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So far, the biggest problem is the UX. Following someone from another server is not one click away. Until it's resolved, it will not gain mainstream acceptance.

by xvilka 4y ago

rapnie 4y ago
In the Mastodon web UI for interesting people that pop into your timeline (via boosts/retweets) it is 2 clicks, go-to-profile + follow. Some clients have it as one click directly from the timeline. That is hardly a high UX barrier. OTOH when I am in Twitter UI I am always surprised how cluttered it is by Twitter recommending me all kinds of people I should be interested in somehow. Any UX takes a bit of time to get familiarized to, and then you no long notice its warts so much.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I disagree, this is a problem that needs solving. Clicking the link on my phone brought up Mastodon's web interface (which is fine) but there's no way for me to easily follow this account. My phone doesn't prompt me to open the link in an app because those prompts are domain based and the follow button showed me a whole bunch of text and instructions to copy/paste something somewhere else. It's perfectly understandable to me, but it's also not exactly great UI design.
  - mal-2 4y ago
    There have been proposals to use a custom URL scheme to accomplish this (you don't need the link to point to the person's home domain at all), but they were shot down by Mastodon lead Eugen due to browser support and UX concerns. I think that is a mistake and it needs to be looked at more seriously. Perhaps another fedi software project will adopt a useful standard and then Mastodon can follow after the kinks are worked out. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679#issuecomment-1301180085 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679#issuecomme... https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2291 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2291
mg 4y ago
It does not need much to add the "follow with one click" to your browser. This code works for me: let your_instance="masto.ai"; document.location=( "https://" + your_instance + "/authorize_interaction?uri=" + encodeURIComponent(document.location) ) You can make it a bookmarklet or a chrome extension to have it at your fingertips. (Set your_instance to the Fediverse server you use first) You can use my bookmarklet editor to turn it into a bookmarklet: https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor
- mkl 4y ago
  If it's so simple, why is it not part of the default UI?
  - mg 4y ago
    When you go to https://masto.ai/@mg https://masto.ai/@mg the UI of masto.ai cannot know which Fediverse server you use. Just like when you see an email on a website, that website cannot know which email service you use. To easily follow someone on the Fediverse, your browseer needs to know how to handle Fediverse links for you. Just like your browser needs to know how to handle email links for you.
    - chrismorgan 4y ago
      But with email, there are mailto: links, and email clients (locally-installed apps or webmail) can register themselves to handle such links. What’s missing here is a standardised protocol scheme.
  - noirscape 4y ago
    It used to be. Mastodon removed it when they rewrote their entire UI in React in favor of their current messy "copy-paste a url into search" setup. The old follow button would just open a popup where you entered your home instance + username. It would then redirect you to your instance (not needing a sign in cuz you're already logged in on that) and your instance would do all the magic for following.
jeroenhd 4y ago
I think most people will use Mastodon and Twitter through their respective apps (or different apps om the case of Mastodon). Inside the app, following people isn't really that different from following people on Twitter. I do think Mastodon can use a better follow button, though, but I don't know how to really do that without a browser extension that can access arbitrary websites (aka "a bad idea"). I know web applications can register protocol handlers, so perhaps an web+activitypub:// protocol combined with installing such a handler upon login at one's home server might help? Of course Safari doesn't implement this, but all other desktop browsers do and on mobile you can just use the apps.
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > I do think Mastodon can use a better follow button Mangane (fork of Soapbox) UI running on my Akkoma instance is a two-click follow - click on the username, click on the follow button (which isn't wildly different to Twitter, technically - one click on the three dot menu, one click to follow; only difference is that you don't leave the tweet you're looking at.) Should imagine some JS/UI whizzkid could replicate the three dot menu and copy the follow (mute, etc.) functionality there (alas, this is far beyond my skillset.)
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    When I click on the follow button on your instance, I get asked for my account ID. The problem isn't the follow button when browsing within your home instance, it's when you get linked to someone else's account on their home server and want to follow them.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- mal-2 4y ago
  I think the web-based protocol is the correct solution. Unfortunately it has been shot down already in Mastodon github issues, so another fedi project would have to take up the mantle on solving this. Akkoma has 'Remote Follow' which uses an OAuth flow to execute the follow action on your home server. I think that's too heavy of a solution but it is pretty decent UX. Definitely better than Mastodon's which primarily prompts you to 'Sign in' 'On this server'. That's almost never relevant to the user and should not be the primary prompt when you click Follow.
mal-2 4y ago
I think this is really overblown. It only matters when you see someone's handle posted elsewhere. When you discover them naturally in your timeline you can just follow them. It could be solved with a new URL protocol scheme easily (instead of linking to your account on your home server, create a link to your handle on its own: fedi://@myname@myserver.place) The reason it's confusing currently is that people link to their home server, which is not useful to someone trying to follow them.
gadders 4y ago
I'd have thought the child exploitation material would be pretty high up the list as well, now that they have started to be thrown off Twitter.

So far, the biggest problem is the UX. Following someone from another server is not one click away. Until it's resolved, it will not gain mainstream acceptance.

by xvilka 4y ago

So far, the biggest problem is the UX. Following someone from another server is not one click away. Until it's resolved, it will not gain mainstream acceptance.

rapnie 4y ago

In the Mastodon web UI for interesting people that pop into your timeline (via boosts/retweets) it is 2 clicks, go-to-profile + follow. Some clients have it as one click directly from the timeline. That is hardly a high UX barrier. OTOH when I am in Twitter UI I am always surprised how cluttered it is by Twitter recommending me all kinds of people I should be interested in somehow. Any UX takes a bit of time to get familiarized to, and then you no long notice its warts so much.

jeroenhd 4y ago
I disagree, this is a problem that needs solving. Clicking the link on my phone brought up Mastodon's web interface (which is fine) but there's no way for me to easily follow this account. My phone doesn't prompt me to open the link in an app because those prompts are domain based and the follow button showed me a whole bunch of text and instructions to copy/paste something somewhere else. It's perfectly understandable to me, but it's also not exactly great UI design.
- mal-2 4y ago
  There have been proposals to use a custom URL scheme to accomplish this (you don't need the link to point to the person's home domain at all), but they were shot down by Mastodon lead Eugen due to browser support and UX concerns. I think that is a mistake and it needs to be looked at more seriously. Perhaps another fedi software project will adopt a useful standard and then Mastodon can follow after the kinks are worked out. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679#issuecomment-1301180085 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19679#issuecomme... https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2291 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/2291

mg 4y ago

It does not need much to add the "follow with one click" to your browser. This code works for me: let your_instance="masto.ai"; document.location=( "https://" + your_instance + "/authorize_interaction?uri=" + encodeURIComponent(document.location) ) You can make it a bookmarklet or a chrome extension to have it at your fingertips. (Set your_instance to the Fediverse server you use first) You can use my bookmarklet editor to turn it into a bookmarklet: https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor

mkl 4y ago
If it's so simple, why is it not part of the default UI?
- mg 4y ago
  When you go to https://masto.ai/@mg https://masto.ai/@mg the UI of masto.ai cannot know which Fediverse server you use. Just like when you see an email on a website, that website cannot know which email service you use. To easily follow someone on the Fediverse, your browseer needs to know how to handle Fediverse links for you. Just like your browser needs to know how to handle email links for you.
  - chrismorgan 4y ago
    But with email, there are mailto: links, and email clients (locally-installed apps or webmail) can register themselves to handle such links. What’s missing here is a standardised protocol scheme.
- noirscape 4y ago
  It used to be. Mastodon removed it when they rewrote their entire UI in React in favor of their current messy "copy-paste a url into search" setup. The old follow button would just open a popup where you entered your home instance + username. It would then redirect you to your instance (not needing a sign in cuz you're already logged in on that) and your instance would do all the magic for following.

jeroenhd 4y ago

I think most people will use Mastodon and Twitter through their respective apps (or different apps om the case of Mastodon). Inside the app, following people isn't really that different from following people on Twitter. I do think Mastodon can use a better follow button, though, but I don't know how to really do that without a browser extension that can access arbitrary websites (aka "a bad idea"). I know web applications can register protocol handlers, so perhaps an web+activitypub:// protocol combined with installing such a handler upon login at one's home server might help? Of course Safari doesn't implement this, but all other desktop browsers do and on mobile you can just use the apps.

zimpenfish 4y ago
> I do think Mastodon can use a better follow button Mangane (fork of Soapbox) UI running on my Akkoma instance is a two-click follow - click on the username, click on the follow button (which isn't wildly different to Twitter, technically - one click on the three dot menu, one click to follow; only difference is that you don't leave the tweet you're looking at.) Should imagine some JS/UI whizzkid could replicate the three dot menu and copy the follow (mute, etc.) functionality there (alas, this is far beyond my skillset.)
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  When I click on the follow button on your instance, I get asked for my account ID. The problem isn't the follow button when browsing within your home instance, it's when you get linked to someone else's account on their home server and want to follow them.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mal-2 4y ago
I think the web-based protocol is the correct solution. Unfortunately it has been shot down already in Mastodon github issues, so another fedi project would have to take up the mantle on solving this. Akkoma has 'Remote Follow' which uses an OAuth flow to execute the follow action on your home server. I think that's too heavy of a solution but it is pretty decent UX. Definitely better than Mastodon's which primarily prompts you to 'Sign in' 'On this server'. That's almost never relevant to the user and should not be the primary prompt when you click Follow.

mal-2 4y ago

I think this is really overblown. It only matters when you see someone's handle posted elsewhere. When you discover them naturally in your timeline you can just follow them. It could be solved with a new URL protocol scheme easily (instead of linking to your account on your home server, create a link to your handle on its own: fedi://@myname@myserver.place) The reason it's confusing currently is that people link to their home server, which is not useful to someone trying to follow them.

gadders 4y ago

I'd have thought the child exploitation material would be pretty high up the list as well, now that they have started to be thrown off Twitter.