Technology

PWA = progressive web app = a webpage-based app, as opposed to a native app for whatever OS you're using.

for those like me who didn't know what it meant

I'm also finding it really effective. I only hate that backing out from a post is a crapshoot on whether it preserves my scroll position, resets to the top, or reloads the entire feed.

The Web app is really good! The only issue I have with it since it got updated to 0.18 is that when you click a post link and press back to go to your community, it reloads the entire community and takes your scroll position all the way to the top. It's really killed the experience on mobile for me and it didn't do that prior to 0.18 I found.

Anyone else having the same issue?

When you think about it it's so weird that it feels like a novelty when a website works well as a website without needing dedicated software, but that's enshittification for ya, has us so used to that artificial barrier that we accept it as normal when it isn't

Whichever way you look at it, Lemmy is pretty great.

Installing it as a PWA on my iPhone causes the history buttons to disappear (since they're part of the browser). This means that if I open a comments page, I can't get back to the post list again. I can tap on the logo to get to the main page, but my scrolling position is lost, so I'd have to scroll down to find where I stopped scrolling last time.

Yeah no, still have to use an app.

I’m primarily using Mlem on iOS cause the PWA was always kinda janky for me

I started using Lemmy like that, without any apps. It's fine, specially on desktop.

It really is pretty good, especially after 0.18. It’ll obviously be great when high quality apps are available, but the mobile experience is already good enough for being completely free.

Agreed! Only deal breaker I can see for me is that using a PWA with Safari in iOS instead of Memmy means that when I open a link and go back it starts from the top again. Obviously doesn’t occur when I can open a new tab in the browser but still definitely annoying.

0.18 will also massively improve the user experience for y'all (whenever Beehaw updates). They ripped out the old websockets architecture, which eliminates all of the weird glitches like upvotes disappearing or random posts popping up in your feed.

Yup, and via hermit as well.

It has benefits over jerboa in that everything works right.

But jerboa is a better overall experience because of the way it uses the screen in a balanced way. Coming from reddit 3rd party apps, browsers and PWAs are so clunky. Even old reddit suffers from that, though. New reddit at least is visually closer to app layouts.

Which is tangential. But until jerboa catches up, it's going to be glitchy, which is annoying in its own right, like some community links just crashing the app.

Personally, I have not setup an app yet. Web version is all I know so far, and I'm coming from old.reddit as my previous standby anyways. I mistakenly paid for Fedilab, only to find it doesn't support Lemmy, or at least not the instance I'm on.

Lemmy web does what I want and expect so far, although subscribing across instances could be smoother.

I've never understood the appeal to make a standalone app when a solid PWA can be just as good.

I'm trying out Jerboa but also definitely prefer the current web interface as a PWA on Android. I'd rather have just a great responsive mobile and desktop web interface as my main way to use Lemmy.

I think that we get too used to relying on mobile apps because the corpo sites don't care about doing anything beyond the bare minimum cookie-cutter UI to get users, and so we rely on this party apps to actually provide useful features.

I'm hoping that the fediverse can bring out a lot of interesting and useful web design options, for Lemmy and Mastodon and the other federated tools. Having something that is open and beautiful (and functional) should be a part of the plans for increasing adoption and drawing in more people to the community.

I don't really like the top buttons for sidebar subscribed etc. Jerboa moves all the information into better spots I think as it treats the interface as more of an application then a web page.

I only use the web UI, jerboa didn't click with me. The only issue I have with it s that collapsing comments can be tricky.

Entirely agree. Firefox mobile shortcut is the best alternative out there in terms of UX

There was an update to lemmy just now, someone said it broke jerboa. I guess beehaw has installed it already.

This is how I've been using kbin.

I'm posting currently from the PWA after I enabled 2FA on my account (not currently working with Jerboa). It's nice and works well, but I prefer the more compact list view present in Jerboa. Other than that, no complaints!

I‘m using both Lemmy and kbin in my browser just fine. Though I‘d like to use a nice iPhone app eventually, it‘s not strictly necessary for me to enjoy browsing and posting.

I'm using connect for Lemmy and that seems to work really well.

Installed lemmy and elk.zone as pwa via vivaldi. Lemmy only misses the back button.