Free to be Social

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 15:59:22 -0500

An idea I've been entertaining recently is for the sidebars on mobile devices to be controlled by left/right swipe motions. It seems a number of folks have troubles with the buttons and swiping is a much more natural interface. If anybody wants to experiment with that idea:

https://github.com/mattbryson/TouchSwipe-Jquery-Plugin

Otherwise I'll get to it eventually.

show all 22 comments

Mario Vavti

Fri, 15 Nov 2019 16:05:13 -0500

I have been thinking of that also...

Robert Kormann

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 05:05:13 -0500

I am using Redbasic quite a lot on a mobile phone, and I am fine with the buttons. However, swiping in the left sidebar would fit to other apps, at least on my phone using Lineage OS and some FDroid apps.

Taking into account the limited reading space on my small phone, and using the "Goto Top" button, I am wondering whether the permanent visibility of the header would make sense in favor of more reading space, if the swiping solution is realized.

Just as a proposal...

Alexandre Hannud Abdo

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 07:29:16 -0500

I think swipe right/left on mobile would be nice.

Regarding the header, it seems to me that current best practice is to have it move out of sight as you swipe up, and move back in as you swipe down.

(On a side note, I never got why does the search button/box disappear from the header in mobile mode.)

Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum)

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 09:05:15 -0500

@Mike Macgirvin and others, the swipe plugin has some very nice demos at http://labs.rampinteractive.co.uk/touchSwipe/demos/index.html .

Andrew

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 15:35:23 -0500

The Nextcloud web interface does exactly this. I've heard they are open source so it could be another resource to review.

Mike Macgirvin

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 17:53:01 -0500

MySpace (the Justin Timberlake version) did this like ten years ago. I'm not sure of the point of that comment except to once again point out that in your eyes Nextcloud is the bees knees and nobody else can hold a candle to them.

You are free to use anything you wish, as is everybody here. I'm not developing for Nexcloud because they have a different philosophy which is not totally compatible with my own. They aren't as incompatible as say Google and Facebook and Microsoft, but I've found my interactions with the Nextcloud developers to be just like the interactions with Diaspora and Mastodon. "We're popular, you're not - because we're popular and you aren't. Therefore we are superior beings and anything you do is irrelevant".

It's no different than the rah-rah cliques in high school. I wasn't one of the popular ones. I was however one of the clever ones who carved out quite an interesting life regardless.

Matthew Dent (Zap)

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 18:14:24 -0500

@Mike Macgirvin @Andrew - It's also worth pointing out that the license of NextCloud make it unwise to seek inspiration there, as anything derived from it would not be able to be distributed under an MIT license.

Giac El Vecio

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 18:37:10 -0500

...just like the interactions with Diaspora and Mastodon. "We're popular, you're not - because we're popular and you aren't. Therefore we are superior beings and anything you do is irrelevant".

It's no different than the rah-rah cliques in high school. I wasn't one of the popular ones. I was however one of the clever ones who carved out quite an interesting life regardless. ...

even me..I have felt this kind of feeling for years, since the days of friendica ...

sure that if they feel superior for having so many users compared to us here, I dare not imagine what Zucky might think about the popularity of these developers and their projects ...he must be extremely worried :))
..but basically I believe that almost all of these developers live in a world thinking just about the present (and therefore not widening the horizons but just observing and copying what already exists), and probably in 2D, while maybe we already see movies in 3D or maybe even 4D ...

Waitman Gobble

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 00:35:37 -0500 last edited: Sun, 17 Nov 2019 00:39:08 -0500

@Mike Macgirvin @Mario Vavti @Robert Kormann @Alexandre Hannud Abdo @Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum) @andrew @Matthew Dent (Zap) @Giac El Vecio

I missed the Justin Timberlake version.

I tried the plugins for Next Cloud, and I don't think they do anything spectacular. It's awesome at file storage, but the other stuff seems not so great to me.

Robert Kormann

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 06:56:37 -0500

@Waitman Gobble I do not deserve commenting strategies of Hubzilla or Nextcloud, since I never participated in one of the projects, however, I use both. And I am a fan of the original Unix/Linux approach: Concentrate on one task, and be good in that. So, Nextcloud for file storage, and Hubzilla for communication.

BTW In that sense I vote for the thread. Touch Swipe might be useful in the communication stuff. The Nextcloud app has this Touch Swite stuff, however, is it really useful in the file storage context?

Andrew

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 08:49:57 -0500

Yikes. My comment touched a nerve there, didn't it? I was scrolling rather quickly through my stream getting caught up on posts and saw this as something I might have a helpful idea about (which is rare these days), trying and obviously failing to insert a little open source humor. What I was definitely not doing was making some snide remark making value judgements about Nextcloud vs your work, Mike.

That being said, if you want to know a project that is really superior to all this Zot crap, you should check out Mastodon. They've got like millions of users and Justin Timberlake might even be one of them!

Oh, but being serious again, I did want to mention that the swipe-in side menu is often more annoying than it is worth in my experience. Perhaps there are ways to optimize the behavior, but you do so much pinch-and-zoom and panning left and right on a touch screen just to see content that pulling in a hidden menu with the same gesture can be difficult to make reliable.

Waitman Gobble

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 10:50:19 -0500

@Mike Macgirvin @Mario Vavti @Robert Kormann @Alexandre Hannud Abdo @Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum) @andrew @Matthew Dent (Zap) @Giac El Vecio @Waitman Gobble

I read about Wikipedia's new social network. I tried to check it out but it wants you to pay, i tried to pay and the payment thing did nothing. So I don't have an active account. There is a public feed, and I found the post of a guy who paid the hundred bucks and said it was not a social network, but wiki Tribune or something that has already been around and he has been using. He was kind of irked i guess. It's just 'rebranded'. According to the poster the new social network is not social, there are no user privacy controls and such, it's just a profile where you can post articles to a wiki feed and it's all public.

Anyone check it out? I cannot confirm that's a true post but it sounds like it is true.

Mike Macgirvin

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 13:48:25 -0500

@Robert Kormann The software I have written (at least in the last ten years) has always concentrated on one task but it isn't communications or cloud storage. It is distributed privacy.

Michal Klodner

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 15:24:25 -0500

Nextcloud is far from social features. There is a request to make it Zot compatible, but is is definitely not on the horizon. The point would be to share files to social accounts. So it would have to be deeply integrated.

Instead, their social plugin is just simple Activitypub client, which is funny, because it has no sense to have isolated bad AP client in Nextcloud interface. It has no connection to Nextcloud resources, ie to receive stream of social activity on files (modifications, comments...). Nextcloud project has no ideas how to make resources social channels.

Probably it is because ActivityPub point of view taken, because for AP implementations now it is obviously hard to imagine concept of channels.

So more realistic is to make Nextcloud a plugin for Hubzilla, to use its file browser UI and plugins like OnlyOffice on your Hubzilla files and possibly share them to Nextcloud network.

Max Kostikov

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 15:25:28 -0500

@Michal Klodner Is there a reason to have Nextcloud plugin if we already have own WebDAV in Hubzilla?

Michal Klodner

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:34:59 -0500

@Max Kostikov Social annotations of files. You can share HZ file as post attachment and have comments on that post, OK. But when you work on it with others via Webdav, no activity gets to original post.
When You subscribe to Peertube channel and some film comes to you and you comment it, it gets to original Peertube video page and everyone can see all fediverse comments there.
Plain Webdav does not receive social activity from other software, so the plugin could implement this layer.
App could show "conversations" related to file from different channels (maybe even private messages about it).

Andrew

Sun, 17 Nov 2019 16:57:27 -0500

It's funny to see people going through the same stages of thought as they learn more about decentralized technologies and the Zot-based projects (Hubzilla and Zap). Eventually what people grow to understand is that, while compelling in terms of day-to-day use, particular features/apps/plugins are not really important for the big picture view of a better internet. The most important tech needed now is an infrastructure that puts people back in control of their identity. Everything else stems from this. Owning your identity means that you can share things privately without needing to rely on a third party. It means that if you want, you -- and only you -- can prove to others that you are you. Owning your identity means that you can encrypt your data with keys that only you have, which means that you actually own that data, no matter where you store it. Owning your identity means that you can change service providers and domain names and email accounts and yet still retain the private shares of data and connections to people that such sharing requires. You cannot be free if you are locked in. That's the nomadic part of owning your identity.

Zot is the only system I know about, even after a decade of researching this stuff, that understands and implements this foundation in a working system. While this software and the features it has (calendars and file storage and social networking and all that) are very useful, I would argue that the most important purpose of Hubzilla and Zap are showing people how these concepts can work in the real world. It introduces novel ideas and stirs the imagination.

While the ideas in Mike's code are spreading glacially slowly, they are at least penetrating the consciousness of other prominent decentralized web projects. Some examples: The Matrix.org team explicitly listed "account portability" (i.e. the basics of nomadic identity) as something they want to implement in the next phase of development. The Nextcloud project now supports federated data sharing and improved access control lists. This means that you can privately share a folder with someone fairly seamlessly who does not have an account on your server.

Anyway, my point for newer members of the Zot network community is to (1) keep sharing your ideas and being part of discussions and (2) don't get too distracted by the individual features and their implementations. A glossier file storage GUI or better emoji support in a modern looking "dark theme" are not going to be what pushes this forward. It is a focus on and good communication about the core concepts and principles that the software embodies.

RockyIII

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 05:56:05 -0500 last edited: Mon, 18 Nov 2019 05:59:13 -0500

@Andrew
@Andrew
besides the main devs your are quid important for the ZOT community, you taught me already quid a lot - THANKS for that

Matthew Dent (Zap)

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 12:49:08 -0500

@Michal Klodner

Social annotations of files. You can share HZ file as post attachment and have comments on that post, OK. But when you work on it with others via Webdav, no activity gets to original post.

I'm kind of struggling to see a practical usecase for this. I have very vague thoughts in my head of, "That might be cool/interesting," but nothing concrete that says, "OH, That would be so helpful in order to ....." What practical benefit does the capability for "social annotation of files" provide?

Michal Klodner

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 15:51:30 -0500

@Matthew Dent (Zap) @Mike Macgirvin I work in film archive and any digital archive today presents some documents online and to be able to discuss on them and enrich them with public annotations and collaborate on widening the historic context is desirable in archive presentation systems. So i want to use social networking systems as a core of collections publishing portals/platforms.
Imagine using independent social account in editions like this (you can select parts of texts there and make public/private notes etc.):
https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/projects/debates-in-the-digital-humanities-2019
Uses opensource tool Manifold. This systems will converge with social networks i think.

Mike Macgirvin

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 14:29:40 -0500

You should be able to discuss any activity with others, including "John uploaded a spreadsheet". We do support this for photos (though it can be confusing and can create two separate comment threads for a photo if the photo was uploaded into a post) but not yet for other files - for this precise reason.

Mario Vavti

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 01:34:30 -0500

@Mike Macgirvin actually photo items do look slightly different from text posts with a photo embeded. But the differenceshould probably more visible. Also the photo module is not ported to use the conversation framework yet.

#todo