Xylight

verification for lemmy apps: LemmyApps/#2

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/39906482

There was like 8 prereleases for this because i kept changing stuff. This is actually going to be from v1.31.1 and v1.31.2.

Biggest changes

Command palette

• 
• Press / or ctrl + p and start typing to instantly go to a page, switch themes, switch accounts, etc.

Theming changes

• You can now have multiple presets for themes, and there are 5 default presets. (Default, Classic, AMOLED, Catppuccin, Lightly)
• Admins can set their own default theme for photon with PUBLIC_THEME.

New markdown renderer

• Photon now uses svelte-markdown for markdown rendering, which lets me use custom components for markdown.
• Instead of only style changes, I can run actual code, meaning images can be made expandable and codeblocks can be copyable.

Lots of languages

• There are a ton of languages thanks to the community.
• English
• Hebrew
• Bulgarian
• Chinese
• Dutch
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Japanese
• Polish
• Portuguese

Minor features

• New "link actions" menu
  • This will have options for archive sites to bypass paywalls, etc.
  • Media bias action was moved next to here, or in here depending on your selected post style.
• Allow uploading multiple images at a time
• Select menus use my own components now, making them more powerful
• Add infinite scroll to communities too
• Add uploaded media/voted posts in your profile page
• Using my own service worker now, so caches should work properly

Other stuff

• Use sharper icons for readability

There was like 8 prereleases for this because i kept changing stuff. This is actually going to be from v1.31.1 and v1.31.2.

Biggest changes

Command palette

• 
• Press / or ctrl + p and start typing to instantly go to a page, switch themes, switch accounts, etc.

Theming changes

• You can now have multiple presets for themes, and there are 5 default presets. (Default, Classic, AMOLED, Catppuccin, Lightly)
• Admins can set their own default theme for photon with PUBLIC_THEME.

New markdown renderer

• Photon now uses svelte-markdown for markdown rendering, which lets me use custom components for markdown.
• Instead of only style changes, I can run actual code, meaning images can be made expandable and codeblocks can be copyable.

Lots of languages

• There are a ton of languages thanks to the community.
• English
• Hebrew
• Bulgarian
• Chinese
• Dutch
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Japanese
• Polish
• Portuguese

Minor features

• New "link actions" menu
  • This will have options for archive sites to bypass paywalls, etc.
  • Media bias action was moved next to here, or in here depending on your selected post style.
• Allow uploading multiple images at a time
• Select menus use my own components now, making them more powerful
• Add infinite scroll to communities too
• Add uploaded media/voted posts in your profile page
• Using my own service worker now, so caches should work properly

Other stuff

• Use sharper icons for readability

I've been messed around with random features in photon, and i tried something stupid today.

I was experimenting with an AI post summary feature, (just because i wanted an excuse to make a cool animation) but as I was using it, it actually ended up kind of useful.

If I were to implement this feature, it would only work like this:

• The user would have to opt-in manually.
• The user would need to specify what AI service they wish to use.
• The user would have to specify their own API key, if the service requires one.

In the end, I probably won't add this, since you can just copy/paste the content into an AI app. But it could also be slightly more convenient.

What do you think?

I just wanted to say thanks to all the translators of photon! Even if you only changed 1 word, translating this large app is not easy, especially because it's hard to find the context for certain actions.

With all of your help, Photon is now available in 13 languages!

English, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Polish, Chinese, and Portuguese!

If you want to help translate, you can do so at https://weblate.xylight.dev. You can translate as little or as much as you want!

This is applicable to almost any piece of software with text in it. When starting your new app, you should make sure you are using a separate language file for the strings in your app. This makes text reusable, and you can change it all in one place.

Once your app gains a community, if you did this, you can also get translators!

With Photon i made the massive mistake of hardcoding everything up until the app became massive, and my PR for un-hardcoding all the strings looks like this:

It was worth it though! Because the community has translated it into 11 languages!

Photon has a feature on links which gets data from Media Bias Fact Check to determine its media bias. However, I've seen controversy on lemmy.world's bot with this, and I'm not sure if this is the best place to get the data from.

Should I use a different dataset? like allsides'?

A lot of admins trying to host photon have been unable to after i switched from Node to Bun server. Bun is a newer server that is significantly faster, but it seems to have caused issues when hosting for weird reasons when people try to host it.

Starting from v1.31.2, I will publish node images as well as bun images, it's very simple to access:

Instead of ghcr.io/xyphyn/photon:tag, do ghcr.io/xyphyn/photon:tag-node

When I changed the default theme I saw someone say I should name the classic theme "AMOLED". Apparently, the theme was so dark to a lot of people that it appeared black! I guess my designer's eye and working on photon for over a year made me not notice this.

The classic theme uses a very dark gray for the main background, and an even darker gray for the sides. There was never any black, except in very very early versions of Photon.

TL;DR: nonstandard community and user links should work properly now, when people waste their time by doing [!community@instance.url](https://instance.url/c/community) instead of [!community@instance.url](/c/community@instance.url)

test

This will be a test post for markdown, as I'm switching to a faster markdown renderer that will allow me to do some cool stuff, like allow expanding images and running my code in markdown.

It might release with v1.31.2.

arguably a bigger update than v1.31, lots of backend changes for better speed

i've been using this command palette a lot because it makes doing everything so fast. let me know if there's any action or link you'd like added, since it's very easy to do.

What's Changed

• feat: add a command palette by @Xyphyn in https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon/pull/364

  • Press / or ctrl + p or right click the photon logo to bring up the command palette
  • Instantly start typing to find a link, or run an action

• design: Make compact mode even more compact

• misc: add infinite scroll to communities too

• code: rewrite how post feeds are handled, improving speed and cleanliness and allowing more opportunities for caching.

• misc: add support for upvoted/downvoted posts and uploaded media in the profile page

• strings: tweak some strings for better clarity

• Vertical postlink layout for mobile by @sevonj in https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon/pull/360

Full Changelog: https://github.com/Xyphyn/photon/compare/v1.31.0-fix.1...v1.31.1-rc.1

I'm working on a command palette for Photon, which will allow you to press ctrl + p or / to open a prompt where you can type and go to a page or a recent post instantly.

Are there any actions or links that you'd want me to add?