Phanpy === **Minimalistic opinionated Mastodon web client.**

This is an alternative web client for [Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/). - 🏒 **Production**: https://phanpy.social - `production` branch - break less often - slower fixes unless critical - πŸ—οΈ **Development**: https://dev.phanpy.social - `main` branch - may see new cool stuff sooner - may break more often - may be fixed much faster too Everything is designed and engineered for my own use case, following my taste and vision. This is a personal side project for me to learn about Mastodon and experiment with new UI/UX ideas. 🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧 **🐘 This is an early ALPHA project. Many features are missing, many bugs are present. Please report issues as detailed as possible. Thanks πŸ™** 🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧🚧 ## Features - πŸ‘ͺ Multiple accounts - πŸͺŸ Compose window pop-out/in - πŸŒ— Light/dark/auto theme - πŸ”” Grouped notifications - πŸͺΊ Nested replies view ## Design decisions - **Status actions (reply, boost, favourite, bookmark, etc) are hidden by default**.
They only appear in individual status page. This is to reduce clutter and distraction. It may result in lower engagement, but we're not chasing numbers here. - **Boost is represented with the rocket icon**.
The green double arrow icon (retweet for Twitter) doesn't look right for the term "boost". Green rocket looks weird, so I use purple. - **Short usernames (`@username`) are displayed in timelines, instead of the full account username (`@username@instance`)**.
Despite the [guideline](https://docs.joinmastodon.org/api/guidelines/#username) mentioned that "Decentralization must be transparent to the user", I don't think we should shove it to the face every single time. There are also some [screen-reader-related accessibility concerns](https://twitter.com/lifeofablindgrl/status/1595864647554502656) with the full username, though this web app is unfortunately not accessible yet. - **No autoplay for video/GIF/whatever in timeline**.
The timeline is already a huge mess with lots of people, brands, news and media trying to grab your attention. Let's not make it worse. (Current exception now would be animated emojis.) - **Hash-based URLs**.
This web app is not meant to be a full-fledged replacement to Mastodon's existing front-end. There's no SEO, database, serverless or any long-running servers. I could be wrong one day. ## Development Prerequisites: Node.js 18+ - `npm install` - Install dependencies - `npm run dev` - Start development server - `npm run build` - Build for production - `npm run preview` - Preview the production build - `npm run fetch-instances` - Fetch instances list from [instances.social](https://instances.social/), save it to `src/data/instances.json` - requires `.env.dev` file with `INSTANCES_SOCIAL_SECRET_TOKEN` variable set - `npm run sourcemap` - Run `source-map-explorer` on the production build ## Tech stack - [Vite](https://vitejs.dev/) - Build tool - [Preact](https://preactjs.com/) - UI library - [Valtio](https://valtio.pmnd.rs/) - State management - [masto.js](https://github.com/neet/masto.js/) - Mastodon API client - [Iconify](https://iconify.design/) - Icon library - Vanilla CSS - *Yes, I'm old school.* Some of these may change in the future. The front-end world is ever-changing. ## Mascot [Phanpy](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Phanpy_(Pok%C3%A9mon)) is a Ground-type PokΓ©mon. ## Maintainers - [Chee Aun](https://github.com/cheeaun) ([Mastodon](https://mastodon.social/@cheeaun)) ([Twitter](https://twitter.com/cheeaun)) ## Backstory I am one of the earliest users of Twitter. Twitter was launched on [15 July 2006](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter). I joined on December 2006 and my [first tweet](https://twitter.com/cheeaun/status/1298723) was posted on 18 December 2006. I know how early Twitter looks like. It was fun. Back then, I [made a Twitter clone](https://twitter.com/cheeaun/status/789031599) called "Twig" written in Python and Google App Engine. I almost made my own [Twitter desktop client](https://github.com/cheeaun/chidori) written in Appcelerator Titanium. I [gave one of my best talks about the Twitter client](https://www.slideshare.net/cheeaun/story-of-a-thousand-birds) in a mini-conference. I built this thing called "Twitter [Columns](https://twitter.com/columns)", a web app that shows your list of followings, your followings' followings, your followers, your followers' followers and so on. In 2009, I wrote a blog post titled ["How I got started with Twitter"](https://cheeaun.com/blog/2009/04/how-i-got-started-with-twitter/). I created [two](https://twitter.com/cheeaun/status/1273422454) [themes](https://twitter.com/cheeaun/status/1487781343) for DestroyTwitter (a desktop client made with Adobe Air by Jonnie Hallman) and one of them is called ["Vimeo"](https://dribbble.com/shots/31624). In 2013, I wrote [my own tweets backup site](https://github.com/cheeaun/tweets) with a front-end to view my tweets and a [CouchDB backend](https://github.com/cheeaun/tweet-couch) to store them. It's been **more than 15 years**. And here I am. Building a Mastodon web client. ## Alternative web clients - [Pinafore](https://pinafore.social/) ([retired](https://nolanlawson.com/2023/01/09/retiring-pinafore/)) - [Cuckoo+](https://www.cuckoo.social/) - [Sengi](https://nicolasconstant.github.io/sengi/) - [Soapbox](https://fe.soapbox.pub/) - [Elk](https://elk.zone/) - [Mastodeck](https://mastodeck.com/) - [Tooty](https://github.com/n1k0/tooty) - [More...](https://github.com/tleb/awesome-mastodon#clients) ## License [MIT](https://cheeaun.mit-license.org/).