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.

I know Ernest is trying his best, however with the current pace I worry about growth (and I’m not alone, as shown by mbin). If there is another Reddit exodus, for example, or if we get a surge due to the Threads thing, I feel like many will just turn back due to the UI alone. Some of the gripes are below:

  • With the “+” button, what is the difference between the four types? I know the answer (as do experienced kbin users) but it is not “newbie friendly”

  • 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)

  • Images load when they enter the viewport instead of just before (also, images are not cached and as a result they need to load again when you back out of a post, leading to excessive data usage)

  • A slight but very noticeable lag when backing out of posts or clicking on them (presumably while data fetching is happening)

… etc. There are more (such as issues with certain HTML / code templating stuff, seeing “span” and other tags instead of the actual code block), but these are the main ones in my eyes. I was assuming that there would be fixes by this point for these sort of issues, but I haven’t noticed the interface change for a hot minute and it’s seriously hampering the experience (as a solely-mobile user).

When can we expect stuff like this to be addressed? I don’t mean to be a downer or belittle the efforts by the kbin contributors (I love kbin, that’s why I care enough to make this post!), but this has all been consistent since July and I worry that these will just become cruft that never gets addressed and will simply be something new users need to “deal with” or “learn”, when we are the only site that has this unusual flow and these bugs.

Thank you!

  • H2SO4@kbin.social
    1·
    10 months ago

    I get your frustration. In the meantime, you can use a browser extension to customize KBin. I personally use FF on mobile and the addon called Stylus

    There are magazines for customizing KBin like this:

  • bluGill@kbin.social
    1·
    10 months ago

    I think there are higher priority issues. Not that you are raising invalid issues, just too much work for too few Ernst’s

  • Pamasich@kbin.social
    0·
    10 months ago

    seeing “span” and other tags instead of the actual code block

    If you’re using Firefox or Kiwi, the Kbin Enhancement Suite userscript now has a fix for this. There’s also a standalone version here.

    Well, for the span tags, I haven’t seen other tags being an issue. If you see a code block where the same issue occurs with other tags, tell me so I can update it.

    If there is another Reddit exodus, for example, or if we get a surge due to the Threads thing, I feel like many will just turn back due to the UI alone.

    I don’t know if ernest’s views changed since the last exodus, but iirc people joining the platform wasn’t really his intention, it just happened. Kbin hasn’t even had a proper full release yet, it’s still beta software, so I don’t think people bouncing off is that big an issue yet.

    With the abandonment of Artemis (formerly kmoon), kbin is now only really usable by the mobile site.

    That’s the case for now, but app development is still happening with other projects:

    • ernest has mentioned intentions to revive his kbin app project
    • Lemmy’s Lunar (ios) app is adding kbin support
    • @jwr1 introduced their Interstellar app prototype for Android recently.
    • density@kbin.social
      1·
      10 months ago

      I understood OP to be talking about mobile specifically. If there is a way to get the userstyles on mobile it’s gotta be like 20 steps long. If someone could somehow wrap it all up in an easy package that would be one thing but idk if it’s really a viable solution.

      • Pamasich@kbin.social
        1·
        10 months ago

        I understood OP to be talking about mobile specifically.

        And that’s why I said Firefox or Kiwi. Both of those are mobile browsers (the latter is chromium) that support extensions, so you can just install your favorite monkey and stylus and add userscripts/userstyles the exact same way as on desktop.

  • minnieo@kbin.social
    0·
    10 months ago

    imo the ui on kbin is wonderful, and very usable on mobile unlike reddit and other sites, and especially preferable compared to lemmy. i dont imagine there will be another exodus from reddit, it was all performative and hardly anyone stuck around.

    • ProdigalFrog@kbin.social
      1·
      9 months ago

      and especially preferable compared to lemmy.

      Thing is, Lemmy has Photon and Alexandrite alternative frontends that are dramatically better than the standard web UI, and a plethora of good mobile apps already, like Boost and Eternity. :\