Jupiter Rowland@<a href="https://mastodon.world/@lucy_idk" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Lucy idk ⁂ ⚝ ⁂ ⚝ ⁂ ⚝ ⁂ ⚝ ⁂ ⚝ ⁂</a> Since Mastodon 4.4.0, desktop/laptop users can no longer see alt-texts by hovering their mouse cursor over an image. They have to click the "alt" badge in the bottom right corner now. This change has never been announced to them. Now there are countless Mastodon users trying to figure out how to open alt-texts, and why they can't do it the way they're used to anymore.<br><br>Of course, this does not affect those who only ever use Mastodon through a mobile app, and who never see the Web interface in the first place.<br><br>Hubzilla, which is what I use (in case you believed I'm on Mastodon, too; <a href="https://hubzilla.org" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://hubzilla.org</a>, <a href="https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://joinfediverse.wiki/Hubzilla</a>), had a few more changes, not all of which got big announcements.<br><br>First of all, unlike Mastodon, Hubzilla shows you entire conversation threads immediately. You don't have to look them up yourself. Even your timeline, called "stream" on Hubzilla, consists of threads instead of single messages strewn about.<br><br>Up until the recently released version 10.4, Hubzilla used to show the comments in conversations strictly chronologically and on only one level. Before it introduced small arrow-like buttons which take you to the parent comment of a comment on a comment, and which can easily be overlooked, it seemed like Hubzilla only had flat, strictly chronological conversations in the first place, like older bulletin-board forum software such as phpBB. In fact, by default, it isn't possible to reply to comments; this has to be activated manually.<br><br>Also, in longer conversations, Hubzilla used to show only the latest three comments. One click revealed all the other comments, no matter how many. However, Hubzilla always loaded the whole thread in one go. This put a lot of strain on the server, and it could take a while in your browser.<br><br>The first change in version 10.4 which came out early this week was that, like its ancestor Friendica and its descendants (streams) and Forte had done much longer ago, Hubzilla switched from a strictly chronological and flat view to a tree-style view which shows you directly who replied to whom.<br><br>In addition, however, Hubzilla introduced "lazy loading". While it's aware of the whole conversation right away, it doesn't load the whole conversation at once anymore. Normally, it only shows the comments on the start post itself. Only if you want to check a certain comment deeper into the conversation, that branch is shown up to that comment.<br><br>If you want to see other branches, you have to open them manually now. To add to the confusion, you can do so in two ways which even make the respective branch look different. There's one icon that unfolds a branch comment by comment, but in a flat view; it's directly underneath the respective comment. And there's another icon that unfolds a branch in an indented view, three levels at once. But that icon is stashed away in a menu, so those who haven't read the 10.4 announcement won't even go look for it. And it's three levels at once because Hubzilla doesn't show more than four levels in this indented view so that the indentation doesn't get too extreme.<br><br>The main cause of drama is the comment editor. Unlike Mastodon where you have exactly one editor for everything, Hubzilla, like Facebook and every blog under the sun, has a separate editor for comments. It used to be conveniently placed under the bottom of the conversation itself. By default, you would comment on the post itself; if you wanted to comment on a comment (again, this is an optional feature), you had to click an icon under that comment, and whoever posted that comment was mentioned in the comment editor.<br><br>Since Hubzilla 10.4, for those users who have activated the "reply to comments" feature, the comment editor under the bottom of the thread is gone. Instead, the post got the same reply button that the comments already had. Whatever you want to comment on, you now have to click that button. And then the comment editor opens as a pop-up over the rest of the UI.<br><br>For starters, this is inconvenient. Also, there was no big announcement for this, so these Hubzilla users didn't even know how to comment with the editor "gone".<br><br>Besides, the position of the comment editor is fixed. And it tends to cover up at least parts of whatever you want to comment on, especially if you want to comment on the post itself.<br><br>Lastly, if you want to interact with anything else, e.g. hover over mentions so you can see their full IDs and add them manually (which is necessary if they're Mastodon accounts; they won't see your comment if you don't mention them) or copy-paste part of whatever you want to comment on into your comment draft as a quote, you can no longer do that while the comment editor is open. You have to close it and re-open it later. This adds quite a bit of inconvenience.<br><br>That, and it isn't documented anywhere either that the comment editor keeps its contents when you close it and re-open it for the same post/comment. The fact that you do, in fact, not lose your draft when you close it takes some getting used to.<br><br>Oh, and at least some of these points affect <em>all</em> Hubzilla users. Whereas, I guess, more than 90% of all Mastodon users only ever use Mastodon through an app, Hubzilla doesn't have any native mobile or desktop apps. There is no alternative to the Web interface.<br><br>#<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Long" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Long</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=LongPost" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">LongPost</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=CWLong" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">CWLong</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=CWLongPost" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">CWLongPost</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=FediMeta" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">FediMeta</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=FediverseMeta" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">FediverseMeta</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=CWFediMeta" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">CWFediMeta</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=CWFediverseMeta" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">CWFediverseMeta</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Mastodon" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Mastodon</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Mastodon44" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Mastodon44</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Mastodon440" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Mastodon440</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hubzilla" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Hubzilla</a> #<a class="" href="https://hub.netzgemeinde.eu/search?tag=Hubzilla104" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Hubzilla104</a>