What's new, mid-July
A few new things on PopsicleBoat this week. Like always it’s all additions, bug fixes, etc. I post these for the people using it, but I’ll drop them here too.
1 - Unread counts. The All Posts link in the sidebar now shows a badge with how many posts you haven’t read, and they’re listed at the top of the feed. Reading one clears just that one, and there’s a “Mark all as read” button for when it piles up. (I wrote up the surprisingly annoying part of getting that right here.) Once you’ve got a few spaces going, your home page opens with recent posts instead of the welcome page.
2 - A website on your profile. There’s a website field now, for your blog or wherever you live online. It shows under your name so people know who you are. It’s got a rel="me" on it too, so if your site links back, Mastodon, etc, can verify it’s really you.
3 - Reply notifications in the browser. You can get a browser notification when someone replies to you, without handing over an email address. It’s opt in, obviously. Your browser asks first, nothing personal leaves your machine, and if a reply lands while your laptop’s closed it’s waiting when you open it.
4 - Alt text on media. When you attach an image you can give it alt text now, at upload or after, so screen readers can describe it.
5 - Download your data. There’s a button in settings to download your stuff, profile and posts and replies and media links, all in one file. I don’t want anyone stuck here who doesn’t want to be.
6 - One link for the comment-section thing. If you know someone with a blog who wants comments without running a comment system, popsicleboat.com/comments lays it all out on one page now.
Basically all in the service of making things easier for you to use the whole project for your whole project, or just part, or none of it at all.
If you’ve been reading me, you probably picked up on the fact I’m mostly just having fun making it possible for the web to be easier for people like you to create for. If’n you want. ;)
