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UPDATE! Now 30% of Lemmy Apps display posts accurately - Lemmy.World
lemmy.world> Updated! Updates are shown in quote text like this. Some scores are updated
following app updates. # An Apps Experiment ## Introduction This is an
experiment I performed out of curiosity, and I have a few big disclaimers at the
bottom. Basically, I’ve seen a lot of comments recently about one app or another
not displaying something right. Lemmy has been around for a while now and can no
longer be considered an experimental platform. Lemmy and the apps that people
use to access the platform have become an important part of people’s lives.
Whether you are checking the app weekly or daily, and whether you use it to stay
up on the news or to stay connected to your hobby, it’s important that it works.
I hope that this helps people to see the extent of the challenge, and encourages
developers to improve their apps, too. ## How I did it I wanted to investigate
objectively how accurately each app displays text of posts and comments using
the standard Lemmy markdown. Markdown is a standard part of the Lemmy platform,
but not all apps handle it the same. It is basically what gives text useful
formatting. I used the latest release of each app, but did not include
pre-releases. I only included apps that have released an update in the last 6
months, which should include most apps in active development. I was unable to
test iOS-exclusive apps, so they are not included either. In all, 16 apps met
the inclusion criteria. > I also added Eternity, which is in active development,
although it has not had a recent update. I was able to include several iOS apps
thanks to testing [https://lemmy.world/comment/11506252] from
@jordanlund@lemmy.world – Thanks, Jordan! This made for 20 apps that were
tested. Each app was rated in 5 categories: Text, Format, Spoilers, Links, and
Images. I chose these mostly based on the wonderful Markdown Guide from
@marvin@sffa.community, which was posted about a year ago in
!meta@sffa.community [/c/meta@sffa.community] (here
[https://sffa.community/post/105]). I checked whether each app correctly
displayed each category, then took the overall average. Each category was
weighted equally. Text includes italic, bold, strong, strikethrough,
superscript, and subscript. Format includes block quotes, lists, code (block and
inline), tables, and dividers. Spoilers includes display of hidden, expandable
spoilers. Links includes external links, username links, and community links.
Images included embedded images, image references, and inline images. > Thanks
to input from others, I also added a test to see if lemmy hyperlinks opened
in-app. There was a problem with using the SFFA Community Guide that caused some
apps to be essentially penalized twice because there was formatting inside
formatting, so I created this TEST POST [https://lemmy.world/comment/11514952]
to more clearly and fairly measure each app. In each case, I checked whether the
display was correct based on the rules for Lemmy Markdown, and consistent with
the author’s intent. In cases where the app recognized the tag correctly but did
not display it accurately, that was treated as a fail. ## Results Out of a
possible perfect 10, 7 apps displayed all markdown correctly: ### Alexandrite -
10.0 ### Connect - 10.0 ### Jerboa (Official Android client) - 10.0 ### Photon -
10.0 ### Quiblr - 10.0 ### Summit - 10.0 ### Voyager - 10.0 #### Arctic - 9.3
#### Interstellar - 9.1 #### Lemmuy-UI - 9.0 #### Thunder - 8.9 #### Tesseract -
8.6 #### mlmym - 8.0 #### Racoon - 7.6 #### Boost - 7.3 #### Eternity - 7.0 ####
Lemmios - 6.9 #### Sync - 6.9 #### Lemmynade - 6.1 #### Avelon - 5.7 More
details of testing here [https://lemmy.world/comment/11514952] ::: spoiler
Disclaimers ## Disclaimers ### I Love Lemmy Apps (and their devs) Lemmy apps
devs work very hard, and invest a lot in the platform. Lemmy is better because
they are doing the work that they do. Like, a LOT better. Everyone who uses the
platform has to access it through one app or another. Apps are the face of the
entire platform. Whether an app is a FOSS passion project, underwritten by a
grant, or generating income through sales or ads, no one is getting rich by
making their app. It is for the benefit of the community. This is not meant to
be a rating of the quality or functionality of any app. An app may have a high
rating here but be missing other features that users want, or users may love an
app that has a lower rating. This is just about how well apps handle markdown.
### This is pretty unscientific You’ll see my methodology above. I’m not a
scientist. There is probably a much better way to do this, and I probably have
biases in terms of how I went about it. I think it’s interesting and probably
has some valuable information. If you think it’s interesting, let me know. If
you think of a better way, PM me and I’d be happy to share what I have so you
don’t have to start from scratch. ### My only goal is to help the community I do
think that accurately displaying markdown should be a standard expectation of a
finished app. I hope that devs use this as an opportunity to shore up the areas
that are lagging, and that they have a set of standards to aim for. I don’t have
any Apple things Sorry. This is just Android and Web review. If someone would
like to see how iOS apps are doing, please reach out and I’ll share how we can
work together to include them. :::
Hi, glad you’re loving Connect! I pushed an update yesterday (v187) that should address the markdown issues noted. Hopefully @gedaliyah@lemmy.world will update at some point :)
10/10 now! 🎉
Thanks for the updates.
Wow, great work!
Personally, I don’t love the spoiler text being hidden instead of collapsed, but that seems like more of a style choice than function issue. It shows and hides as it should.
I know for sure that there are communities who would appreciate spoilers in this style and I hope that they find your app!
Yeah, there also seems to be a bit of an issue with formatting embedded inside spoilers. In your comment there are inline images in a spoiler block. They load on the web, but not in Connect. I wonder how other apps deal with that. Maybe another round of testing is in order soon!
I think it’d be nice to have the hidden block if the text is just one line, but if there are images or many lines then just make it expandable and load images when opened. I have no idea how much work that is to implement though.
I figured out pretty quickly that there is no comprehensive way to test markdown on Lemmy because of differing standards, and because of an infinite combination of different tags, like images inside of spoilers, as you say. I tried to stick to the most common uses I see and which have been referenced and used widely for a long time (which is very subjective but I had to start somewhere). In theory, every combination should work, but we (Lemmy as a whole) don’t even have the basics consistent.
Yes, markdown inside spoilers is something which would be good to see fixed.