Recently, I made a post here, which gained some traction in support of the cause. However, I mistakenly used an outdated screenshot of Photon. It turns out that photon.lemmy.world is running an older version of Photon, which caused some misunderstandings.
For those who saw that post and were misled or disliked Photon because it appeared to display only 2-3 links on-screen, similar to new Reddit, let me clarify. While Photon is modern and intuitive, it is not like new Reddit in this particular aspect. This outdated screenshot gave the wrong impression, which I’ve since updated, but I wanted to create this new post since many people may not revisit the previous one to see the corrections.
The latest version of Photon, which can be seen at phtn.app, is a big improvement over what’s on photon.lemmy.world. Photon is modern, intuitive, and, speaking as someone with years of Reddit moderation experience who has also started moderating a few communities on Lemmy, it offers a far superior moderation experience. For example, Photon allows you to view the mod queue for all communities at once, making moderation much easier compared to the base UI or other alternatives.
Photon's modularity and customization options are comparable to, if not better than, Kbin's UI. You can easily change fonts, reposition docks and panels, apply custom themes, adjust sorting, and customize the modular side panel to arrange and pin items in any order you like. All of this can be done without needing CSS or additional technical knowledge. It’s probably the most modular yet user-friendly UI available right now.
Here’s an example of the latest Photon interface settings:
Here’s a more customized version I created in just a few seconds—it can be personalized even further:
In my previous post, I emphasized the need for a modern, visually appealing, and intuitive UI to help the Fediverse grow and attract mainstream users. Currently, Lemmy remains dominated mainly by discussions of political topics and critiques of Elon Musk, while its user base is still relatively small at around 40k+ users. For Lemmy to thrive, it needs to expand beyond its current niche and cater to more general topics and interests.
Personally, I use Reddit for far more than just shitting on Elon Musk, discussing politics, or even tech, especially FOSS. For example, I frequently engage with communities about cars, gaming, TV shows, entrepreneurship and general topics that are largely missing or underdeveloped on Lemmy. These general-interest communities are what make platforms like Reddit so versatile and appealing to a wider audience.
If we remain in our current comfort space, Lemmy will likely continue to stagnate as a niche platform. Meanwhile, other alternatives could grow and potentially replace Reddit one day, and it may not be decentralized, open source or community-funded rather centralized and driven by investors/VCs, Just as we’re seeing with platforms like Bluesky gaining traction over Mastodon to replacing X/Twitter. By embracing a UI like Photon’s, which is both modern and user-friendly, we can create a more inviting experience for mainstream users, helping Lemmy grow into a platform that caters to a broader audience.
I think overall it's not a bad suggestion, and yes Photon looks very sleek, and I have even contributed a language translation for it.
However, my main concern is: what would happen if the main dev loses interest and drops support of the interface? Lemmy backend may add a new feature that either breaks Photon, or Photon can't make use of it until updated. If the development of this frontend could be more integrated with the Lemmy project team and funded, I would be less concerned.
While it would be best if lemmy devs can be more involved with photon, photon is still completely open source and the project is open to contributors, worst case hypothetical scenario of if the project ever gets abandoned it can always be forked, continued, or even better it can be handed by the current dev to someone who can continue to keep it alive.
If photon is widely used I see no reason the dev would just abandon it as it is rather than handing over the project to someone else who has already been contributing.
Like the old.lemmy interface which hasn't been updated since July?
I'm pro FOSS, but that's not a silver bullet that magically attracts developers to work on projects. We're still a 45k monthly active users community which relies on 5 devs which work on Lemmy, and maybe 2 on each of the alternatives (Mbin and Piefed).
The appeal for text-based forums just isn't there anymore.