The two big features in release v3.2.7 of Ktistec are back end support for creating polls (the front end is coming in the next release) and advanced theming support—specifically, a rich vocabulary of CSS class values and data attributes on which to build a theme. The full set is documented in the README. I'll post more on how I'm using these later this week.

Here is the full set of notable changes:

Added

• Back-end support for creating polls.
• Advanced theming support with new classes, data attributes, and view helpers.
• Task status display on admin page showing running and imminently scheduled task counts.

Fixed

• Poll vote form now correctly submits Question ID.

Changed

• Move location of Ktistec version notice. (fixes #133)
• Updated admin page for better accessibility and less clutter.

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

I took a detour and worked on alt text editing in release v3.2.6 rather than continuing with the polls backend. I also continued to fix bugs and to add polish. Here's the full set of changes:

Added

• Support for editing alt text in the Trix editor. (fixes #52)

Fixed

• Render fallback icon when actor is down.
• Remove blank figcaption elements.
• Emojify display names in notifications.

Changed

• Color notifications label by type of unread notifications.
• Render lines instead of points for server starts in metrics.

(I'm editing this post in Markdown—the new feature in the last release!)

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

Would it be useful to customize the rendering and presentation of posts by actor?

I follow a lot of actors and I get a lot of posts, and I'd like the posts from some actors to stand out, and I'd like the posts from others to be more inconspicuous. Or maybe I want to use color to help visually categorize posts from actors I follow, based on subject matter.

Does this sound like a useful feature?

#ktistec #fediverse

I rolled out a lot of features over the last several weeks and created a lot of bugs in the process. Release v3.2.5 of Ktistec is mostly about fixing those bugs. I did implement two requested features, however: support for editing posts in Markdown and support for Open Graph metadata. Here's the full list of new features:

Added

• Support for editing posts in Markdown. (fixes #25)
• Support for Open Graph metadata on actors and objects. (fixes #71)
• Support for uploading a site image.
• Internal table of contents page.
• Poll expiry notifications.

🎄 I'm working on support for poll creation and management now. It's also time for a performance improvement pass or two.

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

The big feature in release v3.2.4 of Ktistec is support for viewing and voting on Mastodon polls (AKA FEP-9967: Polls). This feature took a surprising amount of work. Some of the effort was due to my struggles with visual design, but getting the behavior right was also tricky. For example, a "vote" is just an ActivityPub Note, but unlike other notes, it shouldn't appear in a poll's replies (it could, but that would be redundant and confusing). So I had to add exceptions throughout the code to deal with this. A custom Vote object type would have been nice in the original implementation.

Added

• Support for viewing and voting on polls. (fixes #49)
• Added tooltip to notifications menu item summarizing new notifications.

Fixed

• Improved wrapping of actor panel follow/refresh information. (fixes #130)
• Autocomplete now works correctly when adjacent to a Trix attachment.
• Image title attributes are now preserved.

Changed

• Moved avatars to the bottom of the object detail view.

Thank you @jayvii for the build fix!

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

Release v3.2.3 of Ktistec includes two big features:

• FEP-1b12 Group federation
  Improved federation with Lemmy and other forum-type servers. Ktistec supports community and thread follow/unfollow, as well as up-vote/like (down-vote/dislike is supported but there is no visual affordance for that yet).
• FEP-9098 Custom emojis
  Support for viewing custom emoji in posts and on actor profiles. Ktistec does not yet support custom emoji creation and management.

The full changelog:

Added

• Support for viewing custom emoji in posts and on actor profiles.
• Actor type (Person, Group, etc.) overlay badges on actor panels.
• Colored fallback avatars for actors without icons.
• Support for robots.txt.

Fixed

• Federation with Lemmy and other servers that support FEP-1b12.
  • Shared inbox support for local actors.
  • Serialization of Undo includes the undone activity.
  • Serialization of Like and Dislike does not.
• Notify only once for an object's first received activity.

Changed

• Accumulate metrics by hour for finer granularity.
• Clean up presentation of public followers/following pages.

The next release will include support for Mastodon polls (FEP-9967).

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

I've improved federation support for Lemmy and other servers that support FEP-1b12 Group Federation.

I had to increase the number of available file descriptors on my personal server 4x because of the resultant inbound volume of ActivityPub activities! I liked a federated post and DOSed my server.

#ktistec #activitypub #fediverse

The big feature in release v3.2.2 of Ktistec is pinned posts with support for the Mastodon Featured Posts collection. Federation works both ways—pin a post on Ktistec and it will show up as a pinned post on Mastodon and vice versa. When you refresh an actor profile, Ktistec also fetches and updates the actor's pinned posts. This is another small step in the direction of supporting all features that Mastodon-compatible client applications expect to access via the API. It's also useful in its own right.

The other major feature, which I posted a short video demonstrating here, is X-Ray Mode. X-Ray Mode is a developer and power-user tool for inspecting ActivityPub JSON-LD representations of actors, objects, and other content. Pressing Ctrl+Shift+X on any page displays the data behind the page—like an x-ray. You can:

• Cached Version: View the local JSON-LD representation stored in the Ktistec database
• Remote Version: Fetch and view the original JSON-LD representation from the source server
• Navigation: Click on any ActivityPub IRI to navigate to that object
• History: Use Alt+Left and Alt+Right to navigate through your viewing history

This feature is useful for debugging federation issues, understanding ActivityPub structures, and verifying how content is stored and represented.

Here's the full changelog for the release:

Added

• Support for pinned posts and the Mastodon "featured posts" collection.
• X-Ray Mode for viewing and navigating JSON-LD resource (actor, object, etc.) representations.
• Back links on thread pages for easier navigation. (fixes #1)
• License page for LibreJS compliance. (fixes #127)
• Highlighting of recently fetched hashtagged posts.

Changed

• Improved presentation of audio and video media.
• Refactored theming/styling implementation.

The next release will focus on smaller features and bug fixes.

Enjoy!

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse