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.
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
Thank you!!
You’re a hero
Short and sweet, thanks for explaining.
I felt like it was too late for me to ask, absolute legend!
whats the actual difference, does it improve the performance/caching/first-time loading speed?
Ive been exclusively browsing on mobile web, same as I did reddit. This layout is much more user friendly forsure.
The benefit of not having half the screen devoted to trying to get you to download the app is a huge bonus.
This Apollo-like webapp is new too, and I like it quite a bit: https://wefwef.app
Holy shit that’s sleek. Gonna give that a go for a while.
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.
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?
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.
I’m primarily using Mlem on iOS cause the PWA was always kinda janky for me
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).
This is my journey too
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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.
Agreed! This is annoying for me as well, but still I like it a lot. Better than Reddit, even.
Yeah it’s quite unfortunate with iOS. I’m on android but afaik iOS just doesn’t support all the PWA features.
Which is super interesting in its own right, because when you look back at the first iPhone, Steve Jobs actually announced at first that it wouldn’t have a Software Development Kit for native apps and all applications will be web based. They obviously didn’t stay on that path, but I find it quite ironic.
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.
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.
I’m looking forward to this. There’s a related bug that drives me crazy when it repeatedly executes an uncommanded scroll-to-top-of-page that should get fixed with the websockets purge.
I started using Lemmy like that, without any apps. It’s fine, specially on desktop.
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’ve never understood the appeal to make a standalone app when a solid PWA can be just as good.
PWA, like most web stuff, has a low barrier to entry but is extremely hard to make look and feel right. Check out the other comment about controls flashing. Native apps do not just have better development tools, they save you from having to reinvent whole kinds of wheels.
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.
