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.
I’m really excited about this. Of all the link aggregators, I think Mbin has the best desktop experience. Hopefully, an iOS app will come soon.
Fantastic stuff!
A couple of points of constructive criticism, of what I’ve seen so far:
- The notifying levels are a bit confusing: 🔔 and 📣 are often used to mean the same thing (notofications on). I propose alternatives here: https://kbin.earth/index.php/m/kbinEarth/t/914080/-/comment/4986347
- Microblog responses generally start with
@user. This is bad enough already when reading from a platform where this is not the norm, but with the updated display of user mentions it becomes even more confusing as it appears to be part of the text. I don’t have a good solution for this - maybe leading @s could be condensed somehow?
yeah I think it is not polished enough on the microblog side, but I don’t know how to improve it… Maybe just dont render the inline thijgs for microblogs…
I would love to say that something like collapsing leading user mentions into the avatars would make sense, since they are almost always irrelevant anyway. But it just feels fundamentally wrong to start messing with the content of people’s responses.
Maybe some tone of background colour on mentions (possibly only leading ones in microblog responses) could help it stand out from the text proper, without messing too much with the content?
(I would also consider decreasing the space between the avatar and user name, but that’s hardly relevant feedback at all)
Minor copy paste issue when bringing this over from GitHub, the reference to
#1434refers to this GitHub issue if anybody wants to see it there.It is a parsing error interestingly enough, the hashtag recognition took over the link :D
Ooh, nice find! That’s way more interesting.