Hubzilla has an interesting opportunity right now.

Marshall Sutherland

If you tried to make a Hubzilla app that rummaged around in your contacts, you might have an insurrection on your hands among the old guard since privacy is considered a key feature.

hosh

Indeed. Someone just created a mock permission request form for IOS

hosh

Hubzilla needs a bit more than a fancy app in order to be " user-friendly" and succeed (though that's one thing that could help). And the "success" of large companies like facebook is partly owing to repugnant behaviour like betraying the needs of its users. We can't beat them at their own game. We can only try to emulate things that aren't harmful, like making the on-boarding process simple, the user experience as pleasant as possible, the discovery process good (in a forum post The sad state of the Hubzilla general Directory was mentioned). And also to give people an easy path to taking advantage to those areas that are unique to hubzilla, like cloud storage, wiki creation, long-form blogging, web sites, etc.

hosh

@Scott M. Stolz

An open source Facebook alternative can success without doing shady stuff.

I'm rooting for you, believe me (even if email is the communications app that everyone loves to hate)

Jupiter Rowland

@hosh Well, if we do want a native mobile app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, something that phone users can install without ever launching a browser, we may have to cut something from it. I don't think the app necessarily has to cover everything. Most settings, yes. Hubzilla's own apps, yes.

But how many people who are always only on a phone and never on a desktop computer, and who depend hard on a native phone app and would never touch a browser, would want to build a webpage on Hubzilla? Or maintain a wiki? How many bloggers are there who only ever use a phone, and who use native apps for everything, including blogging?

A native Hubzilla app wouldn't have to support webpages, it wouldn't have to support wikis, and it probably wouldn't have to support articles and cards either.

Something else a native Hubzilla app could leave out are visual settings, including the PDL editor. They wouldn't have any influence on the app, and you couldn't see and check what they do anyway.

? Offline

Absolutely agree with [email protected] . I'm old enough to remember the acronym KISS . Good advice for any code writer or programmer. Keep It Simple Stupid.....I've a whole list of these from 'back in the day'!

hosh

I personally would use such an app only for checking / writing to network stream - I use the other features only from the desktop. Even the existing PWA doesn't have access to everything (such as admin options).

Jupiter Rowland

@hosh Cutting the app down to absolute bare-bone isn't a solution either.

Just because most Hubzilla users mainly use Hubzilla on a desktop or laptop computer through a standard Web browser, doesn't mean everyone uses everything this way.

Many people use Facebook exclusively through a phone app without ever touching the Web interface. Many people use Mastodon exclusively through a phone app without ever touching the Web interface. Many of them don't even own a computer.

I keep having to recommend Friendica as a Facebook alternative because it absolutely, absolutely, absolutely must be a native phone app, full stop.

In other words, the app must be a full replacement for the Web interface for the average Facebook escapee user. It doesn't need Webpages, it doesn't need Wikis, it may not need Articles and Cards, and it definitely doesn't need appearance settings and the PDL editor.

But it still does have to be fully independent from the Web interface for everything else. Not only channel, stream and HQ. Also channel settings, profile settings, privacy settings, custom channel role configuration, apps, connections, contact roles, privacy groups, Files app, Photo app, Superblock, NSFW, calendar (at least Hubzilla's own event calendar, not necessarily also covering CalDAV calendars) etc.

Features not covered by the app are non-existent for people who will only ever use Hubzilla through the app. And there will be people who only ever use Hubzilla through the app. Just like there are people who use Facebook or Mastodon only through an app.

dynamic_hubzilla

@Jupiter Rowland

"Well, if we do want a native mobile app in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, something that phone users can install without ever launching a browser, we may have to cut something from it."

This feels to me like the result would be a different product. Wondering if a fork and rebranding would make sense rather than trying to make the main branch of Hubzilla phone-friendly. Rebranding might also make sense given that with Hubzilla's long history a lot of people might have preconceived notions of what the experience is like.

In any case, I think it's hard for dabblers to design good user interfaces. If there's *any* way to recruit a trained UX person for the project, I think that's a good idea. Other than marketing (blah), UX seems to be the biggest barrier to success for a lot of open source projects.

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

The assumption or suggestion that HZ is an alternative to FB is wrong in the first place.

Parts of HZ are similar to FB but at a whole the project is quid different and most people from FB are not ready for all the given options of HZ.

So any try to sell a complex system as a simple can must fail.

The Power of HZ has more to do with extensible systems like WordPress and Nextcloud in compilation with strong sozial networking features know from Google+ .

Even a big player like Google could not implement the function "circles" that way that people could adopt to it easily.

I personalty learned over the past years not to advertise HZ for something which it can fulfill.

You will not please people with GIMP if they are used to something like normacs.

Jupiter Rowland

@dynamic_hubzilla

This feels to me like the result would be a different product. Wondering if a fork and rebranding would make sense rather than trying to make the main branch of Hubzilla phone-friendly.

I've never been talking about cutting Hubzilla itself down.

I've been talking about a phone that mirrors certain features of Hubzilla while not including others.

If I wanted a slimmed-down Hubzilla, I'd propose (streams).

Jupiter Rowland

@𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼 The Red Matrix would have been more of a Facebook alternative. Zap would have been more of a Facebook alternative. (streams) is more of a Facebook alternative, not to mention that it's geared towards the Fediverse as it really is in the 2020s rather than a vision from 2012 of the mid-2010s Fediverse.

But at least parts of the Hubzilla community want to profit from the imminent Facebook exodus, both past Friendica and before the (streams) community reacts.

I myself am recommending (streams) along with Hubzilla. And if a phone app is an absolute mandatory requirement, I recommend Friendica. At least it isn't Mastodon.

dynamic_hubzilla

@Jupiter Rowland

Yes, I understood that you were not talking about reducing the features for Hubzilla. It just also sounded like a very different experience, and also somewhat potentially confusing in terms of what the app should be able to do.

I'm not a smartphone user, so don't have experience with this, but I have the impression that that apps with reduced features are not uncommon.

Maybe what I'm thinking doesn't make sense, but I feel like there's a difference between "this app gives you a subset of the features of the core software" (with maybe an implication that at some point more features will be ported over) and "this app normatively *shouldn't* support the full features set."

Jupiter Rowland

@dynamic_hubzilla For a native Hubzilla app, there are two premises.

On the one hand, it has to cover all features necessary for "normal" use so that most users will never have to use the Web interface. This means that it will also have to cover almost all configuration.

On the other hand, it must not be too complex. Sure, we could have a Hubzilla app that covers all of Hubzilla. But that would make the app an even bigger monster than it'd be with only the functionality necessary for most people. And some of it would never be needed.

Seriously, how many people would want to use a phone app to build a webpage or edit a wiki on their phone while commuting? With nothing more than two thumbs on a touch keyboard and a teensy-tiny bit of screen left to see what they're typing in the first place?

And what sense does it make for a phone app to cover the settings for the Web interface which isn't even visible in the phone app?

This isn't about reduced functionality in an app because that's how you make apps. This is about leaving features out of the app that literally nobody needs in the app anyway (wiki), also leaving features out of the app that don't even make sense in the app (PDL editor), but at the same time implementing everything that's needed so that the app can be a full stand-in for the Web interface for most people.

hosh

So what's the next phase? Someone can volunteer to build it? Or get a cost estimate then pass around the hat?

Bill Statler

This reminds me of a discussion years ago on a forum for forum administrators. Question: Why are people leaving traditional online forums for Facebook? Answer: Forums work poorly on a smartphone. Question: What can we do about it?

The best answer (in my opinion): Nothing. Forums are inherently designed for long-form posts. Tiny phone screens are NOT designed for long-form posts. Forums assume that the user has an appropriate tool for the task, i.e. a big screen and a keyboard.

So I feel like Hubzilla is in the same situation, but moreso because of all the additional functions. It's convenient to be able to access Hubzilla through a phone, but you wouldn't want to regularly use it that way. I don't even want to use Streams that way, although it works. (I haven't tried Friendica or its app, so I can't comment on that.)

Marshall Sutherland

Tiny phone screens are NOT designed for long-form posts.

I would modify that to say that they are not designed to WRITE long-form posts. A consumer of content might prefer to use their small screen while a creator of content might prefer a large screen. Everyone is going to do some of each, but there may be a large % whose "content" primarily consists of likes and very short replies.

Here is an analogy that comes to mind. Take a more traditional web site with comments. The tools used by the the content creators of the site will be vastly different from viewers and commenters on the site. This is a more extreme case of what I'm trying to point out.

Scott M. Stolz

There are two things at play. Reading and writing.

Facebook and Hubzilla doesn't force you to write long or short posts, so people can post in their preferred style and with as many or as little words as they want.

People who use phones tend to write shorter posts. People who like writing longer posts will prefer a computer to compose posts.

Many people switch back and forth between their desktop/laptop and phone, and for some people, you could probably guess which device they used based on the length of their posts.

People use their phone to read articles and blog posts, and if they are willing to do that, they are probably willing to read longer social media posts, as long as they are interesting. So that is not a show stopper either.

Hubzilla is flexible enough where it can be used for microblogging and/or macroblogging.

𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼

i meant nomacs - it's a simple image editor #^https://nomacs.org in contrary to a complex one like GIMP

*_jayrope

@𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼 Okay, sadly can't try, no macos installer.

• sent from #Hubzilla at #Fediverse.