MsDropbear42 🇦🇺​ 🦘♀🌈🐧​

EDITED | For reasons idk, my initial attempts to send this toot when i first wrote it a couple of hours ago, repeatedly failed with an incomprehensible error msg. Eventually i had to delete all my CW text, replace it with just "tbc", at which point it did Send. Then, i edited it, & replaced "tbc" with my original CW. That also Sent ok... or so i thought. Just now, viewing it from Masto, only the first temp edited version has federated there, not the corrected update; wtf? Hoping this umpteenth attempt now might work...?

Nope! Getting cranky now. @MsDropbear42

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Firefish's GUI & hugely granular Settings are a pretty different beast from #Mastodon, so i've had heaps of learning, setting up, fiddling & finessing to do. I've reached a point now where it's seriously good, in many ways a far better UX than in Masto... & yet sadly, i believe that for now i need to leave it alone for a while & return to Mastodon as my daily socials client.

Fwiw, self-notes i've just scribbled down for my later reference.

1. Atm impossible to stop timelines auto-updating [no Slow Mode like in Masto], & this is stressful. Albeit they seem not to AU when already scrolled down from the top, phew, but if i'm reading the top toot the t/l can & does reload sans-warning & displace my toot being read by however many new toots just arrived. This is hugely discombobulating!

2. Atm no native way to globally stop Boosts appearing in my Home timeline [in Masto this is simple via one click]. I had to use the clumsy inefficient workaround of manually muting boosts for each individual account i Follow.

3. The #Firefish paradigm afaict is fundamentally different to Masto in that for the latter, my Home t/l remains useful even if i Follow no other accounts, coz it's populated with my Followed Hashtags plus any Followed accounts. Given my strong preference is to follow myriad tags, but minimal accounts, that's great for me. Otoh in Firefish the Home t/l seems to be exclusively for toots from accounts i follow, ergo, if i choose to follow nobody, this t/l is empty.

4. As said, Followed Hashtags do not appear in my Home timeline. I had to create an Antenna for them, then display it as a parallel timeline. This causes me cognitive overload & partially duplicated reading work.

5. This one might be The Killer though. There's an official Bug re Antennas, whereby they only show a subset of the targets, but then repeat all these over & over as one scrolls down that timeline.

It's a great pity, not only that maybe the past 36 hrs might have been a waste of time & effort, but much more importantly, IMO Firefish in many ways is already a superior* UX than Masto... but its fatal flaws atm seem a showstopper for my needs. I'll keep the tab pinned but unloaded, & keep checking in every few weeks to see if improvements might have happened.

* eg, i love these aspects [non-exhaustive list]:

- 4000-char toots is great, compared to my current Masto's 1024. Furthermore, Firefish's #ContentWarning #CW equivalent allows one to "cheat", coz to my surprise & unlike Masto, text here is not counted for the total toot-characters used. Yay!
- The toot-compose windowlet in Firefish is substantially nicer than Masto, not least for its excellent Preview tool.
- The UI is super-impressively user-reconfigurable, making Masto feel positively Olde Worlde in comparison.
- Firefish's Search tool is truly powerful, vs Masto's highly limited tags search.
- The granularity of Firefish's Settings is astoundingly impressive & useful, so for a details-geek like me [eg, my love of #ArchLinux & #KDEPlasma, heehee], this is almost euphoric.
- Without the User needing to go to any external CSS etc hassle, Firefish's UI is already subjectively gorgeous ootb, via its plethora of native Themes. #FirefishSocialNoobQuestions #FirefishVsMastodon #SlowMode

Jul 31, 2023 at 1:21amWeb
Show threadMsDropbear42 🇦🇺​ 🦘♀🌈🐧​Jul 31, 2023
For reasons summarised in my OP, til further notice i'm now reverting to Masto as my daily client [albeit definitely still retaining this shiny new Firefish Instance account, just not actively using it nor even looking at it on a daily basis]. In the brief time i've had this account, various peeps have been kind enough to #Follow me here [are you all masochists or something ? 😜]. If you somehow, incomprehensibly, still wish to keep up with my meandering moronic musings & banal baleful bleatings, fyi fwiw, my active Masto account is @MsDropbear42. See you on t'other side... or not 🤭

#FirefishSocialNoobQuestions #FirefishVsMastodon #SlowMode #Firefish
Show threadMaria The Martian Jul 31, 2023
@MsDropbear42 It's the theme customization and markdown that won my heart. I'm sure Antennas will improve too. I like the deck layout but I get that it's overload for many. It is simply gorgeous on my laptop.
Show threadLily Cohen Jul 31, 2023
@MsDropbear42 Super thorough write-up! Thanks for sharing!
Show threadLily Cohen Jul 31, 2023
@MsDropbear42 and yeah the antennas being broken right now is a pretty big one imo. It’s definitely hamstrung my normal usage.
Show threadEarthlingJul 31, 2023
@MsDropbear42

Hi everybody,

please help: what is the relationship between "firefish" and "calckey"?
Just two independent servers, or is one part of the other?
Show threadMsDropbear42 🇦🇺​ 🦘♀🌈🐧​Jul 31, 2023
@Raven47 Afaik, they just decided to rebrand. Note the url here still contains the old name... https://joinfirefish.org/blog/en/calckey/
Firefish

A fun, new, open way to experience social media

Firefish
Show threadEarthlingJul 31, 2023
@MsDropbear42

I don´t understand. There is no mention of "calckey"?
Show threadMsDropbear42 🇦🇺​ 🦘♀🌈🐧​Jul 31, 2023

@Raven47 No i know, but as i said to you:

Note the url here still contains the old namePS: I'm about to put my Firefish account to sleep for a while, so if you wish more tooting to me, pls also send it to my Masto account; @MsDropbear42 otherwise it might be weeks+ before i see it.