this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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Lemmy
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If anyone wants to work on a web client for Lemmy, let me know. I'm thinking about it, but seems like a lot of works for just one person.
Why not just send in PRs for the official lemmy web ui? I am sure many Lemmy users want similar functionality and it'd be great if they didn't have to resort to a third party web client.
Let's say I start with something simple, like moving everything to the left of the screen instead of centering it. People like OP and me would like that, but from the POV of the lemmy devs, that's quite a shit PR, isn't it?
I would rather have a web client that can go in a different direction UI-wise, and if they like anything there, they can take it for the main web UI. And of course, there are many other advantages of a client, like using multiple accounts from different instances.
Edit: I also like the idea of a simple client anyone can fork and modify to their taste.
Well you gotta do some integration work obviously instead of just changing the theme outright. Maybe add in a easy way to set themes and layout. Default will be whatever main Lemmy devs think is good, and optional settings that allow a style that OP wants.
It's simpler than creating a whole separate client and then also having to maintain it whenever Lemmy's backend changes or when they introduce a new feature.
Looking at the conversations they are having on GitHub, that doesn't seem like a great idea. If I was going to contribute to the main repo, it would be to help with whatever they are doing, not to push ideas that they are not looking to implement at this time. They are working on rewriting the UI anyway. I really don't see what would be the problem with having an alternative front for people with different tastes that those of the devs.
Maybe. But I wasn't really looking for the simplest way to tweak the UI, I'm already doing that with my own scripts. Making a web client with a different UI that people can fork and make their own just sounds like a cool project to work on.
I had been thinking about forking lemmy-ui and then tweaking the site to be more Reddit-like, but ran into build problems and a lack of time. But I’m still open to it.
I took a look at lemmy-ui, but I'd much rather work on something more static and detached.
The main issue you're gonna encouter is CORS. There is no real upstream decision on loosening the existing CORS permissions. The alternative is to proxy every request from everyone which will not only get you rate limited but also you will have to deal with storing people's authentication tokens which requires not only complete trust in every step of the way but also not accidentally messing things up and exposing them somewhere.
Hmm... that's interesting, I didn't think about that. Definitely not gonna proxy, that's for sure, I wanted it to be serverless.
Welp, I don't know how it could be done then. I would ping Dessalines or Nutomic, but I haven't really decided to start working on this, so I won't bother them. But if anyone feels like going for it, I'll be happy to lend a hand.
Edit: I just saw there's an open PR to allow CORS. I guess we'll see how it goes.