Dev update #14: Authentication Overhaul, Multiple User support, more Caching, Inbox, Chat & More

Hello again! Dev Update 14 here

As always, all changes are already on nemmy.app.

Wow, so it's been quite a while since the last update and there are a couple reasons for that, e.g. I'm not home atm so I only have a Laptop. I also have very little time in general right now and have a lot to do at work.

Anyways. I did manage to add some features (break others) and improve some UX.

What changed

• You can now add multiple users to Nemmy (you can't add ones with the same username on different intances for now)

This required a complete overhaul on how authentication works on Nemmy. It's a lot more complicated but also more streamlined now.

• Mild to Big performance improvements of Images

I switched almost completely to next/image, which optimized image loading by default so especially feeds with lots of images should now be less resource intensive.

• Inbox, Chat and Settings pages have been added. None of them are done but you can take a look at the progress

• Users from all Lemmy instances and Mastodon can now be viewed on Nemmy (some are still redirected to their own instance's website)

• A few pages are now server rendered before being hydrated with user-specific content

This means that soon almost all initial requests will be cached on a few minutes basis (currently 2 minutes). So after the first request, every other within 2 minutes will be almost instantly served.

Right now, this counts for the Homefeed and Post pages. The Inbox, Chat and Settings pages are also Server Rendered, but not as aggressively cached since they are User specific pages anyway.

• Comments are being rendered in a more sensible way

This means huge performance boot on posts with 200+ Comments. But it also means you'll have to press the "load more comments" button more often.

I know the UX of doing that isn't ideal right now, I'll take care of that later.

• You can now view Instance info (basic implementation)

• Instances are now shown in more places

e.g. on posts

Known Bugs

• Especially when doing anything with authentication, you usually have to refresh the App right now. I'll fix that soon.

That's it for now!

See you all soon