Split "local@instance.name" into two fields

[mykdavies]

There's a lot of places in the app where if you perform an action, it's not immediately obvious which account is performing this action especially if you have multiple accounts per server (I know this particular aspect may not be mainstream :-)

If that field at the top of the home tab was split into two, you could select "username@instance.name" as the account you wished to perform all actions as, and "All/Subscribed/Local" as the view you wanted (maybe add the everything choices in there when selected).

The "username@instance.name" should then be visible on other screens (perhaps only if you have multiple accounts) and allow you to switch as required.

I think this might be a significant change, but it may well prove to be much less confusing than the current "search through servers looking for a default account" process.

[jordan1776]

This doesn't really answer the full request but, the part about splitting the field at the top seemed intriguing so I threw a screenshot into photoshop to see how it would look. I made the feed an icon on the left side and moved the sort to the right to balance it out. Also I put the settings and view into a 3 dot menu on the right,

The only thing is most usernames and instance combos can be pretty long so it might trail off in the field so I just show the instance in my concept. I though maybe if all user interactable pages (post, comments, replies) had a 3 dot menu in the top right, then there could be a line that says the full username you're using (so it is there but not in the way). And repeat it somewhere in reply pages.

Something like this for that menu:

• username@instance.com

---

• View
• Settings

[mykdavies]

That's really helpful. It's great to get a reminder of how little space we have to play with here.

I'm not sure if I'm in a sensible place to think about what would be the common use case here as I am currently running multiple accounts with different names on the same instance, and accounts with the same name on different instances, so I kinda want to see both parts all the time.

I was thinking out loud in a comment yesterday and came up with three use cases:

• user has main account and shitposting account
• user uses separate account for admin/mod activities (and may well be backup mod for communities on other instances)
• user has accounts on "private" instances (used for org internal comms)

I wonder if we could offer them the option of adding a nickname for each account which we could then use in these fields?

[zachatrocity]

I think we could probably shrink the size of that drop down. It's rather large and that would free up some space. Coincidentally, moving the settings and reload and scroll to top into the three dot Menu has already happened. So we do have a little bit of real estate there. Just FYI. I do like seeing the name next to the instance. I wonder if we can move the notification bell somewhere else? It seems a little out of place

[mykdavies]

Notifications: I'd suggest adding it to the tab bar if you Android guys didn't have that big FAB clogging up the middle :-) maybe add a badge to the user icon in the tab bar and then replace the posts/comments pseudo buttons on your own user page with "inbox" and "outbox"

[jordan1776]

I think i got it, swap the bell on top and the profile button on the nav bar. Then have the profile button show the current users profile picture. If they don't have one set, use a colorized generic picture. For example, you might have 2 accounts without avatars on lemmy.world, but you know which one you're logged into because one is red and the other blue,

Side note: I don't think a bell icon makes much sense, it might be better to use an inbox/mailbox icon.

[mykdavies]

I really like that avatar approach, much more compact and it would be very appealing visually.