Can you code? We need your help to improve lemmy (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by Gaywallet@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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About two days ago we found a bug with the registration system on lemmy. Because of this we have updated our registration process a few times, and cannot deny any applications as the person registering does not receive any message and cannot re-apply.

We currently have several hundred people that we are waiting to deny, and some unknown amount of people that we denied prior to finding this issue which we would really like to contact and give them a chance to register as they didn't write enough in their registration for us to really evaluate if they were a good fit for this instance.

If you're a developer please take a look at this github issue and please work your magic to help fix this problem.

As an aside, we also have a list we've been working on for enhancements that would make moderating and administering this instance a lot easier, and enhancements we think users would enjoy in terms of UI and UX. We'd love to share these as well as facilitate a discussion to surface more ideas (and we plan to in the future), but right now we need to focus on the most pressing issue to us running this website, whether people can create an account here and participate.

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[-] beeboopbeep@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago

Is there a way we can minimize the stickies? It’s a quality of life but would be great to read it once and shrink it so I get to my feed quicker.

[-] marco@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

My dev days are a little while behind me, but I have experience in project management, QA, etc. Happy to help.

[-] SubArcticTundra@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Off topic but I'm really happy that the developers chose Rust to code Lemmy in. Low maintenance + high performance is the ideal combo for open source server software.

[-] rimu@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

There are hardly any experienced Rust developers. It's going to be a big problem.

[-] LetterboxPancake@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I might need to learn Rust. Java/Kotlin/C# are fine for work, but I'm interested in new stuff anyways.

[-] ghostalmedia@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Bit of a tangent here, but if you’re ever looking for experience designers to help out here and there, or to just give something a second set of eyes, I might be able to lend a hand or connect y’all with some bright and chill people.

You probably don’t want me making any PRs, but I know my way around Figma and a user test plan.

[-] Lionir@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I'd love to see you redesign some parts of the Lemmy UI!

In my option, a lot of designing work is still to be done so I'd love to see mockups you can make and your thoughts on design work!

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If we could end up with a theme that looks a lot more like https://kbin.social, I'd be so happy. My biggest gripe with Lemmy is all of the white space, and none of the current themes improve that at all. All of the theme options offered by kbin look amazing by comparison, and to my understanding Lemmy theming is done via CSS based on Bootstrap v4, so new theme creation should be straightforward enough.

It's to the point where, when visiting Lemmy instances, I use a custom CSS extension to modify a few properties to make it a bit more palatable to me.

If you guys ever need help creating custom themes to offer to users I'd be happy to contribute.

[-] crank@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Can you post your user style??

But I would very much support having a more compact theme available without a browser extension. I think some tightening up up would make this place look more welcoming. It feels sort of "empty" due to all the white space.

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hey there, sure, currently I'm using this. The border between comments on a comment thread doesn't look the best, but it makes it easier for me to track comment levels so I like it, though there are certain properties I'd like to change but can't.

Either way, I'm using an extension called Amino to apply my CSS changes on a domain-level.

This fixes a lot of the whitespace and borders to make differentiating between posts and comments a little easier, while minimizing white space. I think it looks nice.

.container-lg {
    max-width: 1600px;
}
.col-md-8 {
    max-width: 80%;
    flex: 0 0 80%;
}
.col-md-4 {
    max-width: 20%;
    flex: 0 0 20%;
}
.post-listing {
    border: 1px solid rgba(34,34,34,.125);
    border-color: #c80000;
    border-bottom: 0px;
    padding-top: 10px;
}
hr {
    display: none;
}
.border-top {
    border-top: 1px solid rgba(34,34,34,.125)!important;
}
.border-light {
    border-color: #e4e4e5!important;
}

[-] crank@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

thank you I like it! I hate when websites force me to have so much blank space. Like I remember what an improvement it was in 2002 when everyone got into sans serif fonts and padding to their table based layouts and using % widths, but the craft has moved on from those days... For this kind of website I am thinking more of a newspaper and less of a coffee table book.

looks like Amino is only available for chrome and edge. For other ff users I will say I use an addon called Stylus but it might not be the best one; kind of resource hungry on big pages.

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Hey so just a heads up, I made a few more changes that I quite like (again, for the red theme, tweak appropriately for the default green theme), so thought I'd just update you.

This changes the main feed quite a bit, adding a bit more of a card-like design to posts, though I have done my best to make sure there isn't too much white-space from this change, I just feel it looks a bit more modern, but again, feel free not to use it :)

It also, and this is my favorite change, changes the title color of any post you've visited, something that I feel is basic but for some reason Lemmy didn't have before. So now any posts you've visited before will be a light-gray color instead. Hope you find some value here.

.container-lg {
    max-width: 1600px;
}
.col-md-8 {
    max-width: 80%;
    flex: 0 0 80%;
}
.col-md-4 {
    max-width: 20%;
    flex: 0 0 20%;
}
.col-sm-2 {
    max-width: 10%;
    flex: 0 0 10%;
}
.col-sm-9 {
    margin-left: 5px;
    max-width: 80%;
    flex: 0 0 80%;
}
.post-listing {
    border: 1px solid rgba(34,34,34,.125);
    /*border-bottom: 0px;*/
    border-color: #c80000;
    border-radius: 5px;
    margin-bottom: 8px;
    padding-top: 10px;
    background-color: #fff;
    transition: all .2s;
    box-shadow: 2px 2px 1px #c80000;
}

hr {
    display: none;
}
.border-top {
    border-top: 1px solid rgba(34,34,34,.125)!important;
}
.border-light {
    border-color: #e4e4e5!important;
}
body {
    background-color: #ecf0f1;
}
.navbar {
    background-color: #fff;
}
.card {
    background-color: #fff;
    box-shadow: 2px 2px 1px #c80000;
}
.col-12 .card {
    box-shadow: none;
}
.comments {
    padding-left: 10px;
    background-color: #fff;
}
a:visited .d-inline-block {
    color:#d6d7d9!important;
}
.my-2 {
    margin-bottom: 0px!important;
}

[-] crank@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for sharing! I will try it when i am on desktop.

I actually used your code as base to start to fix some things that bug me the most.. all spacing/positioning the colors are a total mess. So i am interested to see what yours is like. I can tell from looking that yours is more efficient because i do not know what im doing so it is trial and error.

Do you think there is a better place than wherever we are to post? A repo or other code sharing? I think the stylus extension connects to some sort of website but i never investigated it.

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Hey so I setup a repo; swap to the default green litely theme, and then test a few of these out, I think they turned out quite well!

https://github.com/HrBingR/Lemmy_CSS/

Please feel free to submit pull requests if you have other colors or ideas you think would look nice. The more the merrier!

[-] crank@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I have had hardly any time at the desktop this week! I tried your code and I like it because it generally looks good. I like mine because it uses the full use of space and has strong delineations. I'd like to combine them when I can. Dial down the hideous by about 50%.

Here is my code https://gist.github.com/btyaa/36a1743e7a0ae95b5aa8178722650b9e

I hope I am not disparaging you by giving you credit. I can remove it if you want. I do not feel this deserves to be in a repo at the moment. It is hideous at the front and the back.

The Stylus extension exported it with this @-moz-document and tbh I do not exactly know what that is; it isn't how it shows up when I edit it. I didnt look into it.

Also I apologize for my various bad css habits such as preceding lines with x or other letters to comment them out instead of using comments. And I use border, outlines, backgrounds to help me locate things. Forgive me I learned CSS before web developer tools, before firebug, and only had intermittent practice since that time. I always fallback to my old ways. Only roughly grok CSS3. Usually I hide these but sometimes i miss. If I would properly share, I'd run a script to remove all the junk.

But if it works easily in your userstyle extension you should try it out. It might hurt your eyes. I make effort to describe what I am doing in comments, because otherwise I get even more lost, but the way it exported isn't great.

Oh also it hides some stuff I am not interested in. So, uh, careful.

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I was thinking of creating a Github repo for it, maybe make a few different theme variants as well for people that'd want different than the standard two colors etc. Might take a crack at it, will let you know.

[-] crank@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

omg did you add drop shadows??? wowwowow i love it

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Glad you like it! :)

[-] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 0 points 1 year ago

How do we deploy custom CSS?

[-] HrBingR@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

So I use the Amino Chrome/Edge extension, which you can use to deploy CSS per-domain, but there should be alternatives available both for Chromium-based browsers and for Firefox.

[-] ghostalmedia@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

Nice! I’m pretty new, so let me get a little bit more familiar with the platform, and I’ll craft up some stuff!

[-] Themightypooper@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Is there a way to follow you here? I'd like to see that. I'm working on being a designer and I'd like to see what others are coming up with.

[-] ghostalmedia@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

It doesn’t look like that quite exists yet

[-] Themightypooper@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

That's a shame. But I'm sure it must be pretty close on the roadmap. It's a pretty essential feature.

[-] reka@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

How does this work with a federation model. Is it possible that there can be lots of different clients with different UX’es?

[-] lungdart@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

That's pretty much how mobile apps work, so very likely.

[-] OneRedFox@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Fediverse platforms in general are just different UIs for the same content since they all interop to varying degrees. You can subscribe to and interact with Lemmy content from Mastodon, as an example.

[-] chinpokomon@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Does that go in reverse too? Subscribing to a Lemmy instance, do I have a Mastodon account by extension? I thought they were different federated services, but being able to authenticate and authorize through one (or more) accredited account(s) would make sense for both services.

[-] Hellebert@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I don't really know Rust at all but it might be a good opportunity to learn. I come from a C# and Python background so I might see if there's anything I can tackle.

[-] BioHall@lemmy.pt 1 points 1 year ago

It’s possible, once they have a good ecosystem of apps plus a lower priced tier (maybe around at macbook air pricing?) However, I can’t imagining it ever shredding the feeling of dystopian-ness of it

[-] SpacePirate@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Likely need to define some basic rbac controls. They signed up, sure, but don’t receive a “user” role until after approval. Then in the home page, when signed in with no roles assigned, they get a banner saying they’re still pending approval and will not be able to post or comment.

The major concern will be retroactively applying user roles to the existing users.

[-] BobQuasit@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I cannot code. 🫤

But it occurs to me that we need a couple of features - although maybe they already exist.

One is the ability to back up a Lemmy account and download the data.

The other is account portability - the ability to move an account from one instance to another.

But I suspect that #2 might be impossible.

[-] crank@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

mastodon has some portability features but not the ability to fully move the content of your account: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/ though you can move some stuff like friend lists etc.

[-] swnt@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

Test

[-] thiccdiccnicc@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for posting and writing all this up. I'll take a good look at it if this is a Friday that work tickets decide to slow down.

[-] nutomic@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

As a workaround you can go into the database and query directly for users with rejected application and email provided. Then write a script to email them. Getting a fix developed, reviewed, merged and deployed will take a few days in the best case. And even longer now because we are busy with lots of things.

[-] admin@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you. I've suggested this method to @Penguincoder@beehaw.org and we are looking into it.

[-] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 0 points 1 year ago

as they didn’t write enough in their registration for us to really evaluate if they were a good fit for this instance.

I'm just curious, what do you consider to be "writing enough"? How strict are you with your applications? I'm trying to learn from beehaw for my own instance.

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this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2023

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