It looks like that poster may be a bot or troll. They just joined and somehow have made their own magazine and then crossposted from that mag, TO that mag, several times...
While I agree the web app is not the perfect solution, I think it actually works fairly well all things considered. It will never be as smooth as an actual app, but I think time will eventually fix that.
More optional applicable permissions to moderators when owners add them: Right now, when I add a moderator, they can only delete, ban and moderate posts in general, but accessing the mod panel is impossible unless you are an admin, so this means, moderators can't help owners with community rules, description, or even attach a new logo. There should atleast be some kind of supermod option or role that I could enable for the mods, so that this remains an optional but needed feature for some (and I am one of them).
This is something I have noticed. It would be nice to have the magazine panel open to more moderators than just the owner (though, I understand why it may have been set up like that to begin with.)
Also, are reports also submitted and viewed under the magazine panel?
You should be easily able to add a banner using the magazine CSS. Though that's not being federated currently, I hope magazine CSS federation gets added in the future at least between kbin/mbin instances.
This should give you a banner above the threads section:
main > header {
/* Change both of these */
height: 100px;
background-image: url(https://i.imgur.com/zWuVa7U.png);
}
While this should give you one that also extends over the sidebar:
Changing the #middle to #header would put it above the kbin header (with the logo, the threads/microblog buttons, etc).
Community Engagement
There is an Active People section in the sidebar.
I think the issue here is that kbin simply doesn't have a lot of users yet.
One of the reasons I believe for that is also because the platform feels very stale or dead in plain sight.
This won't improve if you show people "0 people are viewing this thread" on every thread. Actually, it would worsen the impression that the site is dead.
A while ago, kbin's development came to a standstill because ernest was gone for weeks and the project's contribution guidelines are very restrictive.
Many contributors, including major ones, decided to leave the project and work on their own fork which uses more open contribution guidelines based on consensus.
They adopt all the changes ernest makes to kbin, but have their own features on top of that. I believe fedia.io, for example, runs mbin now.
I wouldn't say restrictive, but based on previous threads and his conversations with Melroy (guy who forked Kbin and brought Mbin), Ernest has been cautiously approving contributions in a more patient manner, and along with that the brief few weeks of absence of development from Ernest's side (and as a result, no approval on new contributions during this period of time) because he had some personal issues he had to deal with, this for some reason led some of the contributors to fire away and create a fork, I still question this move considering the pause was only briefly for a few weeks and Ernest, as always, did a great job at communicating about why things got slow during that period.
I've already mentioned my personal opinion in another message in this thread itself, so not going to repeat myself but that is what happened as far as I know.
Thank you so much! I will make use of this, what you can do with CSS is amazing although not so newbie friendly which I am to CSS, so a user-friendly option to add a banner similar to logo would be good still.
And regarding my suggestion about user engagement, showing how many people are viewing live actually does not work like that, it only shows the number of people viewing it live when the post is brand new/24 hours and when nobody is viewing it, it won't say 0 but simply not be shown at all.
Again that was a mere example, just like the online status was as well, my main reason to mention those things is to possibly spark an idea of something even better that could help kbin, but not really copy what reddit already his, they were mostly just examples of what we could have similarly or just get the thinking process going on there :)
Update: unfortunately the banner CSS given did not work, here is the imgur link I was trying to add to m/cars for reference: https://imgur.com/a/SDy0s5O. The issue is that even after I followed your instructions and posted it on the CSS box from mod panel, I tried refreshing, banner just does not pop up.
Maybe if you could help me out here, i'd really appreciate that, thank you again!
That's weird. I was testing it out with a userstyle, which worked, so I assumed it would work with custom css too. But I guess there might be some restrictions in place? Seems very restrictive though if that's the case here. Not even the first one I gave works. I'll see if I can find anything out.
Okay, so I've created a magazine and tested some stuff out.
In the first code I posted, I used the child selector (>) to select <header> elements directly inside <main> elements. For some reason, custom CSS doesn't seem to support the child selector. No matter where I try to use it, the style isn't applied.
I removed the child selector and instead used :has(hi1[hidden]) to make sure I only get the target element. Without it, it would also replace the background of the individual thread titles.
The image you're trying to use is a bit large, so I've included an example usage of background-size and background-position to change the size of the image and what part of it actually gets displayed.
With background-size, the first value is how wide the image should be, while the latter value is how high. Percentage values are relative to the element's size. So the width and height properties. You can also set absolute values, like I did with height in pixels in this example.
The big issue with this one though is that it'll only apply to the Threads and All Content views. Other views, including Microblog and individual threads, don't have the <header> element I'm looking for here.
The last two lines are there because this actually displays the name of the magazine on the banner. Since that's kind of redundant, since it's already in the bar at the top, I'm hiding the text and making it not selectable.
This one does work in all the views I tested except for when looking at a thread and its comments.
Though, something worth considering in case you intend to just use this code as-is: I just used pixels for simplicity. But the result might look entirely different on other screen resolutions than mine. Here's a list of better units to use if you want it to look the same on all screens. You can use percentages, pixels, and these other units interchangeably anywhere.
About the second code I posted, for some reason :before, much like the child selector, doesn't seem to work. I can very much target the #middle and #header elements from custom magazine CSS, but :before doesn't do anything.
I'm not sure why this is. I see no security reason to block them, so I assume it's not intentional. It's a bit hard to debug :before specifically because I don't know any way to get its styles without making it visible. So I have no idea if something is overwriting the style or if the selector just doesn't work, like is the case with the child selector. I'll have to look into this a bit more over the weekend.
I tried both the ones you mentioned, unfortunately it still does not work, is it because the image is Jpg instead of png? I also copied the image's address and pasted it.
I can see it. Maybe it's the point I mentioned here:
Though, something worth considering in case you intend to just use this code as-is: I just used pixels for simplicity. But the result might look entirely different on other screen resolutions than mine. Here's a list of better units to use if you want it to look the same on all screens. You can use percentages, pixels, and these other units interchangeably anywhere.
Maybe the values I gave are too small for you to see on your screen?
edit: wait, why does the image not work, I literally just uploaded it
edit 3: right, I just noticed that, because I'm mixing percentages and absolute units here, the image actually moves around as I change the screen size. I'll refine the example with more reliability later today.
Here's a list of better units to use if you want it to look the same on all screens.
Honestly, I pretty much suck at CSS and I honestly don't understand how i'd use it, but what I can tell you is that I am using a 2017 iMac, so you should be able to tell the screen size based on that. I am also using Firefox on MacOS.
not sure if you can view this since it's blocked in some countries, but here's a catbox upload.
OMG Wow, it looks so damn good! I wish it worked for me!
right, I just noticed that, because I'm mixing percentages and absolute units here, the image actually moves around as I change the screen size. I'll refine the example with more reliability later today.
No worries or hurries, take your time on this and let me know :)
Say, do you see any custom CSS anywhere? I mean, I'm not even sure which magazines use it anyway, do you see something on /m/pamasich? Besides the test banner, I also made the magazine name in the sidebar red.
If you don't see anything changed there, do you maybe have custom CSS turned off? In your settings, there's an option Ignore magazines custom CSS under a text field that lets you enter personal custom css. Make sure that's not checked.
Well, for the span tags, I haven't seen other tags being an issue. If you see a code block where the same issue occurs with other tags, tell me so I can update it.
If there is another Reddit exodus, for example, or if we get a surge due to the Threads thing, I feel like many will just turn back due to the UI alone.
I don't know if ernest's views changed since the last exodus, but iirc people joining the platform wasn't really his intention, it just happened. Kbin hasn't even had a proper full release yet, it's still beta software, so I don't think people bouncing off is that big an issue yet.
With the abandonment of Artemis (formerly kmoon), kbin is now only really usable by the mobile site.
That's the case for now, but app development is still happening with other projects:
ernest has mentioned intentions to revive his kbin app project
I understood OP to be talking about mobile specifically. If there is a way to get the userstyles on mobile it's gotta be like 20 steps long. If someone could somehow wrap it all up in an easy package that would be one thing but idk if it's really a viable solution.
I understood OP to be talking about mobile specifically.
And that's why I said Firefox or Kiwi. Both of those are mobile browsers (the latter is chromium) that support extensions, so you can just install your favorite monkey and stylus and add userscripts/userstyles the exact same way as on desktop.
I share your concerns. I was optimistic at first because kbin looked very promising and the app was evolving pretty fast. Just reaching the point of a functional mobile app would have been enough for me, since we can federate with other communities for more content (before they decided to create their own instance, it was good enough for me).
I am pretty sure the project is on a good track, but in the same time, I think it will probably take 1 or 2 years before we have a good mobile app.
Right now, it is only for iOS. I think there is another one being made for android. (I think ernest has included a link to both of these in one of his daily logs.)
Still, it will probably take some time before everything is polished.
By default, it's 11MB if I remember correctly. However, during the recent issues with the instance, we could modify this value at the server level. Once Piotr is back, I'll verify and restore the default values.
Hey, I will get back to this thread and the comments at the beginning of next week. I am able to quickly address some of the issues you mentioned in your post. Changes will undoubtedly be implemented gradually, but for now, the redesign of the ActivityPub module takes higher priority. Once that is completed, the development of the frontend part of the platfrom will truly pick up pace.
Additionally, the suspension of other work was a conscious decision on my part. I believe that the code at this stage needs to be deeply refactored, and that's exactly what I am doing. Solid foundations are the only option for the project to survive and grow in the long term, and to be properly scalable. Adding more blocks to what I have always considered a prototype (which forks do) makes no sense to me.
@BiggestBulb
using kbin mostly on mobile devices, i am time and again surprised that kbin works kinda fine > e.g. kbin deals better with bad internet connections than any other fedi software i have come to know so far > given that kbin is still early beta, this is impressive
i think that we should be patient, and keep reporting bugs :)
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