Testing out Communities // Steempeak update review

Communities launched last night and i had some time to browse through it. I didnt want to spend too much time on it since i barely ever use Steemit, outside of their wallet and market.

Honestly, even with Communities added Steemit still looks like ass. Its all a bit convoluted with poor design choices. A web 1.0 website for the web 3.0 times.
They really need to hire someone to revamp how the site looks.

@steempeak releasing their update was something i was looking forward to and of course what they made looks 10 times better.
From what im seeing right now, this is kind of a transitional period from our old blog focus to the new Community/SMT era.
Im also seeing potential for confusion from the whole Community vs Tribe thing. Once SMTs launch im hoping for a more streamlined way to view all those things.
Some communities will have SMTs, some will be on Steem Engine, some wont have SMTs, some tribes will have communities etc. (A new user coming in probably wont know the difference between a Tribe and a community and many wont after months) Something will have to be figured out when that happens.

Some feedback

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Im really not a fan of the community page. Its pretty hard to find what im looking for. The communities are all thrown into one place with 0 ways to filter them, except alphabetically.
There need to be categories.
Is your community general topic, is it Steem related, is it music related, is it politics related.

In each category the biggest communities go first.

Another thing i noticed which is just related to my personal "quality of life" preferences is the "Blog", "All posts" bar.

First of all, the wallet imo shouldnt go into the "others" category. Id move it back onto the bar.
"Subscriptions" i would not call that because it adds unnecessary complexity for new users. I know it might seem simple to understand for us but small things like this matter. Why not just call it "My Communities"?
Id also place that on the bar, Communities being one of the most important additions in the last couple years. Pretty sure it shouldnt go into "Others".

The "Payouts" tab should be part of the wallet page imo. It seems fitting. (Maybe also put a disclaimer for the Downvote cry babies that the STEEM is NOT yours before the 7 days payout. ;))

Atm, im not seeing the point of having "All posts" and "Blog". I think there is no point in having both. Just keep "Blog" and get rid of "All posts". Almost the same thing shows up in both tabs.

Some of the things i liked.

Well i mostly liked everything but what i think has a lot more potential and what i really liked seeing is the notifications bell additions. I like the fact that you can send out "tips" about witnesses and updates. Id continue to do that by doing short "reminders" or "explanations" on how things work here.

Did you know that Communities are... Did you know that Tribes are.. Did you know that by voting witnesses ... Did you know that payouts work like this.....

(But keep an option to turn it off for those that dont want them.)

Things like that are extremely helpful to new users. We often forget that but when youre faced with so much information blasting at you at once, having something that helps you out in the start is extremely important. (cant emphasize that enough)
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Love the new night mode although im not sure how to turn it off now. lol
Im not seeing the option when i click my drop down.
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I love what you have done with the "Feeds" dropdown. I click it and i can check both my communities and the folks i follow. This duality thats easy to navigate is something Reddit does not have and i just love it.
Maybe "Following Feed" isnt the best name though, you could probably think of something better.lol.

Ill be writing this post in the @ocd community and im hoping to figure out the crossposting option. Im currently not seeing it while writing this in Steempeak.
Curious to see how Steemit and Steempeak deal with the crosspost between communities.

That begs the question of "tags". Should they be removed? Should frontends instead of tags (Where Topics are)provide options to post to multiple communities? What happens with the Trending page?
At this moment there are still big decisions to make for frontends about the direction they want to go in.
I know most of us here always like new additions but all that adds complexity to the system which works against the adoption potential.
Streamlining for the general public is a must imo...

Just a few thoughts and thx to @jarvie, @asgarth and @dmytrokorol for all their work.