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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by ptz@dubvee.org to c/lemmyapps@lemmy.world

Feature: Alternate Source Selector

Implementation Difficulty: Easy

Live Example: https://tesseract.dubvee.org/c/news@lemmy.world (The "link" icon to the left of the post's URL.)

Rationale: I'm quite annoyed with people whining "pAyWallED!" in news post comments, and this is Tesseract's way of addressing that (for users of that UI, anyway)

Description:

On posts with links (that aren't images, audio, video, Youtube, or other media), a dropdown menu is added with links to alternate sources.

Each one will search for the URL in the selected archive provider (currently Ghost Archive, Archive Today, 12ft.io) or Ground News (new in 1.4.5).

Lemmy-UI kind of does this, but completely ass-backwards (only during post creation to set the post link; I'll spare you my spiel about how that's a horrible vector for misinformation).

On Youtube-like posts (YT, Invidious, or Piped), the options are changed to go to the canonical YT link, your preferred Invidious instance, or your preferred Piped instance, but that's just a secondary (but still nice) feature of that component.

Would love to see something like this more widely adopted and am more than happy to answer any implementation questions.

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[-] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 65 points 1 month ago

Wow, this is great! Thanks!

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 44 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, it's been pretty useful.

This is also why I love open source. In corporate, it would be all "patent that so no one can do anything remotely similar" and with FOSS, I'm like "here is a cool thing you might like; please take".

Also, I may have a "Part II" of this post for the remote instance browsing feature. Every time I've shown that to someone, they look at me like it's witchcraft. Would love to see that more widely adopted as well.

[-] cactusupyourbutt@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

whats the remote instance browsing feature?

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 1 month ago

Can list the communities of any remote Lemmy instance and one-click subscribe to them.

[-] jwr1@kbin.earth 25 points 1 month ago

That's actually a great idea! I guess I have no choice but to steal it, so here's the issue for Interstellar.

[-] xnx@slrpnk.net 25 points 1 month ago

This is a great idea! @aeharding@vger.social could voyager add this?

[-] aeharding@vger.social 24 points 1 month ago

Definitely for the PWA and f-droid builds, but idk how happy Google and Apple would be to have an app doing this in their stores. IANAL

[-] wrekone@lemmyf.uk 6 points 1 month ago
[-] Lichtblitz@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago

Thanks for such an enjoyable App!

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago

Do it, Jerboa

[-] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 20 points 1 month ago

I added an issue for Mlem support. 🤞

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago

Can you also add a ticket for them to support spoilers?

[-] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago
[-] USNWoodwork@lemmy.world 15 points 1 month ago

Lemmy has apps available? I've been using a browser this whole time. I used the stock reddit app for years too. I'm such a dunce. Can someone point me toward a decent app?

[-] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago

I use Jerboa myself (was on RiF before), though I've also heard good things about Voyager.

[-] mjhelto@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

I use both, myself. Jerboa is my NSFW Lemmy login and Voyager is my daily driver for Lemmy. I think both are really awesome, but Voyager's "hide read posts" saves my sanity!

[-] irreticent@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

The Boost for Lemmy app is pretty good.

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

https://lemmy.world/comment/11514952

It seems to fail at spoilers, superscript, and subscript.

[-] Asclepiaz@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

I barely know what lemmy is, something something fediverse. I use the sync app, moved over from sync for Reddit.

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Sync fails at tables, subscript, and block quote separation.

https://lemmy.world/comment/11514952

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 7 points 1 month ago

https://www.lemmyapps.com/

Can filter by platform and feature :)

[-] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 7 points 1 month ago

My favorites are sync and thunder, but I recommend thunder since it's FOSS, i'm just waiting for hold to peek.

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

https://lemmy.ca/post/26097116?scrollToComments=true

There are 3 apps that pass the "Does this actually display posts correctly?" test:

  • Jerboa
  • Alexandrite
  • Voyager

Everything else should be considered in a testing phase. Don't pay for an app that can't do spoilers correctly.

Edit: Don't pay for an app that doesn't format text correctly in general, but not doing spoilers correctly is probably the most jarring.

[-] Xylight@lemdro.id 3 points 1 month ago

That's not a great interpretation of that test, as some can fail for reasons other than spoilers, or some clients may be better than ones with higher scores (as explained in the disclaimers page)

[-] DerisionConsulting@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 month ago

I agree that you shouldn't pay for any app that doesn't format text correctly, no matter how it fails, but I think the worst offender is spoilers.

Something being left-aligned in a table instead of centre-aligned probably isn't going to destroy the intent, message, or general flow of a post.
A bot that makes posts 4 lines before you expand it but is instead always 24+ lines long, is a little jarring and disruptive. A post with a riddle, joke, or piece of trivia whose answer is displayed ruins the point.
Granted, the apps that turn ~subscript~ into ~~strike-through~~ are also shitty, but I don't see subscript being used nearly as often.

[-] alteredracoon@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

Artic On iOS has been really enjoyable for me. Voyager is a close second. My biggest pet peeve with voyager is not hiding the bars on scroll. Otherwise I would use it.

Voyager for iOS. Not sure about the robot os.

[-] dumbass@leminal.space 2 points 1 month ago

Voyager is on robot os as well.

[-] Jourei@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

I just installed the default app that it prompted me with. I wonder if other apps can have meaningful more features?

[-] WanderingVentra@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Jerboa? I don't mind it, but I'd experiment with other apps if there's a chance you think you'll like their UI better. It's all about preference. That was the thing I hated about Reddit losing all their apps.

[-] Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I wish my browser did this when it hits a paywall or a broken link.

[-] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 month ago
[-] loam@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago

Thank you, this is desperately needed to clean up extra link previews and help lessen bot posts.

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

Cool! While I'm not sure how messy this would be, would it be possible to let the user add/remove options?

  • It could avoid any headaches for you if a company doesn't like a certain option being included
  • People can remove the options they don't use, reducing clutter
  • If you add a link in the menu to some fediverse post, people can suggest changes to the defaults, or exchange their personalizations
[-] ptz@dubvee.org 5 points 1 month ago

I'm more proposing the general idea to be adopted by other apps; just using my implementation as an example.

would it be possible to let the user add/remove options?

Add? Definitely (and fairly easily). Remove? Not so much (at least in my implementation). Those are the only 3 I know of right now that work reliably. If there are ever more than 3, I would probably move to a dynamic method where you'd just enable certain ones from a list (kind of like Searx-NG if you're familiar with that). A user adding a custom one would work like adding a search provider to a browser (e.g. https://archiver.example.com/?url=%s)

In practice, I tend to need all 3 depending on the source URL in the post. Some don't have a copy of the target or don't render certain sources as well as others, so having a few to choose from is often needed. Allowing user-custom ones is a great idea though.

If you add a link in the menu to some fediverse post, people can suggest changes to the defaults, or exchange their personalizations

I sort-of do that already with suggestions for the built-in Invidious/Piped instances list, but ask that they be submitted via Github or the Tesseract Lemmy community (users can define their own Inv/Piped instances as of a few versions ago). Dunno if I'd want the link to that in the selector menu, but could easily link it from the settings panel where you'd hypothetically edit the archive sources.

Thanks for the feedback; I'll probably work on adding support to at least add custom archive services in one of the next releases (and probably eventually work toward a fully customizable version).

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

That all sounds good to me, thanks for sharing the idea! Looking forward to seeing more implementations of this

[-] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago

Sweet, that's a great feature!

[-] Xylight@lemdro.id 4 points 1 month ago
[-] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 1 month ago
[-] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Like the concept very much, but also please just stop linking to paywalled articles folks. I've stopped whining but it's a downvote at least every time.

[-] Gingerlegs@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Thank you, kind internet stranger

[-] moon@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 month ago

Could just submit a pull request instead of asking for a feature

[-] ptz@dubvee.org 1 points 1 month ago

Possibly, depending on the app and developer.

[-] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Impressive!

What do you imagine might happen if reddit added this feature tomorrow?

Mainly thinking in terms of potential reactions by news agencies & content hosts, or impact on journalism.

this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2024
363 points (98.4% liked)

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