Kbin badly needs a facelift
With the abandonment of Artemis (formerly kmoon), kbin is now only really usable by the mobile site. The site is really not suited for mobile devices however, and there have been minimal user-facing changes in the last few months.... #kbinMeta
When you go back, you are forced to randomly scroll up and down the feed to find the post you were just looking at (this has been an issue for months)
I thought I was being picky by being annoyed by this, but yeah, it is annoying.
Kbin core is first priority still last I saw. Which is more important IMO since then devs can use the API.
I always felt that Artemis was doomed from the start given that it was working around not having an API and seemed to be more focused on Kbin support over lemmy. Not that that’s a bad thing, Kbin is the only fedisite I use other than this one. But for example, I’m on Boost for Lemmy right now and the dev has mentioned Kbin support, but there’s been no mention of it until some comments about the API releasing, then again nothing.
Idk, it just seems like modding an early access game. You can make your own fork and spin it up and it can make great, incredible strides until the maintainer loses interest. That’s not to say that it shouldn’t be done or no one should ever make and maintain a fork, but I was just always confused as to why I was always seeing posts on Artemis alpha releases but the subject matter revolved around Kbin if the app also supported lemmy. Have compatibility be the focus until you don’t have to maintain the instance fork and the app development at the same time.
Moreover it’s just unfortunate that the instance is gone, hopefully there was an account merge available if anyone wanted that. I also certainly don’t have the full picture by any means, just the development posts and then the moderator goodbye post.
I’m personally happy with Kbin on Firefox until the account is supported in Boost. Yes, I have noticed a bug or two that has been mentioned but they are consistent in how they appear in my experience and I tend to not interact with how they often pop up. (I comment less on Kbin so scrolling up isn’t often an issue.) The bug I get most commonly is trying to view the bottom of the page with infinite scroll turned on. If it’s styling that’s an issue, Firefox Nightly or Fennec to play with CSS to your liking with something like Stylus.
I feel bad for the Artemis community, hopefully everyone finds something that works for them soon.
I don't personally have any issues with the website on mobile, I wonder if it could be browser related? I'm also not expecting perfection from something that hasn't been around very long, and never was on reddit so have nothing to compare it to.
I think you have valid points about "dealing" and "learning" and for some, that will be a turnoff. For me, it is an adventure 🙂
Yeah I don't have most of these issues either (like seeing span tags).
Firefox on android.
Kbin is still in pretty early development. I believe it's technically still in alpha. It'll take a while before we get some QoL updates as there's more imperative things that need to be fixed first.
The API should be coming out soon-ish, which will allow app developers to actually start making Kbin-compatible apps, so we should be seeing some more development in that area shortly.
@BiggestBulb
using kbin mostly on mobile devices, i am time and again surprised that kbin works kinda fine > e.g. kbin deals better with bad internet connections than any other fedi software i have come to know so far > given that kbin is still early beta, this is impressive
i think that we should be patient, and keep reporting bugs :)
I share your concerns. I was optimistic at first because kbin looked very promising and the app was evolving pretty fast. Just reaching the point of a functional mobile app would have been enough for me, since we can federate with other communities for more content (before they decided to create their own instance, it was good enough for me).
I am pretty sure the project is on a good track, but in the same time, I think it will probably take 1 or 2 years before we have a good mobile app.
It is pretty bare bones, but Lunar for Lemmy is adding support for kbin. https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/682006/Kbin-Support
Right now, it is only for iOS. I think there is another one being made for android. (I think ernest has included a link to both of these in one of his daily logs.)
Still, it will probably take some time before everything is polished.
While I agree the web app is not the perfect solution, I think it actually works fairly well all things considered. It will never be as smooth as an actual app, but I think time will eventually fix that.
Artemis being abandoned was very disappointing, but there are other developers working on adding kbin support - Lunar for Lemmy is one of them: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/682006/Kbin-Support
Lunar is being developed for iOS. I think there is another one being developed for android but I forget the name.
I really love vanilla kbin on mobile, it works fine for me!!
I'm using the second light theme, classic view, and have tweaked a lot of the settings.
The only problem is threading gets a bit weird on long threads sometimes.
I checked it on Chrome (ugh) and it's better on Firefox though.
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