The v1.8.0 release of mbin brings a lot of new features, some of them quite big, so with these release notes I will dive a bit deeper into the bigger features.

For Users

Big new features

Bookmarks

You can now bookmark threads, microblogs and comments. But not just that, you can organize them in different lists.
When looking at a post you have this new bookmark icon next to the boost button:

The bookmark icon can be clicked to add it to your default list. If you don’t have a default list, yet, a new one with the name “default” will be created (that can be changed later).
If you have multiple lists you can choose the list to add the bookmark to via the “more” button:
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If a thread is bookmarked in any list, the icon will be colored orange. Clicking the button will remove the thread from all bookmark lists. In the more menu you can see which list(s) the thread is bookmarked to and remove it from specific lists.

To view the lists and create new ones you click on your user and click the “Bookmark Lists” link.

If you open a list you will see all content from this list combined: threads, microblogs and comments.
A list could look like this:

Notification Settings per User/Magazine/Thread/Microblog

Underneath a user, magazine, thread and microblog you will notice a new widget to set the notification setting:

The settings are (from left to right): muted, default and loud.

Default respects your global notification settings, while the other two modify it. They are processed hierarchically, meaning a muted user commenting on a loud thread which belongs to a muted magazine will not trigger a notification, while a loud or default user would. Another example: a muted thread in a loud magazine will not trigger a notification for new comments unless the commenting user is set to loud.

Inline Previews of linked posts

We added rich rendering of activity pub entities. That may sound very technical, but the gist of it is: if you mention a user or a magazine we will now render a component for it, with the avatar, the name, the hover preview, etc.
We did the same for threads, microblogs and comments. So when you put the “original URL” (ActivityPub id) in your post we will now render an inline preview of that post.

This also allowed us to implement a new appearance setting to always display the domain of users and magazines (two separate settings).

We will change it a bit in v1.8.1 again so the inline previews do only trigger if the link text is the same as the URL, see GitHub Issue 1434.

Smaller features

Improved smartphone / touch experience

You do not have to click on the header of a thread anymore to open the thread, if you’re on a touch device. Additionally you can now click on comments to open the page for it.

Related panels now respect the block settings

exactly that.

improved search experience

You can now filter the search results by the magazine it was posted to, the user authoring it and whether it is a thread or a microblog.

Default Sort Option

You can now set a default sort option for the front page and comment pages in your user settings.

For App Developers

Bookmark API

This API is tested and finished. The documentation can be found here and here.

Search API

The API gets the new search parameters as well: authorId, magazineId and type (docs).

Notification Settings

This API is not yet tested and will probably get a small revamp in v1.8.1

Nodeinfo endpoints are now available even if federation is disabled

The mbin nodeinfo endpoints (/.well-known/nodeinfo and /nodeinfo/2.1) were not accessible when federation is disabled, removing the only way to tell the mbin version of an instance. This is now fixed.

For Admins

Big new features

Signup Requests

You can now activate the new admin setting “New users have to be approved by an admin before they can log in.”. After that users will be asked to supply an application text upon registration:

If you have the new signup notifications enabled you will get a link to jump to the new users signup request. Otherwise you can go there from the admin menu.

Smaller features

Signup Notifications

You can now enable/disable signup notifications in your user settings. They are enabled by default.

Image Delete Command

We now have a command to delete older federated images, see docs.

Nginx Config Fine Tuning

We have updated the Nginx config in our docs with an improved regex filter.