Hubzilla offers an extensive range of features for the Fediverse. However, navigating Hubzilla's features and their settings on my phone is a nightmare. Navigating the Fediverse is difficult too.
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Hubzilla offers an extensive range of features for the Fediverse. However, navigating Hubzilla's features and their settings on my phone is a nightmare. Navigating the Fediverse is difficult too.
I spent the best part of a day learning to navigate Hubzilla's features and their associated settings. I haven't even created the various roles I would like for my account yet. I am the tech support person in my family and if it takes me that long to find my Hubzilla bearings, my family will give up on Hubzilla a lot sooner. It's such a pity as Hubzilla has every feature I want in a Fediverse social web app.
Hubzilla has a navigation bar that is trying to serve two masters and serving both poorly. 5 steps are required to change the background colour of my navigation bar. First step is to choose the Channel App. Second step is to choose the Channel settings Cog Wheel. Third step is select the right arrow to open the Settings Menu. Fourth step is select the Display Settings. Fifth step is choose Custom Settings, where I scroll down to find the background colour setting for the navigation bar. In the meantine, the navigation bar tells me I am in Settings, but not which app, making it difficult to find this setting again, which was the case with me. Also if I get any of those steps wrong, I won't find the setting. Its like navigating a maze and I can't go back.
I suggest the Navigation Bar become an App Header bar with App Content Menu on the right and a Settings Cog Wheel on the right. Right of the App Content Menu have a Search icon with the App icon in the centre e.g. Home icon for Channel. Toggle the Menu to open/close App Content to the side. Toggle the Cog Wheel to open/close Settings from the top. A separate Navigation bar would float at the bottom of the screen with pinned apps, an application icon containing all the apps and a profile icon for account related settings.
So, navigating Hubzilla is bad, but finding content in the Fediverse is bad too. It doesn't help published links do not match actual links. The published link is username@domain.tld, but this will break!! The working link across the Fediverse is domain.tld/@username.
I think the Fediverse is in desperate need of a language filter to make it a more enjoyable experience. I would like to see en.domain.tld/pubstream to filter english content for me and en.domain.tld/@username to find the english version of a bi-lingual poster. I think this is a major flaw of the Fediverse and I'm surprised it hasn't been fixed already.
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