SimonSays make me a sandwich

One thing that would be helpful about not using drop-down boxes for static options: Fewer clicks required to set up a search. Each of the drop-down boxes in use now requires the user to:

• Read the text on the drop-down box to decide whether it’s relevant
• Move the mouse to the drop-down box
• Click to open it
• Read the options within
• Move the mouse to the best fitting option
• Click to choose the option

The first drop-down box (search type) contains only five options, which could be replaced by buttons like the existing Subscribed/Local/All buttons. It would make discovering the available options easier because they would no longer be hidden behind a drop-down, and it would reduce the number of actions required of the user.

The second drop-down box (sort type / time frame) might be a good candidate for this change, too.

As for whether tabs would be a better choice than the button-style approach currently used by Subscribed/Local/All: I’m not sure right now, as I haven’t had much time to consider it. But I think things would get messy and possibly confusing if more than one of these input elements were converted to tabs, because it would mean nesting tabs within tabs. On the other hand, using a row of buttons for each category would allow them to coexist neatly, fit the existing visual style, and avoid adding the complexity of another widget type for users to navigate.

I hear we are a rich nation.

By “we”, do you mean the US? (I’m guessing based on the dad here living in a US state.)

My impression is that US billionaires and large corporations are rich, but most US residents and social benefit programs are not.

It’s refreshing to see actually uplifting news here for a change. Thank you. ;)

human brains are weirdos.

Truer words were never said. :)

the reason people post pictures of text is to give proper attribution, but also to distance themselves from the content,

If only we had some way to reference an original source. Something like a figurative link, if you will.

If only there was a way to copy text, and then paste it someplace else. Sigh… unsolved problems.

0. Getting users to post text instead of screenshots of text.

A useful product can be nice, but I wouldn’t call this patent uplifting news.

It would be interesting to see the annual global power consumption from design choices like this.

deleted by creator

Thank you for the source link conveniently placed at the top. <3

This is absolutely not uplifting news, and does not belong here.

Trump encouraged and signed this bill so he can use it to silence criticism. He said so himself.

It’s also yet another example of bad legislation, in this case a censorship tool, disguised as something intended for good.

If you upload an image, the URL field is populated with the URL of the uploaded image, so there’s not really multiple fields like it appears.

Sure enough; I just discovered this for myself when running some tests. I also noticed that Lemmy offers an Alt Text field, which it looks like the bot is already populating.

Test 1 : The URL field and the image attachment field were used; the latter overwrites whatever is placed in the former. I guess this might be modeled after Reddit.

Test 2: A direct link to the image at xkcd.com was placed in the URL field, and the source link placed at the top of the body. Result: This is similar to the bot’s current format, including the flaw that a desktop browser with strict privacy settings won’t show the comic image as part of the post when the thumbnail is clicked, because it’s an off-site image. Having the source link at the top of the body does at least make it a little more convenient to click through to xkcd.com’s single-page view.

Test 3: Only the image attachment field was used; the URL field was left blank. Result: This allows a desktop browser to show the comic image in-line when the thumbnail is clicked even with strict browser privacy settings, if the post is being viewed on the Lemmy instance where the post was made, because then it’s not an off-site image. Unfortunately, it’s still an off-site image when viewed on other Lemmy instances. The source link was again placed at the top of the body.

(Side note: I used m.xkcd.com links instead of plain xkcd.com links in these tests, just to see how the mobile site looks in different browsers. In practice, either ought to work.)

Conclusion: I don’t have one just yet. It would be nice if we could direct all Lemmy instances to make their own local copy of a post’s attached image, to avoid the off-site image problem. Unfortunately, I don’t think there is a way to do this, and I suspect it would be too burdensome for some small instances.

Having the source link at the top of the post body is helpful, at least.

I’m not sure the current comment votes are representative, due to the selection bias that forms as people engage (or don’t) with idea comments & their replies, but I acknowledge that it is possible that a proper vote would end up as you expect.

EDIT: Lemmy posts have both an URL field and an image field. What would happen if the change I suggested was made, and the image field was used for the coming image? Hm… Maybe that’s worth a test.

If directly linking to the full comic page as the main link is a no-go, how about putting the source link at very top, as the first line in the body? That would at least make it a little easier for desktop users to target the link they need for a single-screen view of the whole comic.

I guess this is going to come down to desktop vs mobile preference.

In that case, perhaps linking to the mobile site would make sense, since it ought to work for both mobile and desktop:

https://m.xkcd.com/3090/

Still not equivalent, since it still requires multiple steps, and doesn’t work with privacy settings that forbid off-site images.

That splits the comic between two separate screens, and requires multiple steps (and page loads) to read it.

It’s not as good as linking to the whole comic, intact, in one place.

The mobile browsers I’ve used let you long-press the image to see the hover text.

If yours doesn’t, you can always prepend m. to the domain name, like this: https://m.xkcd.com/3090/

The thing is, with xkcd, the image is not the full comic. Part of the comic is the hover text, which you don’t get with the image alone.

The way things are now, I click the title and it takes me to a bare image, so I then have to go back, and then read through the post body to find the link to the whole comic, and then click that. It’s a hassle.

(And since you mentioned viewing comments alongside the image, you should be aware that Lemmy’s default interface shows only a thumbnail fragment of the image on the same page as the comic. I guess you might be using a mobile app.)