Still going!
I’ve been exploring other projects recently but I still enjoy maintaining and improving Photon.
Lemmy v1
Support for Lemmy v1 (API v4) is complete as for all currently existing functions. I’ve finished a few of the new Lemmy features (post tags, multi communities) but still have some others to add.
This update also comes with a lot of technical improvements and UX improvements, and should fix a few long standing issues. I’m quite excited to merge it.
The way I implemented this update was to rebase the entire client on the API v4 schemas and structures. While this was great for my overall code quality, and helps me future proof this client, it means I now have to write a compatibility adapter to support API v3. To make things worse, I have to rewrite the entire Piefed adapter (unless I do some cursed setup like Piefed adapter -> v3 adapter -> v4/base).
Android app
You can now install an APK for Photon! It has a few minor issues but should be pretty usable, and it has edge-to-edge support unlike the PWA. You can get it from https://github.com/xyphyn/photon/releases, going to the latest one, and downloading app-release.apk. You can paste the GitHub link into obtainium, too.
Future
I have a lot of UX improvements to make, but I’m waiting until after Lemmy V1 releases to make them (I don’t want to bloat the PR too much). I want to make things more “reliable”, by fixing the way pages are cached, keeping scrolling states intact, adding “drafts” everywhere in case you accidentally delete things, and overall keeping everything in sync. Some changes in the API v4 PR provide the first step to achieving this.
I’m planning to make a “demo” version of Photon that has a heavily curated default feed (not for standard use! phtn.app will remain untouched) so that I can show it in my resume or something.
Closing
Thanks to everyone who uses this app! It was an important pathway to me becoming a better web developer (as much as I dislike that title). I’m rather surprised how many Lemmy servers host it now, and even strange obscure non-fediverse websites using it inexplicably. (Related to recent events, did you know Tesseract began as a fork of Photon?)
if you’d like to donate to support my work, you can do so here.
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Lemmy stuck at 0.9.xxxxx forever
Could I make a feature request that would make my life as an admin much easier? Would it be possible to add links to the local URL, the canonical URL and a lemmy redirector like lemmyverse.link in the share button for posts and comments?
When trying to deal with spammers etc and sharing content with other admins, it’s currently quite difficult to expose a URL that the remote admin can use
Sure, I’ll add that. The share button on posts does already include “origin server” and “your server” buttons, though I need to add this to comments.
I just started using photon and I love it’s moderation tools. Thanks for making something awesome
Thank you! Moving to v1 sounds like a lot of work the way you described it
I would not waste time to rewrite Lemmy API v3 support. Once Lemmy 1.0 comes around most instances will update relatively quickly and v3 will become entirely obsolete.
Piefed support on the other hand would be very much apprechiated.
