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Alexandrite 0.8.12 - Initial Lemmy 0.19.0 support
  • If it works like blocking works for users/communities, posts from blocked instances shouldn't show up in Alexandrite too.

  • Alexandrite 0.8.12 - Initial Lemmy 0.19.0 support
    github.com Release 0.8.12 · sheodox/alexandrite

    What's Changed Support 0.19 auth changes, nsfw edit fix by @sheodox in #90 Full Changelog: 0.8.11...0.8.12

    Release 0.8.12 · sheodox/alexandrite

    It took me way too long to get around to this, but with the release of Lemmy 0.19.0 I finally added support for how auth is done differently now. Everything should work the same, but you'll now be able to use Alexandrite again on 0.19.0 servers.

    There are some more features that 0.19.0 added, I'll be adding those later, just wanted to make sure things still work first!

    If you're self hosting Alexandrite, the docker image probably won't be available for another hour or so after this is posted, the build takes a while! The main Alexandrite site is already updated though!

    5
    Feature Request: Go to a community using the search bar
  • Yep, this is a bug I'm aware of, for what it's worth there's also an issue on Github someone reported this in. You can track it here.

  • [Feature Request] - Edit Community Sidebar
  • Yep, I would like to do that at some point, just haven't been working on Alexandrite all that much lately, but it's still on my todo list!

  • POV: Your paper doesn't quite meet the page requirement.
  • Or find and replace all the periods with ones that are slightly larger font.

  • Lemmy 0.19 - Alexandrite migration plan?
  • Actually it sounds like it might be possible to keep things backwards compatible so I'll attempt to make it work for both versions. The 0.19 announcement post mentions it should be possible to stay backwards compatible.

  • Alexandrite 0.8.8 - Mod team management, multi-platform builds, and more
  • Oops forgot to post links, I edited the post.

    I host Alexandrite at https://alexandrite.app/ and several instances also host Alexandrite on their own domains, like https://a.lemmy.world

  • Trackmania: Fall Campaign 2023 Trailer
  • Yes, launching the game launches Ubisoft's launcher and you have to sign into that to play.

    Also if you use Proton it doesn't auto close the launcher when you quit the game so it'll run up your play time while the launcher is minimized to the system tray.

  • Alexandrite 0.8.8 - Mod team management, multi-platform builds, and more

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/5928967 > alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github > > Just a few things this time, the biggest is mod team management. You can now add and remove mods from the "..." menu on posts and comments. You can also find links to the modlog to see what actions have been taken against that user. > > !add mod button > > You can also remove mods or leave the mod team of a community from inside the "Moderation" area of the sidebar (note: the "Modlog" link moved inside this section too as it's not useful to most people) > > ! > > Alexandrite settings will now automatically update in every tab instantly, so if you change the theme in one tab, when you switch to another already open Alexandrite browser tab you'll notice it'll already be using your new theme. > > When viewing reports, they will now be sorted by newest report first, instead of oldest post/comment first. > > For the self hosters out there, Alexandrite should now have arm builds thanks to ismailkarsli on Github! (Thank you!) The image builds now take a little longer, and the build isn't quite done yet so you might have to wait a bit until it's available. > > That's it for now. Next release will probably be Lemmy 0.19 support, and I believe I'll finally be able to add image uploading then too (it might be in the next release after 0.19 support). > > Github release notes

    7
    Alexandrite 0.8.8 - Mod team management, multi-platform builds, and more

    alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github

    Just a few things this time, the biggest is mod team management. You can now add and remove mods from the "..." menu on posts and comments. You can also find links to the modlog to see what actions have been taken against that user.

    !add mod button

    You can also remove mods or leave the mod team of a community from inside the "Moderation" area of the sidebar (note: the "Modlog" link moved inside this section too as it's not useful to most people)

    !

    Alexandrite settings will now automatically update in every tab instantly, so if you change the theme in one tab, when you switch to another already open Alexandrite browser tab you'll notice it'll already be using your new theme.

    When viewing reports, they will now be sorted by newest report first, instead of oldest post/comment first.

    For the self hosters out there, Alexandrite should now have arm builds thanks to ismailkarsli on Github! (Thank you!) The image builds now take a little longer, and the build isn't quite done yet so you might have to wait a bit until it's available.

    That's it for now. Next release will probably be Lemmy 0.19 support, and I believe I'll finally be able to add image uploading then too (it might be in the next release after 0.19 support).

    Github release notes

    0
    [Bug report] feed loads to last viewed post
  • This is intentional, but I'll probably be changing it.

    When you click a post while in a feed it changes the URL so it's easier for people to share links to posts, as people probably are most used to copying a URL out of the address bar to send to people. It causes a lot of issues though, like the one you mentioned, and the 'back' button on your browser basically doesn't work either. Because of all of that I'm probably going to remove that feature, and make a more prominent "share" button somewhere.

  • Lemmy 0.19 - Alexandrite migration plan?
  • I'll probably end up waiting until one of the popular instances migrates to 0.19, then I'll quickly work on migrating to 0.19 and release a new version. The main alexandrite.app site will use the 0.19 version once lemmy.world updates, because that's its default instance. Exact specifics might change depending on how the rollout goes and how much free time I have around then, so this might change. If Alexandrite updates before your server updates you might just have to use the default UI until your instance updates.

    For self-hosters who want to wait on 0.19, Alexandrite's releases have version numbers nowdays so instead of using the latest docker tag, I'd recommend using the last non-0.19 version until you upgrade Lemmy.

  • [Feaure Request] Allow blocking instances.
  • The PR says "Analogous to the existing community block functionality, users can also block instances. This means that all content from communities which are hosted there is hidden. Posts from users of blocked instances are still visible in other places." So it sounds like what you're looking for.

  • [Feaure Request] Allow blocking instances.
  • It should be coming soon, support for it is almost in Lemmy, once that's released and servers are updated so I can test it I'll add it ASAP! This is the Lemmy PR I'm waiting on.

  • Alexandrite 0.8.4 - modlog, more information on reports, and bug fixes
  • You can link to communities/users by typing the full name/instance stuff out, but I don't have any search/auto-complete stuff for either of those yet.

  • Alexandrite 0.8.4 - modlog, more information on reports, and bug fixes
    github.com Release 0.8.4 · sheodox/alexandrite

    What's Changed Modlogs have been added! Links can be found in the instance/community sidebar. You can also see what mod actions have been performed on a user by clicking the modlog link on a user'...

    Release 0.8.4 · sheodox/alexandrite

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/4271786

    > I've been away on vacation but I'm back with a new release of Alexandrite! > > The mod log is now implemented! At the moment you can see a community's modlog from the top of the community sidebar, and the instance modlog from the bottom of the instance sidebar (I'll likely change where these links are at some point). Now moderators should be able to do even more stuff without leaving Alexandrite. > > !modlog > > Additionally there's a link to the modlog when viewing a user's profile (also in the sidebar), which lets you see the mod actions that have been performed on them. This should help moderators identify problematic users. > > !user modlog > > In both cases, you will see a content warning screen before being redirected to the actual modlog, but you can disable this for either all communities or for the ones you moderate in the settings. > > !modlog content warning > > Icons for NSFW communities will now be hidden unless you have "NSFW Thumbnails" set to "Show" in the settings. Previously it would just always show icons. > > Moderators looking through reports will now see the post or comment's score (and vote breakdown on hover) so you can see at a glance what the community thought about something. Additionally it also shows how long ago a report was made. > > !report votes > > Then just some random improvements. The community header's buttons now collapse into a "..." menu if the screen isn't wide enough to fit them all, and the header at the top of the page is now darker (in dark mode) and lighter (in light mode) which I think looks a lot nicer. > > I'll soon release 0.8.5, but that'll just be a quick bug fix, as I realized when writing this post that the "No" button on the modlog content warning doesn't redirect to the right place sometimes.

    2
    Alexandrite 0.8.4 - modlog, more information on reports, and bug fixes
    github.com Release 0.8.4 · sheodox/alexandrite

    What's Changed Modlogs have been added! Links can be found in the instance/community sidebar. You can also see what mod actions have been performed on a user by clicking the modlog link on a user'...

    Release 0.8.4 · sheodox/alexandrite

    I've been away on vacation but I'm back with a new release of Alexandrite!

    The mod log is now implemented! At the moment you can see a community's modlog from the top of the community sidebar, and the instance modlog from the bottom of the instance sidebar (I'll likely change where these links are at some point). Now moderators should be able to do even more stuff without leaving Alexandrite.

    !modlog

    Additionally there's a link to the modlog when viewing a user's profile (also in the sidebar), which lets you see the mod actions that have been performed on them. This should help moderators identify problematic users.

    !user modlog

    In both cases, you will see a content warning screen before being redirected to the actual modlog, but you can disable this for either all communities or for the ones you moderate in the settings.

    !modlog content warning

    Icons for NSFW communities will now be hidden unless you have "NSFW Thumbnails" set to "Show" in the settings. Previously it would just always show icons.

    Moderators looking through reports will now see the post or comment's score (and vote breakdown on hover) so you can see at a glance what the community thought about something. Additionally it also shows how long ago a report was made.

    !report votes

    Then just some random improvements. The community header's buttons now collapse into a "..." menu if the screen isn't wide enough to fit them all, and the header at the top of the page is now darker (in dark mode) and lighter (in light mode) which I think looks a lot nicer.

    I'll soon release 0.8.5, but that'll just be a quick bug fix, as I realized when writing this post that the "No" button on the modlog content warning doesn't redirect to the right place sometimes. Edit: Nevermind it was 0.8.7, still that's the only fix, I just kept messing up and releasing without the actual change.

    1
    [Feature Request] A way to hide specific individual posts.
  • There is a lemmy setting to hide read posts fwiw, but it's probably not exactly what you're looking for. I've been thinking of making a toggle for it more accessible from the feed, but a lemmy feature to hide individual posts like you could on reddit would be nicest.

  • Alexandrite 0.8.2 - Post title suggestions from your link, private message edit/delete/report, external links in markdown now open in a new tab
  • I've been considering something similar to that too, I'll give it some more thought. Might end up switching those textboxes around. Also when I someday am able to add image uploading I might need to move things around anyway so anything here could change lol

  • Alexandrite 0.8.1 - Cross-posting added! Bug fixes for instance taglines and nsfw thumbnails
  • Sweet, thanks for letting me know! This is definitely the kind of bug I like getting fixed ASAP!

  • [Feature Request] A way to hide specific individual posts.
  • Could you give me a little more detail on what problem this solves for you? I'm not opposed to the idea, just want to understand more. What's inconvenient about the way it works now, and how would you use the site differently if this feature was added?

  • Alexandrite 0.8.2 - Post title suggestions from your link, private message edit/delete/report, external links in markdown now open in a new tab
  • I went back and forth on this and I'm not sure what's best. I think I'd prefer doing it automatically, but I also didn't want stuff on the page to move unexpectedly, because it's really annoying when you're trying to click somewhere but miss because stuff moved around. That's why it only does things when you click.

    Also, on the post creation form on Alexandrite I put the "Title" input first, but the official UI has the URL first, which maybe makes it simpler to create a UI to offer these extra options (and the archive links), so maybe I'd need to reorder them and think about stuff a bit more?

    If you have any ideas for some other place to put the link's title and the "use this title" button I'm all ears!

  • Alexandrite 0.8.1 - Cross-posting added! Bug fixes for instance taglines and nsfw thumbnails
  • Just to confirm, the issue you're reporting is that NSFW images in the post list when using Cards are unblurred? I just released a fix for that, so let me know if you were having any other issues.

    I totally meant for those to be blurred in the first place, but had run into issues during development and apparently forgot to go back and fix it, so no new setting either!

  • Alexandrite 0.8.2 - Post title suggestions from your link, private message edit/delete/report, external links in markdown now open in a new tab
    github.com Release 0.8.2 · sheodox/alexandrite

    When creating a post there's now a button to suggest a title based on the URL you entered You can create a post without first visiting the community by clicking the new "+" button in the header Add...

    Release 0.8.2 · sheodox/alexandrite

    Just some quick features!

    When creating a post there's now a button to suggest a title based on the URL you entered. Just enter a URL then click "Suggest Title"

    !suggest title button

    Then if you want to use that title hit the button!

    !title suggestion

    You can create a post without first visiting the community by clicking the new "+" button in the header. The menu looks a little bit empty right now, but I'll add more stuff here later.

    !create menu

    Also:

    • Added the ability to edit/delete/report private messages
    • Links to external sites in markdown now open in a new tab
    • If you have the "Keep navigation sidebar open" setting enabled, it will now open by default
    5
    Alexandrite 0.8.1 - Cross-posting added! Bug fixes for instance taglines and nsfw thumbnails

    Alexandrite now has cross-posting! You can cross post from the '...' menu on posts:

    !crosspost menu

    You then pick a community from your subscriptions, or search for any other community, or directly enter the full name like alexandrite@lemmy.world if you want a very specific one and don't want to bother with searching.

    !community selector

    And links to cross-posts will now show when viewing a posts:

    !

    Alexandrite now matches Lemmy-UI handling taglines. If an instance has any taglines set it will now pick a random one instead of showing all of them.

    !taglines

    Lastly if you have NSFW thumbnail handling set to "Hide" or "Blur", it will now hide/blur thumbnails when a post is in a NSFW community, even if the post itself isn't marked NSFW, as the post is probably actually NSFW anyway and it's better to be safe than sorry.

    Github release notes

    11
    Alexandrite 0.8.0 - Light mode, link and vote button hue customization, nicer looking posts, post content preview on the List layout

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3256777

    > You're now able to theme Alexandrite a lot more, I'm excited to see what color schemes you all can come up with! > > alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github > > There's now a light mode! Alexandrite will now detect your system's default color scheme and use that, but you can force dark or light mode in the settings. This is the default hue/saturation on light mode: > > !light mode > > You can also change the saturation to make it as gray or as colorful as you want, plus you can customize the hues of links and up/downvote buttons (downvotes in screenshots just for demonstration!) > > ! > > ! > > ! > > ! > > Here are the settings for themes now. There are numbers next to all the sliders to make it easier to share customizations! I might add a few presets in the future. > > ! > > Posts look a little nicer. The content on them shows using similar styles to the previews on the cards. The "View Source" button is now a small button in the top right corner of the post. > > ! > > Some 0.7.0 features I didn't mention here before: > > There's an option when using the "List" post layout that shows a preview of the post content like the card layout does. > > ! > > ! > > Oh speaking of version numbers Alexandrite now releases with version numbers! You can find the version number in use on the "About Alexandrite" page. You can read more on the version number announcement.

    0
    Alexandrite 0.8.0 - Light mode, link and vote button hue customization, nicer looking posts, post content preview on the List layout

    You're now able to theme Alexandrite a lot more, I'm excited to see what color schemes you all can come up with!

    alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github

    There's now a light mode! Alexandrite will now detect your system's default color scheme and use that, but you can force dark or light mode in the settings. This is the default hue/saturation on light mode:

    !light mode

    You can also change the saturation to make it as gray or as colorful as you want, plus you can customize the hues of links and up/downvote buttons (downvotes in screenshots just for demonstration!)

    !

    !

    !

    !

    Here are the settings for themes now. There are numbers next to all the sliders to make it easier to share customizations! I might add a few presets in the future.

    !

    Posts look a little nicer. The content on them shows using similar styles to the previews on the cards. The "View Source" button is now a small button in the top right corner of the post.

    !

    Some 0.7.0 features I didn't mention here before:

    There's an option when using the "List" post layout that shows a preview of the post content like the card layout does.

    !

    !

    Oh speaking of version numbers Alexandrite now releases with version numbers! You can find the version number in use on the "About Alexandrite" page. You can read more on the version number announcement.

    9
    [EDIT: Released] Light mode, more theme customization options!

    EDIT: This is now released, see the 0.8.0 release announcement

    Please let me know if you have any feedback or find bugs! Note, if you are just seeing a bunch of exclamation marks instead of images and are viewing on alexandrite.app, that's a bug I just noticed, click the "Original Post" button on the post to view on lemmy.world. I'll fix that bug tonight.

    I've been working on a light mode, and I added hue customization for links and votes, plus you can customize the base theme saturation. Light/dark mode will be chosen based on your device's preferred setting, but you can set one specifically on the settings page.

    Here's the default colors for light mode (up/down votes for illustrative purposes lol):

    !

    If you don't want it to be so colorful, lower the saturation:

    !

    Or if you prefer a more 'plain' dark mode:

    !

    Here's all the settings:

    !

    Another screenshot for good measure:

    !___

    3
    Changes to Alexandrite's docker image releases

    tl;dr: Alexandrite now has version numbers, new official docker images are built only when publishing a new release instead of with every change to the main branch, currently 0.7.0 is the only/newest version (if you're using latest that's fine, it'll keep pointing to the newest version too). Now you'll find a version number at the bottom of the "About Alexandrite" page. Alexandrite.app continues to run the latest code from the main branch.

    For the technically inclined who want more background: the official site, alexandrite.app, has always been built off the main branch with auto-deploys. I can find a bug and within 5 minutes alexandrite.app can be updated with my fix. It's really convenient because if I deploy something then realize I missed an edge case I can just fix it quick and probably not very many people were ever impacted.

    When I first added self-hosting support I just made it publish images based on changes to main, and planned to add proper version numbers soon after (which I've now done). Now knowing people are self hosting using my docker images, and since I don't control how quickly fixes are deployed or when they update, I've needed to be extra cautious to make sure everything works perfectly the first time (or as close as I can manage by myself). I just want to avoid a scenario where I release a big update at 6:00PM, notice a bug and fix it by 6:05PM, but someone's self-hosted instance updates daily at 6:03PM and now that instance has to live with that bug for the next day.

    That's why I made this change. The main site can be the "bleeding edge" and then the official docker image releases might be slightly behind and hopefully be slightly more stable.

    Besides that, I've been thinking about creating somewhere to chat and share news/ideas of Alexandrite updates besides just this community. Thinking about making either a Discord server or a room on Matrix. Thoughts?

    2
    [Alexandrite] New card/compact layouts, account creation, discussion language settings, self hosting, comment search, show who's a mod in comments, more banning options

    Lot of new features since my last post!

    alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github

    You can now pick between list (default), compact, and card layouts for posts in the feed. Use card if you want to see large images and a preview of the post content as you scroll (card is my favorite now).

    !

    !

    Use compact if you want to see as many posts as possible.

    !

    The rest of these are things I've announced over at the Alexandrite community (!alexandrite@lemmy.world) but not here yet.

    You can now create an account through Alexandrite.

    !

    !

    Your instance/community/personal settings for discussion languages are now all taken into consideration, so if you ever saw a language_not_allowed error that should be fixed now. You can also set your discussion languages in the Lemmy tab of the settings (there still isn't any interface language or localization support yet but I want to fix that at some point).

    You can now self host Alexandrite, check the Github readme for details. It's also on a.lemmy.world if you hadn't heard already.

    You can search in comments and next/prev through the results

    !

    Comments by community moderators will now have a "Mod" badge next to their name.

    !

    Mods can also chose to remove content or make a temporary ban from the ban dialog.

    !

    4
    [Edit: Relesed] Card/Compact post layouts! Looking for testers

    EDIT: This is now released.

    Hey! I'm almost done with a new feature and was looking for some feedback. I'm adding alternate post layouts for when viewing posts in a feed. There's a new setting for it:

    !

    (List is the default, the only style until now)

    Card layout shows the post's image at full height, and the first few lines of the embedded description/post content (got some of the ideas from Sync).

    !

    Compact Layout uses smaller thumbnails and fonts to fit a bit more on screen.

    !

    With this I'm also working towards mobile support. You'll find things generally work a bit better now with this.

    Anyways, let me know how things go, if you find any bugs, or if you have any other feedback.

    3
    Some recent updates! Language settings, account creation, more options for community bans, mod badges in comments, bug fixes

    Hey all, wanted to let you know about the stuff I've added in the last few days.

    You can now configure your languages in the "Lemmy" tab in settings! Along with this Alexandrite now respects your instance/community's configured discussion languages, as well as your language settings. If you ever saw a language_not_allowed error when trying to post or comment, this should fix it!

    !

    You can now create an account from within Alexandrite! From the login page just enter an instance and you'll see a new button to create an account

    !

    And the account creation should have all the same things you're used to seeing. Now if you're introducing someone to Lemmy and send them a link to Alexandrite you won't need to include a "well if you want to make an account go here first, then go back to this site" caveat.

    !

    Moderators! There are a couple changes for you too. First off when banning a user you can now do temporary bans, and can remove the user's content just like in the official UI.

    !

    When viewing comments under a post, or when viewing posts on a community you will now see a badge next to comments/posts made by moderators. Note: the moderator list needs to be loaded separately for each community, which is why you won't see the badges if you're viewing from the home/search pages (it's one server request to load a list of posts, if each list of post subsequently had to make 50 individual requests for communities that'd be pretty taxing on the servers so until you view a post from that community you won't see "Mod" there).

    !

    A few bugs that were fixed:

    • If you ctrl+click (or cmd+click on Mac) to open a post in a new tab, it will now do that instead of opening it in the overlay/column
    • If a thread is locked you won't be able to comment in the thread.
    • Admins now can feature posts in Local
    • Instances that have disabled downvoting (like Beehaw) won't show the downvote button
    • If you're using Chrome, the "Reply" tooltip doesn't get stuck open anymore.
    0
    [Edit: released!] Looking for testers! Self hosting support
    github.com Build software better, together

    GitHub is where people build software. More than 100 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 330 million projects.

    Build software better, together

    EDIT: this has been released! Next I'm working on adding versions to the images published.

    Self hosting support finally!

    I have a branch up with self hosting instructions, a Dockerfile, and images published to Github's container registry. If anyone wanted to help test it out it's available on this branch (and the PR).

    There are a few configuration options you can change as you wish to disable some of the login page links, change the default instance, and optionally only allow logins to a specific instance.

    The published image is just slightly out of date since I changed the publish rules, but at the moment it's only missing some extra validation to check if an instance url is valid.

    Let me know if you run into any issues or have anything you think I should change or better explain.

    0
    Alexandrite - Account switcher, shareable URLs, comment reply context hints

    cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2238542

    > alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github > > Some big updates just arrived! > > First, the instance you're on is now in the page URL, which means now you can send links to posts on Alexandrite to friends without them having to set an instance first (or know anything about Lemmy). > > ! > > That helps to power the next feature which is an account switcher. This lets you switch between all of your accounts on the instance you're browsing! You can also set a default account to use for that instance. Now you could be logged in on multiple accounts across multiple instances just in different browser tabs if you wanted. > > ! > > Because the instance is now in the URL, if your main account is on lemmy.world but you have an account on programming.dev and a friend sends you a link to a programming.dev post on Alexandrite you'll be signed in as your programming.dev user in that browser tab. > > Two clicks to switch which instance you're using (based on what accounts you have) > > ! > > If you have accounts on more than one instance you can pick which instance you see by default when you go to https://alexandrite.app with no instance in the url, or chose to login on any of the accounts you've signed in as previously from the login page. (And in case anyone was curious, no it does not store passwords). > > ! > > Another new feature I recently added is a little hint for what a comment is a reply to once you finish reading a deeper thread, easier to understand with a screenshot: > > ! > > You can also favorite communities to make them show up on the top in the left hand sidebar. > > ! > > Next I planned on working on stuff for self hosting, so stay tuned. >

    0
    Comment searching on posts, forgot to announce this feature!

    I just realized I never mentioned in yesterday's announcement that I improved the way searching in comments works earlier this week and thought I should mention it.

    tl;dr: There's a search bar next to the comment sort options, typing in there will highlight all the comments that contain your search text, and a second floating nav bar shows up which lets you click next/previous buttons to scroll between search matches.

    !

    If you're curious: some technical background. Comments (and basically any other list in Alexandrite) are rendered using a "virtual list" or "virtualized rendering", this is pretty complicated but really common optimization used on sites/apps that let you scroll infinitely as it lets you show a huge list of stuff without the site getting really laggy. It does this by only actually rendering as many comments (or posts etc) as can fit on screen, and skipping the rest, adjusting what's shown to wherever you scroll. So if you're on a post with 1000 comments and you've scrolled down quite a ways, instead of all 1000 comments being on the page maybe only comments 220-230 are there. To an end user you should usually never notice this, but if you scroll really fast, or hit the "scroll to top" button you might sometimes notice the page is blank before a post or comment pops in to fill the empty space a moment later.

    The only issue with that, is if not all of the comments are actually on the page you can't really Ctrl+f to search for something in comments, as only a few of the comments are on the page at once. So I needed an in-site way to search through comments, which is where this came in!

    1
    Alexandrite - Account switcher, shareable URLs, comment reply context hints

    alexandrite.app - !alexandrite@lemmy.world - Github

    Some big updates just arrived!

    First, the instance you're on is now in the page URL, which means now you can send links to posts on Alexandrite to friends without them having to set an instance first (or know anything about Lemmy).

    !

    That helps to power the next feature which is an account switcher. This lets you switch between all of your accounts on the instance you're browsing! You can also set a default account to use for that instance. Now you could be logged in on multiple accounts across multiple instances just in different browser tabs if you wanted.

    !

    Because the instance is now in the URL, if your main account is on lemmy.world but you have an account on programming.dev and a friend sends you a link to a programming.dev post on Alexandrite you'll be signed in as your programming.dev user in that browser tab.

    Two clicks to switch which instance you're using (based on what accounts you have)

    !

    If you have accounts on more than one instance you can pick which instance you see by default when you go to https://alexandrite.app with no instance in the url, or chose to login on any of the accounts you've signed in as previously from the login page. (And in case anyone was curious, no it does not store passwords).

    !

    Another new feature I recently added is a little hint for what a comment is a reply to once you finish reading a deeper thread, easier to understand with a screenshot:

    !

    You can also favorite communities to make them show up on the top in the left hand sidebar.

    !

    Next I planned on working on stuff for self hosting, so stay tuned.

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    Looking for testers! Really cool account switcher & page URLS with the instance to share posts on Alexandrite easy!

    EDIT: This is now released on the main site, enjoy!

    Original post:

    I've got some big stuff I'm planning on releasing either later tonight or tomorrow, and I wanted some testers if anyone's willing! The link is at the end of the post.

    The instance you're browsing is now in the page url, so if you're logged in on lemmy.world, you'll be (once released) on https://alexandrite.app/lemmy.world/.... Now you can share links directly to Alexandrite to friends and they can view it without needing to set a home instance anymore.

    But the real cool feature is a new account switcher! This lets you switch between all of your accounts on the instance you're browsing! You can also set a default account to use for that instance. Now you could be logged in on multiple accounts across multiple instances just in different browser tabs if you wanted.

    !

    Two clicks to switch which instance you're using (based on what accounts you have)

    !

    If you have accounts on more than one instance you can pick which instance you see by default when you go to https://alexandrite.app with no instance in the url, or chose to login on any of the accounts you've signed in as.

    !

    You'll need to login again because it's a new url, but I wrote some code to migrate to the new way I'm handling accounts so you won't be logged out when this is all released.

    Please let me know if you find any bugs!

    0
    New feature! See what a comment is a reply to when in large threads!

    I just added a new feature I think is neat. When one part of a comment thread ends and the next comment is a reply to an earlier comment now there is an up arrow icon you can hover over to see a bit of the parent comment. Now it should be much easier to understand what people are talking about without having to collapse all the comments along the way.

    Little easier to understand with a picture:

    !

    0
    sheodox sheodox @lemmy.world

    I'm the developer of a desktop-first Lemmy client called Alexandrite.

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