I’ve been testing out #Calckey, because it has some extra features that #Mastodon doesn’t, like
- Longer default post length (3000 characters)
- Quote tweets
- Antennas (supercharged lists to follow keywords & people, with exclusions)
- Gallery (untested, seems to be like a media page with Recent & Popular gallery posts from other users and a My Gallery section, which could be like a portfolio)
- Widgets (to customize a sidebar)
- Groups (untested but potentially useful)
But some things about Calckey’s base #UserExperience really sucked:
- Disabling seeing replies in the timeline vs just original posts does not work
- Replies also show the post being replied to, which is theoretically useful, except if it’s a thread you’ll see posts twice as the replied-to-post becomes the reply; it’s hella irritating to see a thread backwards in a timeline or notifications
- Removing people from Lists is a 5 step process
- Muting users boosts only applies to the main timeline and not to Lists
- The DM page is hard to find, doesn’t have a compose option, and doesn’t show all DMs
- The home timeline updates automagically, with a modal New posts notification
- Replies show the avatars of every person being replied to, which is just needless and distracting
- Boosting a post means the timeline gets immediately updated (with the New Posts modal) and my boosts appear as a new, separate post
Calckey’s got some work to do, which is fine since it’s nowhere near a finished product, but these UX issues make for an awful user experience that made me want to run back to Mastodon. (As it is, I would NEVER recommend Calckey to a Fediverse noob, for that I recommend Mastodon with the Ivory app)
But since Calckey has so many features and is so customizable, it includes a Custom CSS option (findable at /settings/custom-css ). With a little digging in the Page Source, I improved my user experience a LOT.
I was able to fix all the highlighted problems with the following custom css:
Oi – I do not provide tech support so try this code at your own risk. If you don’t like what it does, just delete the code and save the settings. YMMV.
If you want to try the code, copy & paste the green text into the Custom CSS field and save it. Each bit of code starts with a /* comment */ explaining what it does. The comments are not required for the CSS to work.
/* Hide replies AND post being replied to from ALL TIMELINES */
.note-container:has(.reply-to) {display: none;}
/* Show replies in NOTIFICATIONS */
.notifications .note-container:has(.reply-to) {display: block;}
/* Show replies BUT hide post being replied to in NOTIFICATIONS */
.notifications .reply-to {display: none;}
/* Show replies in DIRECT MESSAGES */
._content_b6w6v_6 .note-container:has(.reply-to)
{display: block;}
/* Hide avatars in replies */
.mention .icon {display: none;}
/* Hide 'There is a new post' button */
div.new {display: none;}
User Specific CSS in Calckey
/* Hide your own boosts EVERYWHERE */
.note-container.renote:has(a[href="YourUsername"]) {display: none;}
/* Hide boosts in LISTS from a specific user */
.list .note-container.renote:has(a[href="TheirUsername"]) {display: none;}
