Kbin Usability Pack 0.3.6 - Mobile UI and compatibility with next Kbin version
Kbin Usability Pack 0.3.6 - Mobile UI and compatibility with next Kbin version
I have now released a significant new update for KUP that introduces a new experimental mobile UI and adds support for the coming release of the Kbin platform.
What is this?
This is a collection of hacks, fixes, enhancements and experiments that I have been tinkering with since I've joined Kbin, neatly packaged into one behemoth of a userscript.
Updates
0.3.0
Support for next version of Kbin.
The next version of Kbin is upon us and is bringing a lot of new improvements. This release of KUP makes sure that everything will still be working smoothly when the next version launches.
Note that there are some additional improvements and bug fixes related to the general layout included in this release, but will not be visible until the next version of Kbin launches.
Experimental Mobile UI
I have been working hard experimenting with a new mobile UI. Since this relies heavily on functionality in KUB, I've decided to include it into this release. It is disabled by default, but can be activated in the settings panel by toggling "Experimental Mobile UI".
As the name suggests, this is heavily experimental, even more so than the rest, so be prepared for strange edge cases and weirdness, especially if you're using multiple scripts.
The new UI includes a number of changes:
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Replaced many of the small text elements with larger, more touch friendly icons.
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Moved media preview to the top of the article and auto expands it.
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Moved vote arrows to the right for easier reach.
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Moved meta information and footer above the body of the article for easier access on long articles (touch the comment icon to jump directly to the comments)
Other changes
- I've fixed a few bugs related to iOS and Safari.
0.3.1
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Alt. UI Fixed layout issues related to compact mode.
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Alt. UI Fixed layout issues related to future Kbin version.
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Alt. UI Fixed layout issue when creating or editing article
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Preview Fixed not respecting auto preview setting (only media).
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Preview Added setting to enable auto article preview.
0.3.2
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Alt. UI Fixed boost icon missing active highlight.
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Added fallback for compatibility issues with other scripts.
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Improved notifications for common actions.
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Added reset button to settings.
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Preparation for potential future KUP API endpoints.
0.3.3
- Fixed repeated script initiation when using Greasemonkey.
Please try it out and see if there's anything you like! I really appreciate any and all feedback.
If any of these experiments turn out to be majorly liked, I might try to port it over and make a pull request to the main Kbin project later.
0.3.4
- Fixed broken hamburger menu in latest release of Kbin. (Enhancement is no longer needed)
0.3.5
- Alt UI Fixed thumbnail styling in compact mode
0.3.6
- Added fix for horizontal scroll issue on Mobile Safari.
- Added option to toggle this off when the issue is eventually fixed in Kbin.
Other projects
If you haven't, feel free to also try out my other project, Kbin Subscriptions Panel.
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I'm enjoying KUP on mobile but I'm not using the experimental mobile UI for a couple of reasons. The thumbnail previews automatically render as portrait even if the image itself is not, leading to a lot of wasted space. In fact I'd love an ultra compact option for KUP to further condense things, as there's a lot of whitespace. The images/icons for going to the comment section and boosting are very nice, but they do take up more space than just the text. I used RiF for reddit partly because of how condensed and clean it looked even with thumbnails.
Also it would be lovely if you could add a quick reply button under the article text when you click on an article, as right now I need to scroll down through all the comments to get to the Add Comment box, and of course having infinite comment scroll on can make that a bit of a chore. I'd argue that's perhaps something to be addressed on the site overall, but since @ernest is working pretty hard on the back end, sometimes you need things like KUP to help out on the front end for accessibility and minor QOL issues.
Fwiw I am using Firefox with tampermonkey on a Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Thanks for the feedback! I actually released an update 0.3.6 earlier today that addressed some issues with compact mode and the alternative mobile UI. Especially the thumbnails should look a lot better now.
Regarding the thumbnails, they didn't actually use more vertical space than in the standard UI as they merely used all the available vertical space. The issue was that since the whole element is larger because of the thicker footer, the background got stretched out to fill out the additional space, resulting in the portrait format you are talking about. That should however be fixed now, but if you prefer the smaller standard UI, that sadly won't help you in this case. I guess that's what makes it an experimental UI :P
Regarding the comment box, I agree completely and before I repacked my scripts into the KUP bundle I did actually have a fix for that. I never included it in KUP though since that feature is already included in the excellent Kbin Enhancement Script plus a number of other improvements. KUP is fully compatible with KES so I felt I should rather focus on bringing new improvements than reimplementing things that others have already solved.
If I get some time over, I might add that however, in order to make KUP more of a complete single package.