When I used to use Reddit, one of my favorite things about it was the design of the navigation. Specifically I am referring to when you open a post, and the only thing needed to go back is to click in the margin.

Alexandrite also implements this same type of functionality.

If it hasn’t been suggested already, I’d like to know if this is something that could be implemented here as well.

  • Rimu@piefed.socialMEnglish
    6·
    5 months ago

    Thank you for this suggestion.

    I remember when reddit launched that new design, I just about stopped using reddit at that point because it was so slow on my aging laptop. Of course I was too addicted to actually stop.

    As Andrew said it’s not really something that fits well with what PieFed is trying to do, at a technical level. It could be done within our existing technology framework but it would be awkward and brittle. Also I fear things wouldn’t stop there - soon we’d want the comment form to submit a new comment without reloading the page, or navigate elsewhere too without reloading, etc and at that point we really need what Andrew said with an API and a proper frontend framework. This would mean higher tech requirements to use PieFed as well as more skills needed in the development team and a more complex development environment that new developers would need to set up before they can contribute.

    I’ve got my eye on the possibility (necessity??) of having an API but there’s a bunch of underlying code changes that need to happen first. It’ll take time.

    • viral.vegabond@piefed.socialOP
      2·
      5 months ago

      Wow, that is much more complicated than I had imagined! I respect that, and thanks for the consideration. I like all the progress I’m seeing over here on Piefed, keep up the great work!

  • Andrew@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    5 months ago

    Assuming that kind of functionality involves JavaScript, it depends on how much it involves. From what I understand, PieFed is designed to be accessible in low resource / low bandwidth environments, which downloading megabytes of JS isn’t compatible with.

    It would probably need to get to the point of PieFed having an API, and then a front-end (with a design like Alexandrite) can use as much JS as it likes, because it’s something the user has agreed to.