If you previously preferred browsing old.reddit for its compact and information dense web layout, you should know that this theme can be replicated for Lemmy using monkey scripts.
For more information on installing browser extensions to use scripts linked by this post, checkout:
- https://greasyfork.org
- https://violentmonkey.github.io/
- Recommend given recent context:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34830903
This makes lemmy more usable than kbin for me
For posterity, I later stumbled upon the authors original post here:
- Tamper/Greasemonkey script to reformat interface to a style recalling old.reddit
The community that this was posted from also looks interesting:
- Lemmy Plugins & Userscripts
Very nice. I don’t understand the paradigm where everything is spaced out and there’s useless sidebars wasting space.
I general why does there have to be static sidebars that are rarely used. It causes the content body to be squeezed into tiny space. I will use the left menus when necessary which is not every single page view. In particular the right panel on lemmy and reddit have become cognitive blindspots. I will read the board description and decide to (or not to) click subscribe once. Otherwise it’s like how my brain ignores my own nose.
Why did web design become this way?
I had a “hide sidebar” bookmarklet for Reddit that lived in my favorites bar and got used dozens of times a day. I didn’t mind so much when Reddit was fullscreen, but when I was cramming it in with other windows on my desktop that extra real estate made a huge difference.
Personally I see the value of the sidebar but I think it would work better as a fly-out UI element that can be reduced or hidden, and stays that way until opened up again. I’m in the process of trying to stand up my own instance to see how that could be done.
There’s no need to go JavaScript route for theming, Stylus is an add-on that injects CSS instead. I wrote a style here, which increases width of Lemmy instances for wide screens, and also respects your browser light or dark theme if set to follow system:
https://userstyles.world/style/10233/zettajon-1440p-and-darkmode-supported-lemmy
