Oddbean new post about login | logout It's time to focus on the stability of social communication. Profile pictures or names not fully loading, threads not displaying properly, notes being missed, and users unable to tag profiles that they follow are the worst bugs that we have from a user experience standpoint. These are all basic functions of being social on the Internet. If the core function of being social doesn't work well, users aren't going to stick around.
DM's going missing is pretty cringe.
I don't think that I've seen this. To me, this sounds like a relay issue or changing of relays.
Could be. Also receiving client compatibility (gift wrapping / nip44). Some client bug issues as well i.e. messages buffered but unbroadcast.
Local-first design fixes this
It can, but what if you're trying to search for someone or something said that you've never come across?
That's the unlikely scenario. Clients should optimize for the most common user actions.
I think brand new users that aren't following any of their friends and attempting to look for those users would be extremely important. If people cannot find their friends, they'll most likely give up.
https://media.tenor.com/sym0G74VpCAAAAAC/rick-and-morty-this-guy-gets-it.gif
Swipe up. Tap Chrome. Tap New Tab. Tap Tenor favorite icon. Type in "Rick and Morty yes". Find GIF. Long press, open in new tab. Long press, open image in new tab. Go to address bar. Long press, copy entire URL. Swipe up and over to go back to Amethyst. Reply. Paste copied URL text.
Better to copy the image itself and have your client make a new link that's less likely to rot.
I don't know think there's a need to download the image and re-upload it to another service. That's more time consuming for an interaction that should only take seconds. If my GIF reply disappears in a year, I don't think anyone is going to be overly upset.
Why has a one-man team figured this out with Nostur and other client devs can’t seem to do so? This feature has been in Nostur for many many months. It searches Tenor and then inserts the link to the gif you select into your post. https://image.nostr.build/945f63a64edf3aa46fd85ed45eb30f07131326ace2edace1989f8dbfc1532a10.jpg
Dunno. The API seems standard? https://tenor.com/gifapi/documentation#quickstart
I know devs can’t do everything users ask. And I know they have limited time and resources. Ultimately my criticisms aren’t merely about gifs, of course. It’s about whether an app gives users an experience they want and whether it’s dev team is willing to listen to what the users of their app are saying.
😅
Being social in real life has it's quirks too.
It does, but that shouldn't be an excuse when these are basic functions of apps that people use.
Who defined these basic functions you've come to expect?
Expectations that have developed over the past two decades of using social networking applications.
What was valuable about each individual expectation? What purpose did it serve? Why is it required or expected? (Aside from historical trends) (Just trying to ask deeper questions to sus out context)
The value is being able to find my existing social connections or find existing content with minimal effort. Less effort and ease of use provided a better experience for me, allowing me to spend my valuable time being social. Software innovation should make life easier, not harder.
🤔
The tagging of profiles, at least on #amethyst, is so disfunctional that I manually copy the npub of a profile before writing the note.
This has been the way for a over a year without any improvement.
Yeah. one of Amethyst's biggest flaws.
Become a programmer and donate your time.
My time is better spent elsewhere as there are much more intelligent people out there building on Nostr.
Being tenacious, when Damus didn’t work right for me, I just turned to Primal when I saw Jack’s recommendation that it was easiest way to get started. My Damus account still doesn’t work right unfortunately. I was told there was a glitch and I might need to delete it and start it fresh. And, agree with you that it is frustrating.
I clear browser cache or app cache near daily on all apps that I use to get them to work. Most people in the world won't do this besides the people already here.
what he said plus what you said . . . nostr:note19gvq5gej4tj0pkyf2ah4stt5vqyfechry3205epap5pahxlv04ssakavd7
Threads not displaying properly is definitely a big pain.
Threads have gotten better but it's still Hit or Miss depending on which client you use 😭
Coracle is the best imo. Nostrudel is pretty good too.
They are great clients, I just don't like their UI designs all that much. It's just my personal preference.
so you don't like how coracle displays threads? so much easier to navigate threads in coracle than any other client imo. nostrudel has a way to pop open threads in the sidebar which i think is kind of new. i only found it yesterday. also, both seem to always render threads correctly which is what your OP was about.
I like that it works and you can view threads, it's a unique design that no one else does. I just personally don't like the overall feel of the app. Maybe I need to exclusively use it and nothing else for a week?
i dunno. i don't do that. i mostly use coracle to read threads. so if i'm on another client and there's a lot of discussion happening on a note, i'll often copy the note ID over to coracle and read the discussion there. i don't use nostrudel much. the main thing i use it for is to use custom emojis.
You can try Freerse, the thread is clear and smooth. 🤙😉 https://freerse.com
You know what @Derek Ross You're ok :) <3
Who is this Derek Ross guy and what are his contributions.
🫂
I would add notifications to that list. It's absurd that I get incomplete notifications depending on the app I'm using.
Agree. Many people like to be notified of social interactions.
The theory of disruptive innovation (https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation) supports your position: "Disruptive innovations don’t catch on with mainstream customers until quality catches up to their standards".. However, Nostr developers, myself included, may not prioritize fixing features in common with existing social media apps because implementing novel features is more rewarding as a creative pursuit. Nobody is getting paid to improve "boring" features to reduce churn. Personally, I'd much rather see Nostr clients continuing to evolve in weird and wacky ways, creating differentiation, before the focus on stability of features that already exist. It's like the early days of smartphones, before everything became a iPhone clone.
