Playing around with Mastodon v4 (in Hometown!) and...

Playing around with Mastodon v4 (in Hometown!) and trying to change how the post button layout works on mobile web. I moved the post button and the user avatar to the same column as various timeline icons. It gets rid of the big "top bar" that takes up a bunch of space up there just for a logo.

(Ignore the emoji pencil, it is supposed to be a "real" pencil icon but I'm being lazy)

A screenshot of Hometown synced with Mastodon v4. You can see a timeline of local-only posts, and the layout is different from regular Mastodon as described in the text of this post.

A screenshot of the standard Mastodon mobile layout, with a banner taking up a lot of space on the top of the screen.

Like 17 Nov 2022 at 6:18 | Open on friend.camp

9 comments

[DATA EXPUNGED]

Darius Kazemi

Tbh I think I just want to get rid of the vertical bar entirely and take it back to the hamburger menu

17 Nov 2022 at 7:48 | Open on friend.camp

dragfyre

@darius we doin' crimes against UX in here? 🤨

17 Nov 2022 at 7:52 | Open on mastodon.sandwich.net

Daneel Adrian Cayce

@darius Love a good hamburger menu!

Personally I'm finding the sidebar kinda claustrophobic on mobile (granted, I'm on a smaller phone, so lots of things feel that way).

17 Nov 2022 at 8:07 | Open on argon.city

Mina

@darius it's just unfathomable how much space that bar takes up

Especially if you're viewing a post without being logged in

17 Nov 2022 at 8:13 | Open on cathode.church

Max

@darius It’s almost funny: that vertical bar would be an excellent replacement for current menus on both the advanced and “simplified” desktop web UIs when you’ve got widescreens. It’s like they intentionally got mobile and desktop UX confused.

I was wondering myself if I could swap them in pure CSS or not. (Given my instance isn’t running a fork currently.)

17 Nov 2022 at 9:25 | Open on smeap.com

@darius I'm not super fussy about this personally, but the part of me that is a mobile UX designer wants to know why none of this interface is at the bottom of the screen, where you can press it with your thumbs without moving your hand.

17 Nov 2022 at 9:52 | Open on merveilles.town

Dan Bruno

@darius All these years later, no one has ever been able to take it to the hamburger menu quite like James Brown

17 Nov 2022 at 16:01 | Open on xoxo.zone

Jake Rodkin

@darius that vertical sidebar is fun in a “it’s 2001 and everyone’s monitors are getting bigger so let’s start being web layout weirdos” way, and in that I like it for someone taking a big non-standard swing… but actually I hate using it and hope it goes away very soon.

17 Nov 2022 at 17:07 | Open on idlethumbs.social