Post APsN4efN3g7zc0HmNs by otto@hackers.town
(DIR) More posts by otto@hackers.town
(DIR) Post #APsN4au72vXjwZ9Uo4 by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-21T19:48:46Z
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Oof, this is such a not-good UI for cross-server interactions on Mastodon. Who wants to copypasta into a search box that may or may not do the desired thing?Really makes me want to build a browser extension to finesse this between home & away servers.
(DIR) Post #APsN4bTCwRcFhPZWVc by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-22T20:08:29Z
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Hmm, tried doing the search-to-follow thing on my personal instance. It came up with nothing for the person I tried to follow.Tried again with three other instances where I have accounts. Two found the person, one didn't. I'll probably dig into Mastodon code further to see how search works - but does it only search the local database and only know about people whose toots have flowed through already? If so, that seems... suboptimal for finding people to follow on a new instance.
(DIR) Post #APsN4bpXbPTqog1MJs by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-21T19:51:02Z
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I also miss the old behavior with a pop-up that asked for your home server name before just going ahead and executing the fave or boost or follow. I'm assuming there were problems with that model which drove this change, but ugh.
(DIR) Post #APsN4cASLeD7rXo3v6 by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-22T20:42:00Z
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Ohhhhh you know what I bet my instance's problem is?Gotdang DNS.
(DIR) Post #APsN4cagm7C7Au50oC by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-22T20:10:05Z
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I could imagine defederation & blocking have a say in this too, but my personal instance is currently naively open to whatever rolls in. Also wondering if it's a misconfiguration on my instance, but that would be good to learn about too
(DIR) Post #APsN4cmk3IprmHiday by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-22T20:43:43Z
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Sure enough. It was DNS.:headdesk::headdesk::headdesk::headdesk::headdesk:
(DIR) Post #APsN4cy5N7uSLT1hHE by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-21T20:02:57Z
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A few folks have clued me in on this existing browser extension. Looks like UI changes for 4.0 busted it because they're forced to employ hacks.What could be even better is if Mastodon actually officially supported a browser extension that (with permission) clued an away server in on a visiting user's home server for interactions. The extension manages the choice and maybe proxies to the away server API, the server posts messages to the extension for interactions. Could be relatively seamless.https://github.com/rugk/mastodon-simplified-federation
(DIR) Post #APsN4e8P2FkxxkrRzs by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-22T20:46:17Z
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(DIR) Post #APsN4eIKRLhESXVNT6 by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-21T20:04:28Z
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(Like, really, this should be the job of a User Agent - i.e. the browser)
(DIR) Post #APsN4eKSJROiZ8V4me by lmorchard@hackers.town
2022-11-21T20:30:03Z
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An example of this sort of browser extension & page interaction would be Firefox Color, which I worked on a bunch of years ago.Without the extension, you can play around with Firefox themes in a web app UI.With the extension installed, the extension accepts messages from the page to modify the current Firefox theme, acting as a narrow proxy to an in-browser API with the web page as the UI. (The extension itself offers no UI)https://color.firefox.com/
(DIR) Post #APsN4efN3g7zc0HmNs by otto@hackers.town
2022-11-22T20:47:18Z
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@lmorchard DNS responds to port 53Herbie the Love Bug is 53Therefore DNS = A Bug