So Jerboa broke on my phone just now and I didn’t want to stop browsing Lemmy. Unfortunately no suitable alternative was found so I just decided to check if I could open it in my browser and install it.

To my surprise, it worked. And it works really well quite frankly. Sure, the UI is different, but I’m not at all missing any features.

Did any of you guys try it as well? What’s your opinion?

If not, did you even know that was a possibility? It quite frankly never crossed my mind, because Reddit and other platforms always force you to use an app when you open them in a browser.

  • invicticide@programming.dev
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    3 years ago

    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.

  • sikhness@lemmy.ca
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    3 years ago

    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?

  • Noved@lemmy.ca
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    3 years ago

    Ive been exclusively browsing on mobile web, same as I did reddit. This layout is much more user friendly forsure.

    • Dee@beehaw.org
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      3 years ago

      Same. Been using the mobile browser since day one and it has everything the desktop version has just in different spots. I don’t see the need for a dedicated app tbh, unless they muck up the mobile version which I don’t see happening… hopefully.

  • jherazob@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    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

  • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    Did any of you guys try it as well? What’s your opinion?

    In respect to Lemmy as a whole, I’m trying to exercise a lot patience.

    One of the first things I did was install it as a PWA. It has a sleek UI, but some bugs makes it incredibly hard for me to use. One of the worst is an issue with several of the combo boxes which repeatedly flashing on use. I have to try hitting the appropriate selection multiple times in hopes of it eventually taking.

    I use Jerboa most of the time inspite of the many bugs, but I usually end up having to open the PWA for missing functionality.

    Like I said…

    Lots… And lots

    And lots… of patience.

    • lunarnexus@infosec.pub
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      3 years ago

      Why do people keep saying “install” it as a PWA. Doesn’t that mean going to the web page in a mobile browser?

      • ⓝⓞ🅞🅝🅔@beehaw.org
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        3 years ago

        A progressive web app (pwa) is installed as an app on your phone. Developers can publish these web application online without users requiring an app store. They run on multiple platforms and devices from a single codebase, giving a platform-specific like experience. They are very light weight and even offer offline capabilities.

  • CleoTheWizard@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    Oh yeah I tried it. And it even worked better than jerboa in some ways until jerboa had some updates. It still has some features that jerboa doesn’t have, like opening links to other instances within your own instance (that’s a huge problem right now for me). So yeah the webpage version is still competitive with this app but probably not for too long.

    • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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      3 years ago

      I started on PWA, got frustrated with it, moved to Mlem, got frustrated with it, moved to Memmy, and then found not all features were implemented yet — so checked out PWA again and found it had somehow massively improved since the last time I used it.

      So now I use both PWA and Memmy, with Memmy getting more use every day (inbox support got added today).

  • Aninjanameddaryll@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    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.

  • distractedcactus@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    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.

  • Pechente@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    I’m really not a fan of the lemmy / kbin web UIs but I recently installed wefwef.app as a PWA and I really like it.

  • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
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    3 years ago

    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.

  • altz3r0@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    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.

  • jlarex@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    I’ve been using the PWA on my tablet and I switch between the PWA and jerboa on my phone. The PWA seems more stable but the upvote and collapse comment buttons are a little too small for my taste.

  • Papamousse@beehaw.org
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    3 years ago

    As I have an account on Beehaw and Lemmy.world, I created two PWA on my screen, it works great!