I’m the dev of Alexandrite, a desktop-first alternative Lemmy web UI. If you missed it, here’s my announcement.

alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github

I’ve been working on a load of stuff lately and I wanted to post an update on all the things I’ve added since the first announcement.

There’s a new feed layout! Now when scrolling on a feed of posts, in addition to the old overlay view, you can now view a post side-by-side with the post list, which makes it easier to casually look through posts. By default it will pick the best layout for your screen size, but you can force it to use either the column or the overlay layout in the settings.

I’ve added some basic theming! All of the purple colors in text/borders/backgrounds you see on Alexandrite are based on the same hue, now you can completely change the look of the site with a slider in the settings. Here are some examples:

You can now block/unblock communities, as well as block communities directly from post lists!

You can now choose if NSFW thumbnails are either: hidden (unless you click it), blurred, or always shown.

Markdown formatting is much better. Most things are supported now, and Alexandrite will automatically detect links to users/communities/posts and change their URLs to their page on Alexandrite, making it easier to browse.

All of the Lemmy API calls are now client side, previously it would be proxied through Alexandrite’s server, but that has been removed, so now nothing is sent to Alexandrite’s servers. This should make it easier to self host, but I haven’t yet explored that.

That’s all the big important things. Lots of bug fixing behind the scenes too. Hope you like it!

  • Leraje@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    This is now my default way of using Lemmy (on desktop). Looks superb, is fast and intuitive.

    I have one niggle so minor it seems churlish even mentioning it but, for me, the paragraph leading could be increased a touch. It’s not awful in any sense but paragraphs just feel a little tight. That’s just my own thing though probably.

    Great work u/sheodox :)

    (line-height: 1.5rem is my own personal sweet-spot)

    • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Thanks so much! I’m glad you like it.

      You make a good point, check it out now, I’ve increased the spacing in and around paragraphs. You also reminded me I was sitting on a few other styling fixes I forgot to commit too so I’m glad you pointed that out.

  • Eidolon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    Amazing. This is now my default lemmy viewer on desktop. Commenting for visibility.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    So do you have any thoughts on the possibility of this being folded in as an alternative UI straight from the instance?

    As you probably know, lemmy.world added wefwef/voyager as an alternative for their instance. Would alexandrite being a similar alternative interest you or be viable?

    Given lemmy’s hard separation between backend and frontend, this sort of thing seems like a nice advantage the platform can enjoy … multiple frontends developed by the community for us all to enjoy as we wish.

    • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      I think that would be neat, though a little scary as It’s just been one person frantically fixing bugs and adding features. It could definitely be done! I need to work on the self hosting instructions and probably provide a Dockerfile at some point first. Once Alexandrite matures further I could see it happening if any instance owners were interested, I think that’d be pretty neat.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Oh my … that column layout … fuck yes! Even showing the preview at the same time as the text editing window … wonderful stuff!!

    Probably the best way to consume lemmy on desktop right now!

    @sheodox@lemmy.world are you on mastodon? Would you mind if I shared this on mastodon?

        • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Hey you found me! Thanks for the shout out!

          I didn’t get a notification on Lemmy for the Mastodon mention, but you @'ing me on Lemmy made me finally get around to testing out mentions and realized I had a bug (going to “Mentions” in your inbox would show replies instead), fixed! :)

  • imrichyouknow@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    1 year ago

    The best Lemmy web app so far, a light theme will be much appreciated, also the voted vote counts color does not reflect the hue setting.

    • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Thanks! The background stuff was easy just because of how I had already set things up, I plan on adding some more customization at some point for vote colors, links etc.

  • WolfEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Good shit! Bookmarking this so I can check it out tomorrow.

  • kobraEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    idk if it’s because i’m on Brave or what but the theme slider doesn’t seem to change off of purple much at all. I’m seeing nowhere near the color differences you’re showing in the screenshots.

      • kobraEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        It does appear to work but I have to do a manual refresh of the page to get the colors to update.

          • kobraEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Well that appeared to be how it was working earlier. However, now changing the theme slider and refreshing is doing nothing again 🤷‍♂️

            • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              I’ve never used Brave, does it have any functionality like the Dark Reader extension built in? I know on Firefox the Dark Reader extension overwrites theme colors. If that doesn’t fix it maybe I’ll have to download Brave and check it out.

              • kobraEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                See, this is why doing anything for users is just not worth it. OF COURSE it was the DarkReader extension messing everything up, I completely forgot that thing was running 🤦‍♂️

                So sorry to have wasted your time with bad reports :(

                • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  No worries! There was actually a bug yesterday that your first comment got me to look into and fix, and I haven’t spent any more time on this besides replying to your comments so not much time was wasted. Just glad to know it works :)

    • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Try refreshing the page once. I think I saw a bug where the first time you load the page it doesn’t change things but I could only get it to happen sometimes. Let me know if that fixes it.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Minor bug report:

    Upvoting from the notifications view seems to work (as in the votes go through) but don’t get reflected in the view (at least for me), so the user is prompted to repeatedly click the vote button.

  • Skullition@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I’m leaving a comment from Alexandrite :) Are there plans for choosing what the default view is? I’d love to have All instead of Local as the default view. Loving it so far.

    • sheodox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I haven’t implemented Lemmy’s settings yet, but if you go to your home instance, then settings, then change “Type” to “All” and save, then Alexandrite should default to that.