Pre-Release Notes

The current beta (NX-05) has been pushed up to the hosted instance and Dubvee’s main frontend. It contains a few bugfixes/tweaks/enhancements from the prior beta releases as well as the updated community browser.

Remaining Tasks

There is one feature remaining to be re-written: Search. I don’t know if I will have time today to knock that out or if it will be later this week. After that, I’ll go through one more round of testing, squash any new bugs, and make some final adjustments. Then, if all is well, it will be released.

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Overview

This release could probably be considered 1.5.0 rather than a 1.4.x point release, but I’m going to wait until I raise the minimum supported API level before bumping the minor version. Currently, I do have support for 0.19.4+ features, but they’re limited to a few new filtering options in the feeds. I’ve also added the capability to automatically enable/disable features that require different API versions, so I’ll likely be adding some more 0.19.4+ user-facing features in the coming releases. The newer admin/mod features, if any, will need to wait until my own instance is updated past 0.19.3 since I will be unable to test those (I can test the user-level stuff against a different instnace with one of my alt accounts there).

Most of the work in this release has been re-writing core components, getting rid of some legacy stuff, and stanardizing any redundant sections with shared components. All of this is to make the upcoming task of porting to either Svelte 5 or React easier (haven’t decided which yet; I’m annoyed that Svelte has so many breaking changes. We also use React at work which is more stable in the long term).

Bugfixes

• Added missing padding on placeholder initials if there is no site logo
• If replying to a post/comment removal via a comment reply, send the reply before removing the item otherwise the reply will fail. (when I wrote that in the 0.18.x days, you could reply to removed comments and I just never used that feature since the behavior changed in 0.19.x)
• When switching instances or loading the site info for another instance into the site sidebar, the taglines would sometimes get stuck on the previous instance’s values.
• Bugfixes for bugs introduced during the rewrites have been omitted, but a lot of time was spent tracking those down and squashing them.

Bugfixes for Image Loading and Image Proxy

For efficiency, Tesseract tries to request webp versions of non-animated images at sizes appropriate for their use. e.g. 128px for icons, 256 for thumbnail images, etc. Usually this works, but sometimes remote pict-rs gets all pissy about it. Before, this would cause the image to fail to load until opening it with the Zoom which requested the raw image URL. Now, I’ve added error handlers for images to fallback automatically/gracefully:

[Desired Resolution and Format] -> [Desired Resolution] -> [Raw URL at default resolution] -> [Static Placeholder Image]

Similarly, if media proxying is enabled, it will use the same fallback path but via the image proxy. Depending on the user-defined fallback behavior, it will either try the raw URL or return a placeholder image.

I’ve also added apng animated PNG to the list of supported images.

The step to unproxy Lemmy’s stupid federated proxy URLs has been moved from individual components to the image proxy URL generator function; that function is used for all images anyway and returns either the original URL or the Tesseract’s proxy URL depending on user settings and if the admin has enabled the proxy module. If image proxying is disabled by the admin or the user, it will not unproxy the stupid Lemmy URL and use it as-is.

Did I mention how stupid it is that Lemmy federates the proxied URL for images instead of just returning that via the API to that instance’s users? If I haven’t, then let me say it’s fucking stupid.

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New Features

Under the Hood Highlights

• Storage Compression: When data gets stored to sessionStorage, it’s compressed first. This has yielded quite a bit of savings and is a workaround for the 5 MB per-key limit on local and session storage in the browser. 5 MB sounds like a lot when it’s all text data, but since there’s a lot of redundancy in the data returned from the API (e.g. two posts to the same community will each have a full copy of the community details, sidebar info, etc), it fills up fast when you’re taking snapshots of the current state (which his how Tesseract keeps your position in the infinite scroll feeds). In the future, I plan to move to IndexedDB which does not have this limitiation and comes with additional benefits. The current plan is to use PouchDB as the wrapper library which opens the door to syncing with a Couch DB add-on to Tesseract’s server component and allowing state to be maintained across devices :)

• More Caching: For data that doesn’t change often, such as site and community info, the loaders have been updated to first see if there is a cached record for that data. If so, it will be used to fulfill the API call. If not, it’s requested from the server as before and cached until needed. Currently, site (local and remote) and communitiy details are cached. I’m looking into other places data can be cached, perhaps with a shorter validity period.

• Initial Support for 0.19.4+ API Functions: Tesseract is still designed for 0.19.3 as its baseline. However, I updated the JS client to the latest one for 0.19.7 since it’s backwards compatible. While I don’t have all the newer features built-in yet, I do have some that become available when the API level supports it.

Preview Community and User Feeds in Modals

You can now view a user’s or a community’s feeds in their respective modals when clicking a user or community link.

The preview has also been added to the moderation modal. However, in the moderation modal, it limits the feed to just the user and community relevant to the item that initiated the mod modal. e.g. if you click the mod button for a post/comment in the FoodPorn community by user Bob, the only submissions that will be shown are Bob’s submissions to FoodPorn. This should help with performing mod actions as you can check for patterns of rule-violating behavior without having to leave the mod tool.

Another use case is previewing new communities when you click on a pill-button link. e.g. if someone comments about a cool community and uses the !community@instance.xyz format (as they should), you can click on it which will resolve it automatically. From there, you can click “Browse Community…” to see what kinds of posts it has before commiting to subscribing (okay, that’s a very tiny commitment, lol, but you get my point).

New Feed Capabilities

The feeds were re-written as components to be more modular and consistent. Mostly, if I did my job right, you won’t think I did anything at all. That said, they do have a few new tricks:

• Feed filter options for “Show Only [Liked | Disliked | Saved] Posts”.
• Feed filter options for “Show Hidden”, “Show NSFW”, and “Show Read Posts”. Requires 0.19.4+ for show hidden and 0.19.6+ for “Show NSFW” and “Show Read”
  • Those options will be hidden if the instance is below the required API version.
• Can hide/unhide posts; accessible from the post action menu (three dots, top-right). Requires 0.19.4+.
• Better state preservation. The snapshot subsystem has been overhauled, and the data is now compressed before being stored into session storage
• Refreshing the browser will now clear the snapshot for the current feed and re-fetch from the API. i.e. refreshing the app/page will pull the data from the API as expected instead of reloading a stale cache / requiring to manually press the app’s refresh button.
• Manual pagination is now bi-directional. You can page back without having to use the browser’s ‘back’ button.
• Switching between communities will remember your position and sort options in each (until the snapshot expires. Currently 15 minutes)

UI Tweaks

• Clicking a community link to bring up the modal will now allow you to browse the community from within the modal (nice for previewing communities)
• Clicking the @username@instance.xyz in the user profile modals will copy the username to the clipboard
• New vote buttons
• Redesigned comment count button on posts in feed; now shows unread count
• Redesigned crosspost container
• Moved thumbnail image to the left on link previews
• Moved ‘debug’ button into post/comment action menus (removed dedicated button)
• Instance names in the site cards are now clickable. Eventually they will open an instance modal with nice options (similar to user and community modals), but for now, it just goes to /site/{instance} to view the instance details in a nice page (rather than a cramped sidebar).
• Clicking “Home” in the sidebar will take you back to your previous scroll position.

Moved More Menus Out of the Sub-Navbar

I still like the UI element, but too many of the options got moved into dropdown menus in the sub-navbar. Based on feedback, that seems to have sacrificed function for form. In this release, I’ve moved many of the selectors closer to the elements they manage.

• Community Browser instance selector, sort, and type menus have been moved above the community list.

• The sort and type selector menus in user profiles have been moved into the feed component itself.

• In the Inbox, the subnavbar elements have been removed completely, and there is a sidebar to the left of the inbox (similar to an email inbox)

• In the Moderation/Reports area, the subnavbar selector has been removed; like the Inbox, there’s now a sidebar with the relevant filtering options.

• The main feed still has them in the subnav bar, though, since there’s plenty of room on the left-hand side.

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Removed Features :(

Browsing Favorites / Groups as a Feed

This capability was always experimental. The initial implementation wasn’t great, but it worked well enough, and I had a plan to improve it. Unfortunately, before I could put that into motion, the Lemmy devs, in their infinite “knows better than everyone else” wisdom, removed the post ranking metrics from the API. This meant I could no longer do any kind of sorting beyond score and date.

So, since then (0.19.0 or thereabouts), the custom feeds feature has remained in place, crippled, and begging for death. In 1.4.21, I finally decided to put it out of its misery.

Community groups and favorites are still available, but they’re only used for organizing communities now. Favorites give you quick access to your most-visted communities, and groups are still useful to keep tabs on your subscribed communities.

I do have a plan to resurrect the feature, but it’s going to require backend support. I have a partial Tesseract API server, but I’ve not worked on it in a good while. Even still, if I do dust that off and go that route, custom feeds will only work for the “default” instance Tesseract is deployed to and only if the admin runs the API service for it. Not sure how practical that will be, but since it’s something I would want to offer on my own instance, I may still work toward it, though at a low priority.

Option to Disable Automatic Timestamp Updates

I changed the way the timestamps on posts/comments, etc update. Prior to this release, each had its own setInterval in the component and operated independently. In this release, I introduced a system timer that dispatches events at an interval. The date components now simply listen for this event and recalculate. With this change, the option to disable them doesn’t really provide any benefit.

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Changes and Enhancements

Community Explorer

• Moved listing type, sort options, and keyword search out of sub-navbar and into the “feed” area.
• State is now maintained in the URL, so paging back and forward will keep the state correctly (it didn’t maintain any state previously)
• Calls to local and remote getSite are cached in session storage to reduce bandwidth (used to populate the site sidebar)
• Tweaked the ‘subscribe’ buttons
• Added a dedicated button to go directly to the /c/{community} page for each entry
• Clicking the community name will open the community modal for additional options
• The selected instance is now route-based rather than URL param or internal state variable. e.g. /communities/{instance}
• Your home instance now has a “home” icon indicator in the instance dropdown

User Profile Pages (including local profile)

• Uses the new, component-based feed rather than the bespoke one used previously.
• User banner, stats, “about” info, and moderates list is now above the feed rather than in the sidebar (except local profile; that’s still to the side except on mobile)
• “Moderates” list is no longer a separate accordion. That list has been moved into the “About Me” section (similar to user profile modals)
• Sidebar is now populated with the home instance details for the user (banner, icon, name, stats, admins, site description, legal, etc). Non-local profiles only.
• Sidebar site info is now cached in the browser’s session storage to reduce network traffic and load on remote servers
• Better state preservation when navigating in/out. Right now, the snapshot validity is 5 minutes for user profiles versus 15 minutes for the main feed and communities.
• Integrated search. No longer just a shortcut to the /search page with the user pre-set.
• The sort options and type (posts/comment/all) menus have been moved from the sub-navbar to above the feed.
• Lots of under the hood changes, none should be visible except what’s listed :)

New Inbox

• Looks/behaves much more like an email inbox
• Inbox items are collapsed into accordions. Open to view the message.
• Configurable default inbox: can be "all " or “unread”. Setting is in Settings->General->Default Inbox
• Collapsible side menu to switch between message types, all, and unread. Also has convenience pagination buttons. The “mark all as read” button has also been moved here.
• Removed the dropdown menus from the sub-navbar; those are now in the collapsible side menu
• The envelope icon to the left of the message container is the “mark as read/unread” button.

New Moderation/Reports Manager

• Removed the custom buttons from the sub-navbar. Filters are now in its sidebar.
• Now uses the same layout as the inbox
• Has a sidebar for switching between unread/all and filtering by community. Also includes pagination.
• The check button to the left of the collapsible report is the resolve/unresolve button. Green check = resolved, white check is unresolved.
• Unread reports are bolded
• Can filter reports by community
• Removed the moderation action form since it’s a brute to maintain and has received mixed reviews from users.
• Each item has a few quick action buttons for mod tasks. Use the “All Mod Actions…” button to bring up the moderation modal to access all options.
• Looks less awful on mobile :)

Known Quirks

• Switching accounts will reload the feed before any of your blocks and filters are applied. To work around, refresh the feed or the browser after switching accounts. I’m trying to find a graceful way to handle this.

• Changing any of the infinite scroll options (or switching between infinite and manual pagination) requires any existing feed snapshots to be cleared. If you switch options from the quick settings menu, it will automatically refresh the browser as a workaround hack. If you switch them from the main settings page, you’ll need to manually refresh the feed or the browser to clear them. Again, I have a way to deal with this, but I’m not certain it’s the most graceful (though it’s more graceful than force-refreshing the browser lol).