this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Prototype for new Kbin app: Interstellar (media.kbin.social)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by jwr1@kbin.social to c/kbinMeta@kbin.social
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I've been working for the past week on a new kbin app. At the moment, it's just a prototype and only the "Feed" view has content (you can't sign into an account or post anything yet); you can see threads, thread images, thread comments, thread links, and thread votes/boosts. You can also change the "Theme Mode" and "Instance Host" in the settings.

Here's a link to the source code (contributions welcome for those that know flutter): github.com/jwr1/interstellar.
For testers, here's the link to the latest working build: github.com/jwr1/interstellar/releases (AppImage and APK).

Feel free to post any bugs or suggestions in the comments, on GitHub, or on the Interstellar magazine.

Again, this is just a prototype. If someone else is working on a better kbin app, I might just use that instead.

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[–] ReallyKinda@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago

Thanks for putting your time into this <3

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For what its worth, ernest said he wanted to come back working on his mobile client starting next year again. No idea how far that project went before and how much work it would be to get that in a usable state though.

[–] Teppic@kbin.social 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ernest will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he's also said he'd prefer to leave aps to those for whome it is a core strength.
I think he knows it's something the community would like, so I think the post you link above was in reaction to Artimis unfortunately going offline and the App (for now) dieing with it (since nobody seems able to contact the developer). I suspect it's something Ernest will progress 'in his free time' if no other apps which live up to his ambitions are developed first!

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think he said even further back that he wanted to eventually come back to it but I also certainly did not wanted to discourage OP from working on his own one, especially an open source one that could get picked up by someone else if needed. I think the more apps we got, the better. And hopefully some of the Lemmy exclusive apps will support kbin too after the full API release.

[–] ernest@kbin.social 14 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

My priority is definitely the development of kbin-core, especially now that work on the app has started. For now, I prefer to focus my attention on adapting the API to the latest features. It may turn out to be necessary sooner than expected ;)

[–] Teppic@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago

This is great news! Thanks, and also great that you are making it source from the off!

[–] Amanduh@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

I am excited about this, I was on the artemis train before. One thing I can think of is a feature to save posts for later viewing that would be great.

[–] Damaskox@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Awesome!

Just tested it.

  • The Mags tab shows mags but clicking them doesn't do anything
  • Changing Instance host to "kbin.social" gives me a "something went wrong" when I go back to the Feed tab. Also the magazines now give me the same "something went wrong"

I'm at Android version 12.

[–] jwr1@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The individual magazine's page has not been implemented yet; I might try to work on that tomorrow. Unfortunately, kbin.social does not support the API yet (that's why karab.in was the default).

[–] Damaskox@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

OK. Thought as much.
Got confused because I didn't see any English threads 😂

[–] jwr1@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Both kbin.run and kbin.melroy.org support the api and are english if you want to try those.

[–] Damaskox@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I took kbin.run.
I can see the threads and the comments within, and the up/downvotes.

One comment had white text on light-blue background so that's tough to read.

[–] jwr1@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I noticed that. I think those are from citations (with >).

[–] Damaskox@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can the color be edited?

[–] jwr1@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago

I was using the flutter_markdown package to render markdown. Fortunately, the text style can be changed, so once I get around to it, I'll fix the color issue.

[–] minnieo@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago

this is nice to see. thank you for your hard work and making the code available <3

[–] MxM111@kbin.social 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What platform is that? iOS?

[–] jwr1@kbin.social 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Right now, I'm planning on Android. I'd put it on iOS if I didn't have to pay $100 a year for the Apple Developer Program.

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We welcome these projects very much! Thank you so much for your time and effort! Such an app is much requested.

Ps. My advise is to check the nodeinfo (example) and validate the software name, so you can easily switch between mbin/kbin if required in the future.

[–] jwr1@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, that's helpful.

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You're welcome. I'm part of the Mbin community (in fact the 'M' stands for Melroy). If you need more help or having issues, feel free to contact me when you need!! I'm also on Matrix.

[–] TheArstaInventor@kbin.social 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Melroy, if you don't mind me asking, why did you go away from Kbin to start your own? I see nothing wrong with Kbin, ernest seems to be a great hardworking guy, I feel like we are just spreading the already small community too thin, Kbin is already small compared to Lemmy and now only the development has started picking up it's pace back again, another spinoff of Kbin makes no sense to me personally.

I wish you just contributed directly to Kbin man.

[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I contributed a lot kbin directly in the past. It has a long history and story. Long story short: Ernest was offline for months without process, and contributors weren't allowed to merge other PRs, except their own. The way of working within the kbin project means that only Ernest will have the last say and every review goes via him. Development halted when he was gone (yes he is now back). Multiple contributors had the same feeling, hence the reason for a fork. Mbin is community focused, it's not driver my a single owner. All contributors have all rights. We work closer together and review each other code. I speak for myself, but I feel that this change of approach empowered all contributors in Mbin and more sense of responsibility. After all the drama at Kbin, Ernest didn't change either. So I'm glad a fork was created. I wish it wasn't needed.

[–] TheArstaInventor@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Did you guys talk about this to Ernest? What did he have to say about this?

[–] ernest@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I feel that our visions for the project's development are too different for this to succeed. At this stage, it will definitely be better to work on our own things, /kbin is open source, so there is no issue with that. There are several reasons for this link, link

[–] TheArstaInventor@kbin.social 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Thank you for the reply.

From my point of view, you were offline because you had personal issues to deal with, and you dealt with that first, and simply resumed the development after that, and I also see no issues with Ernest being the owner because he is the owner and the founder despite the project being open source and sure, contributions had to go through him but that's fine as long as Kbin itself isn't dead, if it was, then asking him to remove that process would be more reasonable to let the rest of the community try to revive the project, but Kbin wasn't dying or so, it was merely paused for a short period of time.

I personally won't be hopping in-between projects like a kangaroo, I am invested and am already on Kbin so far, its good to have alternatives generally, but in this case, I personally see no reason to go for Mbin. I also encourage and hope potential future contributors focus on a set of projects and not spread themselves too thin.

We all have a life outside the internet, so pauses or breaks here and there is natural, this is less visible in big tech companies, more visible in small startups/projects in early stages which was really the case with Kbin, so we should be patient, I will be atleast :)

[–] DracolaAdil@kbin.social 1 points 11 months ago

New app...WHOOOHOOOO!!!