I just released v3.2.9 of Ktistec!

You can now customize the secondary menu on your home page. This is the menu that links to your posts, drafts, notifications, etc. Posts, drafts, and notifications are fixed, but you can change the final three—they default to bookmarks, followers, and following. Edit the links on your Settings page in the section titled Pinned Collections. I typically replace the defaults with hashtags I'm following and threads I'm actively participating in.

I am slowly adding functionality to support Mastodon API compatible clients. In line with that effort, OAuth access tokens are now associated with sessions, which makes it possible for clients that authenticate via OAuth (instead of username/password) to access all of the existing API.

I use this extensively when building scripts to automate my Ktistec instance. A script can authenticate and cache the access token in a secure keystore. Since access tokens have a limited lifespan and can be individually invalidated, a compromised access token does not force me to change my password!

Here's the full list of changes:

Added

• Support for customizing the secondary menu with pinned collections.

Fixed

• Thread rendering no longer fails when drafts are present.

Changed

• Content warnings are now preserved when replying to posts. (fixes #136)
• OAuth access tokens are now associated with sessions.
• Attachments are deleted when draft objects are destroyed.
• Actor icons and images are deleted when replaced or unset.

A recent poll prioritized emoji reactions and quote posts. I see dozens of quote posts every day, so that's where I plan to focus next.

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

I didn't think I'd ever pull it off 😀, but the new editor framework is complete and with it support for creating polls. One nice extra—you can now choose which content editor to use (rich text or Markdown) on a per-post basis without updating your settings.

The full set of changes in this release:

Added

• Front-end support for creating polls.
• Editor selection support for content, polls, and optional metadata (name, summary, etc.).
• Poll expiry notifications for poll authors.

Fixed

• Poll closed_at handling for drafts and remote polls.

I'll try not to be quite as ambitious for the next release! 😅

#ktistec #crystallang #activitypub #fediverse

A couple of summaries of recent polls:

Is building for browsers without JavaScript enabled an antiquated idea?

87% No / 13% Yes

I interpret this to mean 1) progressive enhancement still matters, 2) accessibility and resilience are important (maybe even at the expense of pure convenience).

Which distinctive Fediverse capability would you most like to see added (to Ktistec) next?

Emoji reactions and Quote-posts tied at 37% each

For what it's worth, I'm actively looking into emoji reactions. These seem to be most popular in servers other than Mastodon, and I'd like to encourage more diversity.

I very much appreciate everyone's participation! Please reply if I'm missing nuance.

#ktistec

sometimes i feel like building software is akin to throwing myself off a cliff and then hoping i can build the thing i envisioned a moment ago before i hit the ground. does anyone else get that?

i decided to tear apart the monolithic editor in #ktistec and to replace it with a configurable system of editing components. how hard could that be, i thought... well, the ground approaches and i only just got a just-about-works proof-of-concept complete!

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

working with ameba has been a treat. #ktistec is now all properly linted.

out of a few dozen rules, i disabled only five and tweaked the configuration of five more. that's a pretty good set of defaults. i also added a few custom rules covering spec hygiene. i highly recommend it!

#crystallang #ameba

adding ameba to #ktistec.

#crystallang #ameba

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