The 2023 redesign

Posted on 2023-09-21

The redesign

With version 4.1.0, keyoxide.org has just gotten a fresh coat of paint, the most important improvement actually being something that was often mentioned to me:

One has to scroll quite a bit to see an entire profile, there aren't many identity claims on the screen as each takes up a lot of space.

The previous design was spacious. Perhaps a tad too much. It could fit perhaps 8 or 9 identity claims on one screen.

The new design fits the 20 identity claims I have on my test account, and there's still room for more.

See for yourself with the Keyoxide project's profile! Hope you like it.

Preparing for localization

Another thing that the redesign diminished besides extreme roominess: the number of text elements, especially on the homepage. It's about time that the website gets internationalization and localization, and having fewer text elements will help with this.

The small things

The Keyoxide website finally actually shows with version it is on in the footer. A minor change but of significant value!

Also, the navigation menu at the top now has a clear Getting started link, finally giving newcomers a clear dire

Behind the scenes

A big overhaul happened on the backend, which was needed to support the new Ariadne Signature Profiles. As it turned out, after working with OpenPGP exclusively for three years, a lot of decisions had been made to the exclusive benefit of OpenPGP profiles. Think of terminology like "UserID", or the fact that profiles can only be read from cryptographic keys.

Now, introduce these new ASPs, which uses neither "UserId" or store the profile information as part of the cryptographic key — ASPs indeed store the profile information alongside the cryptographic key.

Subtle differences but the backend was not pleased! And now it is.

No more generic "ActivityPub" as service provider!

A small but significant improvement unrelated to the redesign: instead of simply showing "ActivityPub" for all Fediverse accounts, Keyoxide is now able to show the actual instance's "software name": Peertube, Lemmy, Mastodon, Pleroma, Akkoma, etc.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work for a number of instances that choose to not allow so-called cross-origin requests for their nodeinfo. A fix for this in the works!

Conclusion

Well, there's a quick overview of the recent changes made to the Keyoxide web client! Hope you enjoy them as much as I do. More updates are being worked on and will get mentioned in a blog post as soon as possible!

The project is always looking for more contributors. If you'd like to get involved, feel free to join the community and ask questions or propose ideas.

If you enjoy Keyoxide, you can help out by supporting the Keyoxide project on OpenCollective. Thank you kindly!