Ellie – A Mastodon Client for Windows(ellie.software)
ellie.software
Ellie – A Mastodon Client for Windows
https://ellie.software/
89 comments
Not for me. Better engagement already than I had on Twitter.
Bear in mind if the OP is primarily focused on business accounts, plenty of servers block them pretty aggressively. There are servers that allow businesses and some businesses with a reasonably decent following, but since there's no advertising business there with an incentive to force people to see business accounts, many people choose not to.
It's interesting you mention that. I've seen a few businesses sort of try and get a holding there, but then abandon their efforts. I think I saw an official MS Azure account that had 14 followers or something. Businesses aren't really clear either on whether or not they're expected to be there, or even allowed. Good point.
Generally a core point is that because you can't really push ads in people's faces, business accounts on Mastodon need to push content people choose to follow. Updates on products and services that existing users of said products and services would want to know about... great. Building a direct connection with consumers through interaction... fantastic.
Can't tell you how refreshing this is to experience.
On the other hand, Tailscale is doing pretty well https://hachyderm.io/@tailscale
But really, I think one of the things that attracts users to Mastodon is how uncommercial it all is. The current audience explicitly does not want display advertising or a website full of #brands
But really, I think one of the things that attracts users to Mastodon is how uncommercial it all is. The current audience explicitly does not want display advertising or a website full of #brands
With the weird exception of the audience for https://brands.town, an instance full of and for #brands. Though the game there is actually culture jamming, satire/farce, and LARPing fake brands for amusement, and not actually a place for real advertising either.
Same here. The technically inclined portion of the Mac-sphere has largely moved over to Mastodon and stayed, as have a lot of devs and designers. Any time I post something I’ve been working on I get a bunch of new followers and a number of replies, contrasted to Twitter where I got almost nothing.
ironic this comes from a throwaway - I suppose they're really totally all in on mastodon
New account (old one seemed to have expired), not a throwaway. I've never (till now) been an active commenter.
Are you in a specific niche? Honestly curious how you've gone from signing up there to 'better' engagement than on Twitter.
There’s no algorithm, so just posting content isn’t enough. If you don’t follow people on other servers you won’t see anything in the feed, and reply threads will be empty. It took a while to find the right people to follow but now I get as much out of it as I used to get from Twitter. Hashtags are a lot more important too for discoverability since there’s no search function.
My engagement is still low, but on Twitter I would post something and it would just never get seen. Now at least a couple of people will often reply.
My engagement is still low, but on Twitter I would post something and it would just never get seen. Now at least a couple of people will often reply.
In November I got disgusted enough to leave twitter, not just pull the plug, tear it out of the wall. To be clear -- very small twitter account, under 1K followers.
I just set up a new Masto account on a larger server, started watching, following, engaging.
A small case in point: Rands In Repose blog's accounts on both platforms. 42K followers on Twitter and 7.7K followers on Mastodon. Despite Twitter having 5.45 times as many followers, Michael Lopp reports significantly higher engagement on Mastodon. Just had this conversation with him.
I just set up a new Masto account on a larger server, started watching, following, engaging.
A small case in point: Rands In Repose blog's accounts on both platforms. 42K followers on Twitter and 7.7K followers on Mastodon. Despite Twitter having 5.45 times as many followers, Michael Lopp reports significantly higher engagement on Mastodon. Just had this conversation with him.
Interesting follow up, thanks!
I see this too. I joined mathstodon - which is a niche for math - and I hardly see any conversations. People are there posting stuff, but there's almost zero engagement, even when well known, popular accounts post.
As an example, going back over the last 1 day's posts on the federated timeline, about 7 posts have 1 reply each, and just 1 has more than 1 reply.
As an example, going back over the last 1 day's posts on the federated timeline, about 7 posts have 1 reply each, and just 1 has more than 1 reply.
Keep in mind that:
1) Only the user has a full view of engagement at any time, and generally only the user's home instance has anything resembling a "full" view of conversations/replies (and even that is going to not show things private to the user). This is a bit of a natural consequence of the federation model. You may be surprised if you follow posts from popular accounts to their home instances how much additional conversation shows up that your own instance isn't seeing (for all sorts of reasons). This is going to be especially the case in the Federeated timeline because some of the Federated timeline is already "one degree out" from the what the instance is naturally following and it won't pick up the next degree.
2) There is some pushback in parts of the Mastodon community against "popular" accounts from the perspective of other social media and there are a bunch of Mastodon denizens that don't converse with "traditionally popular" accounts such as celebrities/"Influencers" and many even actively mute and block anyone that seems more of a "Brand" than a person or that themselves act like Mastodon is primarily a "write only"/"boost mostly"/"self-advertise" media. In my experience the most active conversations on Mastodon are among people you "wouldn't expect" to be popular or in deep, weird, fun hashtags like #Monsterdon.
1) Only the user has a full view of engagement at any time, and generally only the user's home instance has anything resembling a "full" view of conversations/replies (and even that is going to not show things private to the user). This is a bit of a natural consequence of the federation model. You may be surprised if you follow posts from popular accounts to their home instances how much additional conversation shows up that your own instance isn't seeing (for all sorts of reasons). This is going to be especially the case in the Federeated timeline because some of the Federated timeline is already "one degree out" from the what the instance is naturally following and it won't pick up the next degree.
2) There is some pushback in parts of the Mastodon community against "popular" accounts from the perspective of other social media and there are a bunch of Mastodon denizens that don't converse with "traditionally popular" accounts such as celebrities/"Influencers" and many even actively mute and block anyone that seems more of a "Brand" than a person or that themselves act like Mastodon is primarily a "write only"/"boost mostly"/"self-advertise" media. In my experience the most active conversations on Mastodon are among people you "wouldn't expect" to be popular or in deep, weird, fun hashtags like #Monsterdon.
That sounds as expected for a platform of it's current size? The 1% rule is well proven and coming into this expecting Twitter level engagement is never going to work. I would be curious at what ratio of viewers there is.
Tangential nitpick - I thought my browser froze when I couldn't scroll down on the linked page! Didn't realize it wasn't supposed to until I poked in Inspector a bit.
(maybe this is more of a "me" thing though)
(maybe this is more of a "me" thing though)
Me too. I just wanted to see the full screenshot. So here it is: https://ellie.software/assets/app-frame.svg
Isn't it weird that it is a .svg file rather than an actual screenshot? Maybe it's exported directly from Figma, or some other design software.
Nah, it's all vector so it's a fine format choice.
Not just you. That was very annoying. If something is partially visible, you should be able to scroll down to see all of it.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's one of the best ways to telegraph to someone that there's more to discover.
Actually, I'm pretty sure that's one of the best ways to telegraph to someone that there's more to discover.
Same experience here! It definitely looks like there would be more content further down.
It's a decent start for a native-ish client app, but it's clearly still in early development with a fair bit to go.
- In the feed nothing in a post is clickable except the post itself. You can't click links, handles, images. Trying to click takes you to the single post view, where then they're clickable.
- Viewing images is especially rough (which to be fair, it's always hard to show arbitary aspect ratio images in a timeline app like this). Shows in one cropped fixed aspect ration in timeline, and another cropped aspect ratio in post view. Takes two click to view the full image, where it opens in your browser.
- Vertical rhythm/spacing is off, making timeline hard to read. Difficult to see where one post ends and the next starts.
- Clicking a reply in a thread takes you to the top of the thread rather than the post you clicked.
- Can only post text. Can't even attach images.
I'm excited for a neat native Windows mastodon app, so I'll check back in on this every now and then to see how it's getting along.
- In the feed nothing in a post is clickable except the post itself. You can't click links, handles, images. Trying to click takes you to the single post view, where then they're clickable.
- Viewing images is especially rough (which to be fair, it's always hard to show arbitary aspect ratio images in a timeline app like this). Shows in one cropped fixed aspect ration in timeline, and another cropped aspect ratio in post view. Takes two click to view the full image, where it opens in your browser.
- Vertical rhythm/spacing is off, making timeline hard to read. Difficult to see where one post ends and the next starts.
- Clicking a reply in a thread takes you to the top of the thread rather than the post you clicked.
- Can only post text. Can't even attach images.
I'm excited for a neat native Windows mastodon app, so I'll check back in on this every now and then to see how it's getting along.
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Is this using native widgets? I’m currently using Tokodon on Linux and it’s quite a joy to use a thing that is using my OS’s UI for once
From the screenshot it looks like an UWP app. So it's not a "proper native" win32 application.
For what it's worth, 'UWP' is a very specific set of frameworks. The 'new' Windows App SDK (WinUI 3) is not UWP, yet it produces similar looking apps (Using Fluent https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent).
WinUI 3 can be used in a 'proper native' win32 application. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/#compar...
Yes, it's all very confusing and Microsoft has done a terrible job of making this easy for anyone.
WinUI 3 can be used in a 'proper native' win32 application. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/winui/#compar...
Yes, it's all very confusing and Microsoft has done a terrible job of making this easy for anyone.
Also, the Windows team at Microsoft still believes the WinUI 3 controls to be the "most native"/"best experience" in Windows in 2023, even after/because of the divorce from what used to be "UWP". (Though Microsoft's own usage of WinUI 3 across their many applications is currently inconsistent at best.)
UWP is the proper look for win8 and unwards
Thankfully most developers disagree. I am using 11 and the only UWP app I use is the modern terminal... and it's UWP because Microsoft made it.
haha, I used to own that domain! nice to see it being used for something cool.
lol there's no way to move the window before logging in?
I don't really understand why people want to switch over from Twitter to Mastodon while it carries similar problems as the blue platform:
1. Instead of being blocked or shadowbanned by Elon Musk, you can now be blocked or shadowbanned by the Mastodon instance admin. 2. Making connections with other Mastodon instances is non-trivial. 3. Exporting your data and connections is not supported on all Mastodon instances.
Why aren't more people switch over to Nostr? I know Nostr has seen “meteoric” growth [1] and it's easy to find your old twitter contracts again [2] but somehow Hacker News is very quiet about this open protocol and all the various clients and implementations [3].
[1]. https://stats.nostr.band/
[2]. By using tools like https://www.nostr.directory/
[3]. https://nostr.how/
1. Instead of being blocked or shadowbanned by Elon Musk, you can now be blocked or shadowbanned by the Mastodon instance admin. 2. Making connections with other Mastodon instances is non-trivial. 3. Exporting your data and connections is not supported on all Mastodon instances.
Why aren't more people switch over to Nostr? I know Nostr has seen “meteoric” growth [1] and it's easy to find your old twitter contracts again [2] but somehow Hacker News is very quiet about this open protocol and all the various clients and implementations [3].
[1]. https://stats.nostr.band/
[2]. By using tools like https://www.nostr.directory/
[3]. https://nostr.how/
What is it with crypto people and contradictory statements:
--- start quotes ---
truly censorship resistant and decentralized social media platforms
Relays are like the backend servers for Nostr. They allow Nostr clients to send them messages, and they may (or may not) store those messages and broadcast those messages
if you notice that your Nostr client feels slow, it's most likely due to the relays that you're using. It might be worth adding a few more relays (or removing a few) to your client.
most people expect that paid relays will be the norm in the future.
--- end quotes ---
--- start quotes ---
truly censorship resistant and decentralized social media platforms
Relays are like the backend servers for Nostr. They allow Nostr clients to send them messages, and they may (or may not) store those messages and broadcast those messages
if you notice that your Nostr client feels slow, it's most likely due to the relays that you're using. It might be worth adding a few more relays (or removing a few) to your client.
most people expect that paid relays will be the norm in the future.
--- end quotes ---
I don't want to be on a platform that doesn't have a mod that I trust and will do most of the dirty work for me. I want to have fun, not extra work.
You can have a mod on Nostr, basically by only subscribing to servers operated by such mods.
In Nostr, users multi-post their tweets to “relay servers”, and relay servers push it to you. Follow actions are a type of tweets as well so all relays can know who you are following. You can also have as many relays as you want.
Isn’t it going to waste a lot of bandwidth, you may wonder. It does!
Huge benefit of Nostr architecture is that your identity is based on your generated private key and optionally a DNS name you happen to own, so any server operators’ opinions about you won’t affect your identity.
This happens a lot with existing platforms, not limited to Twitter. “Yesterday evening I took pictures of gorgeous Egyptian sand hills, and since this morning Google left me saying I violated them, now even the embassy says they can’t verify my nationality status” - can’t happen on Nostr.
In Nostr, users multi-post their tweets to “relay servers”, and relay servers push it to you. Follow actions are a type of tweets as well so all relays can know who you are following. You can also have as many relays as you want.
Isn’t it going to waste a lot of bandwidth, you may wonder. It does!
Huge benefit of Nostr architecture is that your identity is based on your generated private key and optionally a DNS name you happen to own, so any server operators’ opinions about you won’t affect your identity.
This happens a lot with existing platforms, not limited to Twitter. “Yesterday evening I took pictures of gorgeous Egyptian sand hills, and since this morning Google left me saying I violated them, now even the embassy says they can’t verify my nationality status” - can’t happen on Nostr.
> know Nostr has seen “meteoric” growth [1] and it's easy to find your old twitter contracts again
I used the tool to find my Twitter followers on Nostr and of the ~300 people I follow a grand total of one, Jack Dorsey, is using Nostr. He's apparently the second most followed account and gets about 90 likes on his posts.
Tbh the reason nobody talks about it is probably because barely anyone's using it. The global feed is just one guy spamming JSON dumps
I used the tool to find my Twitter followers on Nostr and of the ~300 people I follow a grand total of one, Jack Dorsey, is using Nostr. He's apparently the second most followed account and gets about 90 likes on his posts.
Tbh the reason nobody talks about it is probably because barely anyone's using it. The global feed is just one guy spamming JSON dumps
> Integrated with lightning, Nostr enables new value-for-value business models that have the potential to be more fair.
I don't understand this.
I don't understand this.
They should've capitalized Lightning, probably referring to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
The "value-for-value business models that have the potential to be more fair" is the bewildering part.
Value-for-value is a buzzword for crypto based micropayments and tipping.
i just want to follow interesting people on a platform that isn't trying to manipulate my emotions to farm engagement. mastodon wins on the latter but loses on the former.
i wouldn't mind if substack notes took off, i'm willing to pay for what i'm looking for.
i wouldn't mind if substack notes took off, i'm willing to pay for what i'm looking for.
If a social network has no ability for moderation of any sort, it's gonna be DOA.
The issue with being unmoderatable is that it means that you will wind up with a network dominated by the worst people. In general, people don't like to hang out on a website with literal (or euphemistic) nazis. If there isn't a way to prevent people from having to deal with that, they're not going to go to your site/service.
Sure, mastodon is moderated on a per-instance basis, but you can always just move instances. If you consistently cannot find an instance that lets you stay, that's likely more of a indictment of you then mastodon.
The issue with being unmoderatable is that it means that you will wind up with a network dominated by the worst people. In general, people don't like to hang out on a website with literal (or euphemistic) nazis. If there isn't a way to prevent people from having to deal with that, they're not going to go to your site/service.
Sure, mastodon is moderated on a per-instance basis, but you can always just move instances. If you consistently cannot find an instance that lets you stay, that's likely more of a indictment of you then mastodon.
That is just a narrative that Mastodon instance operators insists to appease Apple/Google authoritarianism, and also literal German/French authorities, not what actually matters.
Nostr has scalability and some spam problems. I agree with many of your points but it’s a bit too rough for a “general availability” in its current form.
> 1. Instead of being blocked or shadowbanned by Elon Musk, you can now be blocked or shadowbanned by the Mastodon instance admin
Don't pick random instances, get together with friends and family on a community-owned instance. Or run your own. The whole point of getting away from Twitter is to own the means of communication.
You can also get blocked or shadowbanned by nostr relays, and the incentives to run a relay are even worse than for Mastodon
> 2. Making connections with other Mastodon instances is non-trivial.
Lies, there is literally nothing to do to connect to other instances. Subscribe to an account there and you're plugged.
> 3. Exporting your data and connections is not supported on all Mastodon instances.
Goes back to point 1: don't go to a generic universal instance.
Why so much FUD ? Why the hate ? ActivityPub has real issues, but those are not it (in fact, it's a pretty good indication that you haven't used the network to know what you're talking about). Just like nostr has issues, but if we're going to ditch Twitter and centralized communications, why lie ?
Don't pick random instances, get together with friends and family on a community-owned instance. Or run your own. The whole point of getting away from Twitter is to own the means of communication.
You can also get blocked or shadowbanned by nostr relays, and the incentives to run a relay are even worse than for Mastodon
> 2. Making connections with other Mastodon instances is non-trivial.
Lies, there is literally nothing to do to connect to other instances. Subscribe to an account there and you're plugged.
> 3. Exporting your data and connections is not supported on all Mastodon instances.
Goes back to point 1: don't go to a generic universal instance.
Why so much FUD ? Why the hate ? ActivityPub has real issues, but those are not it (in fact, it's a pretty good indication that you haven't used the network to know what you're talking about). Just like nostr has issues, but if we're going to ditch Twitter and centralized communications, why lie ?
> get together with friends and family on a community-owned instance
Do you think if I had friends that I would be on social media?
Do you think if I had friends that I would be on social media?
My friends and family are more likely to already have Facebook or Discord, and are unlikely to successfully navigate Mastodon onboarding even if it made sense for that use case.
I hate Facebook but Discord is already fulfilling the role of a common space.
I hate Facebook but Discord is already fulfilling the role of a common space.
> and are unlikely to successfully navigate Mastodon onboarding
That's the point: take your community with you on your own instance and recreate your AFK network inside computers. Don't let them go through the hassle of choosing an instance, do it for them if you know how it works.
That's the point: take your community with you on your own instance and recreate your AFK network inside computers. Don't let them go through the hassle of choosing an instance, do it for them if you know how it works.
> Don't pick random instances, get together with friends and family on a community-owned instance.
That isn't a social media, that's a mailing list. Won't even have to be on the Internet, you can put up a physical bulletin board and the result would be the same. Might as well drive to their places with packs of cans in the back. Discord/Mattermost works too.
> Why so much FUD ? Why the hate ?
It's not FUD or hate or exaggerated non-issue when a ton of instances are blacklisting the very top second and third and some bunch of top 20 instances. I understand that getting held responsible for users' legal responsibilities is naturally never worth Gargron's time, but if everyone has to to justify blocking pawoo.net(850k users), mstdn.jp(350k) and misskey.io(150k), totaling >17% of total ActivityPub population(7900k), there is clearly a family of elephants in the room.
That isn't a social media, that's a mailing list. Won't even have to be on the Internet, you can put up a physical bulletin board and the result would be the same. Might as well drive to their places with packs of cans in the back. Discord/Mattermost works too.
> Why so much FUD ? Why the hate ?
It's not FUD or hate or exaggerated non-issue when a ton of instances are blacklisting the very top second and third and some bunch of top 20 instances. I understand that getting held responsible for users' legal responsibilities is naturally never worth Gargron's time, but if everyone has to to justify blocking pawoo.net(850k users), mstdn.jp(350k) and misskey.io(150k), totaling >17% of total ActivityPub population(7900k), there is clearly a family of elephants in the room.
> Instead of being blocked or shadowbanned by Elon Musk, you can now be blocked or shadowbanned by the Mastodon instance admin.
I'm the admin on mine.
> Making connections with other Mastodon instances is non-trivial.
It's been entirely automatic for me?
> Exporting your data and connections is not supported on all Mastodon instances.
Pick accordingly?
I'm the admin on mine.
> Making connections with other Mastodon instances is non-trivial.
It's been entirely automatic for me?
> Exporting your data and connections is not supported on all Mastodon instances.
Pick accordingly?
My plan is actually to set up a mastodon instance on my own domain exclusively for myself, and I will be the only user. From what I can see, people from other mastodon instances will still be able to interact with me and my posts?. Is that your experience?
Yes. That's my setup as well.
Only downside is the "local" timeline is... pretty empty. You won't find new people to follow in there, but you can always browse other interesting servers' local timelines if you're searching for more.
Only downside is the "local" timeline is... pretty empty. You won't find new people to follow in there, but you can always browse other interesting servers' local timelines if you're searching for more.
I think lots of people want some moderation, which Nostr makes impossible.
Sure, I don't like Elon running it, but I'd like somebody keeping the Nazis out. With Mastodon, you can pick a server that fits your moderation preferences.
It also doesn't help that the current Nostr audience is a very cryptocurrency-focused crowd, which a lot of people (myself included) find yucky.
Sure, I don't like Elon running it, but I'd like somebody keeping the Nazis out. With Mastodon, you can pick a server that fits your moderation preferences.
It also doesn't help that the current Nostr audience is a very cryptocurrency-focused crowd, which a lot of people (myself included) find yucky.
There's one really big and important (for me) difference - Elon Musk doesn't run Mastodon. I just don't want to use a product he's associated with.
The other one is... all the people I want to follow stopped posting on Twitter and moved to Mastodon. Network effects work.
The other one is... all the people I want to follow stopped posting on Twitter and moved to Mastodon. Network effects work.
I wish that was the case for me... I look back at twitter and they're tweeting like "lalalala nothin to see here, just ignore elon klol?"
Meanwhile maybe 10% did make the move to mastodon and I followed them instantly. The problem? All they talk about is twitter.
Meanwhile maybe 10% did make the move to mastodon and I followed them instantly. The problem? All they talk about is twitter.
Easy enough to set up a filter on Mastodon to hide all mentions of Twitter.
> Why aren't more people switch over to Nostr? I know Nostr has seen “meteoric” growth [1] and it's easy to find your old twitter contracts again [2] but somehow Hacker News is very quiet about this open protocol and all the various clients and implementations [3].
It seems that lots here need a lesson about how network effects work in order to understand why little to no one is interested in moving to such niche social networks which appeal to only weird techies, furry garbage or crypto zealots and bitcoin maximalists.
Both are hopelessly utopian and don't even have a slither of a chance in beginning to challenge Twitter. Nostr might be too early to tell but I already don't like where it's going with its over ecclesiastical preaching of bitcoin. But we have given Mastodon 7 years, and that is enough time to conclude that it has failed to challenge Twitter or even take off.
It seems that lots here need a lesson about how network effects work in order to understand why little to no one is interested in moving to such niche social networks which appeal to only weird techies, furry garbage or crypto zealots and bitcoin maximalists.
Both are hopelessly utopian and don't even have a slither of a chance in beginning to challenge Twitter. Nostr might be too early to tell but I already don't like where it's going with its over ecclesiastical preaching of bitcoin. But we have given Mastodon 7 years, and that is enough time to conclude that it has failed to challenge Twitter or even take off.
From my perspective Mastodon has clearly took off. My bubble already has much daily fresh content.
Well that proves my point. Not only one tiny anecdote isn't evidence or a network effect, it is mostly techies continuing to complain about Twitter that are there, not those who don't care about technology, that is still using Twitter; in the hundreds of millions. Daily.
Even attempting to bring up the daily number of users on Mastodon after 7 years would be extremely painful to mention since Twitter still remains unchallenged.
This is before even mentioning the friction of 'Choosing an instance', already being the first barrier to entry being a failure for the user.
Even attempting to bring up the daily number of users on Mastodon after 7 years would be extremely painful to mention since Twitter still remains unchallenged.
This is before even mentioning the friction of 'Choosing an instance', already being the first barrier to entry being a failure for the user.
I don't really understand what you mean by 'challenging twitter' in this context. Why does the number of DAU matter? In what way are Mastodon and Twitter competing? Twitter is a business that needs to make money to survive. Mastodon is a federated network of services run by individuals and groups under a variety of arrangements.
I've been on Twitter since the first year. I watched it grow and change for the good and bad. I find I use mastodon far more these days. Pretty much daily. Why? The people I want to interact with are on Mastodon discussing the topics I want to discuss.
For me there is simply no comparison anymore. Mastodon wins hands down because: 1. signal to noise ratio is 1000x better and 2. the responses to my posts are high quality, faster, and 10x more than I get on Twitter (where I have 10x the followers).
I've been on Twitter since the first year. I watched it grow and change for the good and bad. I find I use mastodon far more these days. Pretty much daily. Why? The people I want to interact with are on Mastodon discussing the topics I want to discuss.
For me there is simply no comparison anymore. Mastodon wins hands down because: 1. signal to noise ratio is 1000x better and 2. the responses to my posts are high quality, faster, and 10x more than I get on Twitter (where I have 10x the followers).
Where is Joel?
What's the appeal of a closed source, Windows only application if the audience is of open source, federated websites?
The same as Ivory[1] (a closed-source, iOS only application): there’s a bunch of people who value things like platform-consistency and a high focus on UX over source availability and the ability to run it wherever they want. (Note: no specific comment on Ellie’s UX here, I haven’t used it.)
[1] https://tapbots.com/ivory/
[1] https://tapbots.com/ivory/
How does closed source improve UX?
How does open source improve UI?
People will pay for convenience. Whether it's closed source or open source is usually priority number 110 000 for them, waaaaaaay after all other priorities
People will pay for convenience. Whether it's closed source or open source is usually priority number 110 000 for them, waaaaaaay after all other priorities
How does open source improve UI?
well if you dislike something you can see how it works and look to improve it.
well if you dislike something you can see how it works and look to improve it.
As someone who is a proponent of FOSS, in many cases improving the UI of FOSS projects isn’t practical simply because the maintainers won’t accept UI patches and are sometimes even hostile to suggestions. In those situations your only choice is to fork, and keeping a fork up to date with the parent for a non-trivial project takes more time and effort than many can offer.
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> well if you dislike something you can see how it works and look to improve it.
Strange that so much of open-source is actually really bad UI-wise then.
Strange that so much of open-source is actually really bad UI-wise then.
Big reason for this is that most “FOSS” teams are hard-core keyboard navigation nerds (no offense intended, we know who we are), and so, their preferences are completely different from what normal computer users want, so even with access to source and unlimited free time, there is a high probability that a pull request would be shut down because the maintainers don’t want or don’t understand why spacing between elements is 8pt (“2px is just as functional as I want it”) and why keyboard autocorrect should be off for that text field (“what is autocorrect? Never heard of it”).
After talking with a bunch of designer around me, it is mostly because about the lacks of open source awareness in their community. Beside awareness is a common topic of designers from https://opensourcedesign.net/ (I met some of them at a FOSDEM).
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it doesn't. those are completely orthogonal. if ellie is better than a janky FOSS alternative, than some people are going to prefer it.
It doesn’t: there are plenty of OSS projects with great UX (Musescore for one) as well as plenty with atrocious UX (GIMP if we’re naming and shaming).
But UX is something that a lot more people care about than whether the source is open. So when they’re evaluating which product to use, that’ll be first on their mind.
But UX is something that a lot more people care about than whether the source is open. So when they’re evaluating which product to use, that’ll be first on their mind.
In my experience open source projects rarely get designers in their teams, and when they do, they're already pretty large projects.
If a developers follows the conventions of the platform they're developing for (iOS, Android) then it's easy to get a usable application, but many open source apps seem to have been made because the developer wanted a solution to their specific problem and design was only a low priority feature.
Closed source applications often have the business incentive to gain new users at the cost of the competition, which means they need to be attractive rather than just solve a problem in a particular way. That usually translates to more (unique) styling, for better or for worse.
Being proprietary doesn't improve your UX, it just helps incentivize good UX which is why many closed source applications have better UX than their open source counterparts.
If a developers follows the conventions of the platform they're developing for (iOS, Android) then it's easy to get a usable application, but many open source apps seem to have been made because the developer wanted a solution to their specific problem and design was only a low priority feature.
Closed source applications often have the business incentive to gain new users at the cost of the competition, which means they need to be attractive rather than just solve a problem in a particular way. That usually translates to more (unique) styling, for better or for worse.
Being proprietary doesn't improve your UX, it just helps incentivize good UX which is why many closed source applications have better UX than their open source counterparts.
I believe it is compatible: some really want GPL, some are fine with permissive licenses, and some are fine with proprietary.
At the end of the day, a proprietary client to an open API still prevents lock-in. Maybe at some point the UX of the proprietary is so good that some people are happy paying for it, while others will maybe use a lightweight OSS CLI client that fits their need better.
It's all good for me if I am not forced to use the Electron client because the API is not open (e.g. Slack, Discord).
At the end of the day, a proprietary client to an open API still prevents lock-in. Maybe at some point the UX of the proprietary is so good that some people are happy paying for it, while others will maybe use a lightweight OSS CLI client that fits their need better.
It's all good for me if I am not forced to use the Electron client because the API is not open (e.g. Slack, Discord).
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Turns out, it's still way too quiet over there. At least my bubble seems to have quieted down massively again. A few selected groups seem to have made a home and built out their circles, but from what I can hear, it's mostly crickets in the night.
And, the API itself and some of the tech design around it reminds me of the same trouble Twitter went through at the very beginning. One major instance had to kill all their keys a while back (if I remember correctly), so over night, all my users were deauthenticated. The rate limits are quite tough and all designed for one specific use case, and unusable for another, etc. etc.
And every single instance could be sticking to the recommended configuration and performance considerations, or not — it really depends on the person who runs it.