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?
I'm here to read think and talk. I like it simple.
Same, was using old.Reddit before and plan on figuring out how to use the tools I saw to redo lemmy to page layout on no stupid questions.
Yeah, for real. "But there's no fun awards and bubbly icons and bright colors."
Well then, go back to kindergarten.
The reason I used Reddit is Fun WAS because of its stripped down, bare bones style. I only wanted to read thoughts and opinions, and choose to view images/video/ads when I wanted to. This is absolutely a feature of Jerboa (and Lemmy) for me
I don't know the background of OP so this is just an opinion: I feel that modern UX have become so ubiquitous and streamlined for content consumption that users who aren't used to old-styled UIs see the lack of "sleek" design as lesser. It works doubly so that users aren't willing to venture outside of their ecosystems and will put up with anything regardless if it's detrimental to their experience.
Compare users of new reddit and the official app vs. users of old reddit and 3PA. I used 3PA because there wasn't an official app and RiF matched what I was used to. It's a similar phenomena to Apple users vs Windows/Android. People are just used to a streamlined sleek experience (which to be fair has it's merits) but to say it's superior or that the alternative is lesser is a large misstep in thinking.
It takes effort to go out of your comfort zone but it's saddening to see users mindlessly, for lack of a better terms, consume
I think Lemmy could use some more ads. I feel like I don't have enough material things, and I don't know what to buy. /s
I also would like to have content that makes people angry shoved in my face to keep me engaged.
It's about personal preference. It's important to have a user interface that's modular and comfortable for the end user and manageable for the devs. Options are always the answer, the ability to enable or disable certain aspect or details is what drives me towards one app or the other. (This is coming from someone who used Infinity for Reddit for the past 4 years.)
It just seems incredibly nitpicky to call alternatives lazy for not having all of the modularity of a decade+ old platform.
”Reddit is imploding, and the CEO is being terrible to users, and the native app is super intrusive and inefficient but ugh the alternatives have square buttons.”
Just really weird that the lack of visual bells and whistles is something to even talk about at the moment. Just a little lower in the thread, the same person complained about lack of gilding. Just, really weird complaints.
It feels familiar to old.reddit so i like it. Squabbles has an interesting approach to displaying posts + comments tho
Yes people do like nice design and user interfaces. Apple managed to grab a large market share by understanding that.
It doesn't have to be cluttered but it doesn't have to be ... this.
If you want things to improve, you are going to have to accept criticism that your current crush isn’t perfect. There is already a lot of the toxic Reddit’ness that has come over, we don't need more.
I definitely miss Reddit's stylesheets. Giving mods control over the page's CSS was just really neat. Everything had an individual flair
Lol did people use reddit without turning off sub specific stylesheets?!
Let's not kid ourselves, some subs were awful. Few like mildly infuriating actually were creative with it and added to the experience. Others were crimes against design. I disabled them with RES globally and only activated a few select ones. Too many mods thought that red text over black background was a good idea. Then there were those who had a highlight effect on the selected comment and made the white text unreadable. Design is a Art.
I think the more they bitch about Reddit alternatives, the more people will be reminded that there are alternatives to Reddit.
"The hosts are too lazy" says the person whining about it without doing anything.
Try switching to a platform you've never used before and making a community out of nothing, or host the Lemmy instance and be forced to deal with thousands of new users daily. Lazy my ass...
Reddit's UI and performance was pretty horrible for me in the browser. That being said, I find Lemmy's UI and performance worse. 😢
They definitely need to hire a real designer and work on performance. It's pretty bad when I try to subscribe to a community on lemmy.ml from lemmy.world. It takes like minutes for me for the request to go through.
The contrast between white and lime green is pretty bad too. The design makes the app feel cheap. That matters for a lot of people.
I'm hopeful Lemmy will get better over time. 👍
Everything looks better on Jerboa. I went back on the browser to see what you're talking about and immediately saw what you're talking about!
Shouldn't be too hard to change the CSS, but I wish this isn't the default. Even grey would look better.
I hope the devs check these posts out.
TBF Lemmy UI/UX is horrible. So is Reddit's IMO, for completely different reasons, but still. It's a valid criticism, it's just also not an endorsement of Reddit.
I like the deisgn and layout of Lemmy a lot. It reminds me a lot of old.reddit.com
Someone didn't grow up during the days of forums.
But as a designer, I understand where they're coming from. Especially if they were using the new reddit design on the web and Apollo on mobile. At the very least though, I think Lemmy's default UI looks much better than old.reddit (and I say that as someone who still uses old.reddit).
Dark grays, blues? Squared? Good. I love simplicity! Not to mention, Reddit started out like that too, and among the older wave of users old.reddit was still a favorite for that reason.
I'm pretty sure Reddit UI/UX isn't very well designed either lol. Especially new reddit.
I prefer clean interfaces and thus far haven't been disappointed. Just gimme a dark theme option and I'm (mostly) happy.
One thing I do dislike, the post width on desktop is limited. Between the sidebar always being shown and the container being 1140 px wide, the comment section ends up only being 760 px wide; way too narrow for me.
I wrote a Stylus script for Firefox to make the posts full-width.
URL starts with: https://lemmy.world/post
Script:
.container, .container-lg, .container-md, .container-sm, .container-xl {
max-width: 100%;
}
.col-md-8 {
flex: 0 0 80%;
max-width: 80%;
}
.col-md-4 {
flex: 0 0 20%;
max-width: 20%;
}
If you don't like the UI, you can always download a browser extension that change the CSS of the website. However, if this is the main criticism people do to Lemmy, I would say that's not bad for a relatively new platform
I've noticed my friends my age (late teens/ early 20s) say that lemmy and kbin look old. They also are new reddit users so they are probably used to the social media, ads before content approach of modern websites compare to those who enjoyed more simple site designs that were functional
"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.
I was able to get over the majority of the style issues on Lemmy by adding the extension Stylus and installing this theme. https://userstyles.world/style/10440/rediggit-for-lemmy
Hopefully that helps some that want the old.reddit look.
Form over function, it's been all over the place for the last few years.
Right now I can see buttons I may not use immediately in the interface… to me it's fine. To modern designer these must be hidden and only show up contextually or with an hover, and keep the space empty otherwise.
I don't really like modern design, but it is true that a lot of people (mainly younger people or old people that never really looked at internet much before) really enjoy the "simplicity and lean look". These people also enjoy interfaces that requires a lot of waiting and moving around to do simple thing, so…
Lemmy UI has a ton of issues
top hour is broken for me because it constantly populated with every new post. Completely broken.
That's also the beauty of Lemmy... they can host an instance of their own, and customize it to their hearts content, while still having access to the broader community's content!
You can skin and theme an instance however you want, and the lemmi-ui code is open source so you can completely customize that side of things too. It's a complete non issue the instant someone with design capabilities contributes.
Was using Lemmy on my phone via browser, and I darn near swooned at how clean and tidy and useable it was.
... have they seen the reddit apps?
Also color customization is definitely a post MVP thing usually. This platform is not mature
I'm especially annoyed by the way videos are shown on every Lemmy UI, I can't be bothered to click on a link every time there's video content on my feed
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.
With time these sites are all going to shine :)
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.
Lemmy clients could definetly benefit from more customization options. Let everyone have it as they want.
Yeah, I'm over here writing CSS to remove junk (avatar icons, sidebars, etc) from Lemmy pages because it's not text-only enough.
It's cool that others like a fancier view. I want it to be almost nothing but text.
Lemmy is still a baby. I am sure we'll see tweaks/improvements over time. We'll also see scripts/extensions. Overall, I am enjoying my experience using Lemmy.
Nah I stayed on old reddit because I like that every sub has it's on interface and personality. I used to visit lots of new subs just to see their unique design. Lemmy's interface is very sterile and boring to look at.
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