Why aren’t there alternative hostable Lemmy frontends?
Likely because no one is working on it. But there most certainly can be alternative frontends.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Is there a demand?
There likely will be soon.
I would work on it, but I have little to no help and suck at css
EDIT: my ADHD brain really wants to so if anyone wants to help/has ideas pls msg
Sucking at CSS isn't that huge of a deal. You can use utility frameworks like tailwindcss to avoid writing css directly, and if you use react you can use component libraries like Mantine (https://mantine.dev) which is both customizable but also looks great out of the box and provides most any component you'd need to work on something like this.
ehhh I have a love hate relationship with those, they sometimes look great but they also don't
As of june and july 2023 very likely
Why does Lemmy only have one frontend?
It doesn't. But that being said, it's a relatively new platform, so the ecosystem for it needs time to flourish. There's a bunch of mobile apps being worked on with Rexxit happening, so we'll probably see more in the future.
I kinda love this, oh my god. Taking me back to my childhood.
Plus, it actually makes a lot of sense in a weird way.
It's only a few years old.
We are not. There are a ton of apps out there being worked on. If you do not like those write your own or pay someone to do it or work with others doing the same. How many UIs do we need anyway?
There are other themes in the UI; I'm pretty happy with it. That said, lemmy has a nice API, so there are some mobile clients available, and more will likely follow.
Well someone has to put in the work. It’s definitely possible to change the UI and have instances with their own UIs.
And actually, there is already an alternative frontend: wefwef.app It’s not it’s own instance but you can use it with any other instance.
As others have mentioned, there are alternatives like wefwef. The biggest hurdle right now is that Lemmy is configured to use something called CORS which is a security mechanism that ensures that the server on beehaw.org only responds to requests from beehaw.org, and not from just anywhere. This provides some minimal security, but not really a ton because only browsers are actually limited by it. Native apps and api calls are not :/
There is a PR (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3421) for Lemmy that will solve this issue, and once it is merged in, alternative web clients will become easier and more plentiful for lemmy.
Can't you configure NGINX to rewrite the CORS headers? I've done it before, so...
An individual server host could yeah. But the client would only be able to work with that one server then. It's a flaw that needs to be addressed upstream.
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