See the “New Features -> Link Previews” section below for descriptions of the screenshot.

  • Full Changelog
  • Docker Tags:
    • ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:1.4.7
    • ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:v1.4.7
    • ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:latest

Changelog is pretty long this time, so use the link above for the full details. Only the highlights will be covered here.

Bugfixes, Tweaks, and Enhancements

Bugfixes / Tweaks

  • [Crossposts] Text-wrapped community names in crosspost list (typically when on mobile) no longer incorrectly center-justify themsleves
  • [UI] Fixed z-index for alternate source selector in /profile/user section to prevent it from showing over top of the nav bars when scrolling up
  • [Hashtags] Fixed regex pattern for hashtag detection so it should now fully ignore any inside code blocks or inline code ticks.

Enhancements

  • Brought Back the Discrete Listing Type / Sort Dropdowns: Based on feedback from users, I’ve brought back the discrete dropdowns in the nav bar for choosing the listing and sort options (they had been moved into the quick settings dropdown menu).
  • Quick Settings is now a Modal: The dropdown menu was becoming too cumbersome from a UX and maintenance perspective, so it was moved into a modal. The button for it was also moved to the right side of the navbar rather than the left.
  • Removed Context-Aware Search Button on Mobile: The context aware search (which will search the site, community, or currently-viewed profile depending on where you are) button has been removed on mobile to reduce clutter. Mobile users will need to use the main “Search” button in the main navbar and select the appropriate filter options.
  • Deprecated Support for /c/ and /u/ User and Community Links: Those formats will no longer be turned into links automatically and are discouraged. The preferred way to link a user in markdown areas is @user@instance.xyz and, for communities, it’s !name@instance.xyz.
  • Community Modals Now Work With “Unknown” Communities: The community modal has been extended to resolve the community prior to fetching it so that unknown communities can be resolved transparently when clicked. Unauthenticated/guest users will receive an error if clicking a community link that the instance does not “know” about (resolveObject is an authentiated call).
  • Misc: Various UI tweaks/polish where things weren’t exactly uniform (modal action buttons, etc).
  • Misc: Added Quick Settings button to toolbar on post pages
  • Post Titles in Feed/Profiles: Fixed quirkiness with post titles. Can now middle-click post titles to open in new tab again as well as right-click to copy link (turned them back from buttons into links but keeping the ‘button’ behavior)

New Features

Link Previews

Under Settings -> General is a new option called “Preview Links in Modal”. This is enabled by default but can be disabled. It is also under the quick options.

Clicking markdown links (in post body, comments, sidebars, etc) will do a server-side metadata fetch and render a preview. “Internal” links that load in Tesseract will not preview and simply use the user’s “open links in new tab” preference.

The preview includes:

  • Link metadata if available (thumbnail image, embed video, description, title)
  • Alternate source selector
  • MBFC report (if available)
  • If link is to a supported media type (YT, Invidious, Piped, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, Odysee, PeerTube, etc), will show the media as an embed
  • If metadata description contains links, they will preview in the same modal, and a “back” button will be enabled to return you to the previous preview.

e.g. If someone drops a bare Youtube link, it will render in the modal using your preferred YouTube frontend. Same for a Spotify, Bandcamp, etc link. The link is processed through the same rendering chain as posts, so any supported media should render as if it were posted to the feed.

It also has the alternate source selector and the MBFC plugin tied in, so a news article link in the comments can be vetted for credibility, previewed, and followed.

Post links are not tied into this since the post itself acts as the preview / renderer. This can be implemented, and easily, but it seems pointless to me. If I get feedback saying it should handle the main posts links through that, then I can enable it or at least make an option to.

Image Descriptions: The post image demonstrates the preview modal that’s loaded when clicking the raw Youtube link in the comment shown above. The second image shows the preview for a news link posted in the comments of another post.

Badge-ified Community and User Links and Hashtags

Community and user links in post and comment bodies are now badge-ified and load the community or profile modals upon click (versus the old behavior of being a dumb link to the profile/community pages).

Currently, user links are blue, and community links are orange.

Hashtags are now converted into badges/flairs and are yellow.