev for their great work on this!

Too much text. I much prefer a compact view so I can easily scroll past posts that are irrelevant to me

Looks great! :))

Sick!

This actually isn't half bad. I've been using a.lemmy.world as default for now, and it been really solid

Updated the post to include the new donation link.

Looks great!
Would you consider adding my Lemmy theme as well? https://github.com/pkrasicki/lemmy-modern-ui-theme-addon

I like that photon doesn’t use the user’s display name in place of just the user name. That’s an annoying twitter-like feature.
- It's actually because I forgot to implement it :^
  I'll make it an option.

DAAYYYUUUMMM. That is stunning! Lemmy should make this theme the default across the verse!
- existential crisis in progress

very well

very cool!

nice!

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.

UI is nice, but can we please have keyboard navigation in one of these?

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.

was wondering where the rss feed link is now in the new UI

@antik@lemmy.world 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

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.

Liking Photon. There are some good QoL improvements over the default UI, such as easy access to changing the theme.

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 😁
  
  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.
- 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!

70 comments