I've been looking through the other frontends for Steemit, not taking dmania nor d.Tube into account but solely the blogging itself since I do write a lot... and I mean a "LOT". So, let's see what we have for the frontends for Steemit vs Viper vs Busy.
Steemit, by far, is the primary one that everyone gets introduced to, it's where we go when we first create our accounts. Granted there are bottlenecks when it comes to creating a Steemit account, but that's understandable on account that Steemit as a company does have to shell out some money of their own in order to give the new users the ability to create content and we're going to avoid bandwidth issues that happen quite regularly in the early mornings and weekends. This means, we're completely ignoring the backend and all services that aren't blog centric.
Pros of Steemit
- First frontend we're introduced to for blogging (Some come over from d.Tube such as myself)
- Has a light and dark theme
- Relatively easy to use (Account settings not taken into account, considered backend)
Cons of Steemit
- Post editor needs reworked to include a WYSIWYG editor since a lot of newbies have no idea what markup language is and don't know of other frontends that provide a better editor and don't know about SteemPress or care to use SteemPress.
- Links in right hand pane should include more quick links for replies, comments, etc for quick access
- Seriously needs a bandwidth available, voting power and reputation gauge towards the top as a floating bar so users don't need to rely on steemd to know if they can post or not.
- Can't customize tags/categories of interest for customizing the Steemit experience
- Lack of filtering for posts feed
Pros of Busy
- "Interesting People" in the right hand pane
- Has a WYSIWYG editor for posts and comments
- Reading a post pops up on the same page instead of loading a new page.
- Replies are listed in the left hand pane for easy and quick access
- Editing profile gives fields for various social media and some crypto coins
- Various filters included in an activity feed that's very social media-esque https://busy.org/activity
Cons of Busy
- Lack of a dark theme
- No clue how to utilize bookmarks though it's seen as something to do there. https://busy.org/bookmarks
- Can't customize tags/categories of interest for customizing the Steemit experience
Pros of Viper
- Developer takes constructive criticism very well and does accept suggestions into consideration
- Dark theme by default
- Splits Blog Articles from Video Articles (Tries to at least)
- Has a WYSIWYG editor for posts
- Stream layout is tiled squares rather than listed view
Cons of Viper
- Lack of a light theme
- Can't customize tags/categories of interest for customize the Steemit experience, though the developer is aware of the suggestion and has taken the criticism into consideration.
- Lack of filtering options for posts feed
My Conclusion
From reviewing the 3 frontends, I do have my pros and cons that are most important to me. A WYSIWYG editor isn't among them, nor is the overall layout of the posts stream. Lacking a dark theme for me isn't a huge deal breaker either even though I do find it easier on my eyes.What I aim for the most are two things. Filtering and being able to customize my experience in regard to categories/topics. So far only one of these provides me with filtering and none of them at this point provides me with customizing the topics at the left.
I'd much prefer to have the topics customized so that they're more relevant and of interest to me. There's a ton of tags there that I really have zero interest in at all such as the following.
- life (Eh, so what, don't care)
- photography (I have a camera phone too, I really just can't get myself to care)
- kr (No clue what this is, don't even care to check it out)
- art (Whereas I am an artist, I don't publish online and don't care otherwise)
- bitcoin (I don't have much interest in various cryptocurrencies)
- spanish (I can speak Spanish, but I choose not to. Lo siento)
- zappl (WTF even is this?)
- travel (Don't care to travel, zero interest)
- nature (I live out in the sticks, I've had enough nature)
- indonesia (I'm not from here)
- food (I'm hungry, but not that hungry)
- story (I prefer a personal blog)
- dmania (Memes, and a lot of them aren't even good)
- aceh (What even is this?)
- esteem
- dlive
- love (Already have love)
- photo (Can't even get myself to care, I have a camera phone too!)
- contest (Bad luck, I never win)
- music (I'm deaf)
- health (Not too interested)
- poetry (I very rarely consume poetry)
- cervantes (WTF even is this?)
- cn
- utopian-io
- colorchallenge
- deutsch (I don't speak German)
- steepshot
- kr-newbie
- philippines (I'm not from here)
- myanmar (I'm not from here)
- Deaf
- Writing
- blog
- dtube
- video
- funny
- transhumanism
- futurism
- science
- medicine
- technology
- computers
- linux
- biohacking
- FOSS
- censorship
- blockchain
- anarchism
- ancap
- news
- physics
- astrophysics
The filtering isn't an end all be all for me, the categories however, are. I don't care which frontend gets it done first, but the one that implements it and filtering will be able to retain me because it will have given me the best Steemit experience from the onset.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://cryptodeaf.cloudaccess.host/2018/02/steemit-viper-busy/