Updated! Updates are shown in quote text like this. Some scores are updated following app updates.
An Apps Experiment
Cross-posted from https://lemmy.world/post/18159531
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 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 (here).
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 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, 6 apps displayed all markdown correctly:
Alexandrite - 10.0
Connect - 10.0
Jerboa (Official Android client) - 10.0
Photon - 10.0
Summit - 10.0
Voyager - 10.0
Quiblr - 9.5
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
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.
One note on Jerboa, at least for me gifs don’t seem to play when embedded in comments. Otherwise 10/10 for me.
I love Jerboa, it most closely resembles RiF from the beforetimes.
I did not test different media types - but maybe in the future!
I started on jerboa, but ended up moving to connect because of the bugs.
What bugs?
This was over a year ago now Jerboa may well be in a better state now. I can’t remember specific bugs but they were frequent and serious enough to frustrate me, a professional software tester, enough to move to a different app.
Interesting to see that even Lemmy-UI does not display markdown completely correctly
It doesn’t display headings, I know that much.
#Heading
In doing this I learned that there are “correct” but also “preferred” ways to use markdown. A heading should have a
space
after the#
even though it is correct either way.##Heading
Heading
These lines may be the same or different in different apps.
The thing of it is, if you just highlight some text and hit the heading button in the GUI, it doesn’t include the space.
I’m not sure
#heading
is valid markdown (see, eg, Daring Fireball’s “original” syntax page) … and I’ve never seen it. I’ve always understood that the space was necessary, which I think makes sense for a number of reasons TBHSo …
#This does not work
This does work
I know that it works on some sites (reddit for example). Generally, it is not preferred.
Didn’t know it worked on reddit. Generally it seems necessary to require the space as it disambiguates headings from hashtags, and also makes the raw text more readable.
I wasn’t sure if Lemmuy-UI in the results list was a typo or an alternative interface. Now I know. 😄
For some reason, Lemmy-UI does not convert usernames to links: @gedaliyah@lemmy.world
it does, but only if you use the autocomplete feature. it’s also a bit delayed without any indicator that it’s loading.
if you type @gedal and wait a moment it’ll load @gedaliyah@lemmy.world to be selected:
What happens if you press tab or click on the suggested item at the point in your screenshot?
For me, it inserts the link at the cursor position, but doesn’t replace the bit you’ve already typed, resulting in
@gedal[@gedaliyah@lemmy.world](URL)
.Anyone else have this issue?
on firefox, if i type
@gedal
and click or press tab once it replaces the text with[//lemmy.world/u/gedaliyah)
. the behavior is the same whether i hit tab, enter or click the text. .world](https:if i type
@gedal
and click or press tab once it replaces the text with[//lemmy.world/u/gedaliyah)
.world](https:Ah, you are correct. It turns out that the issue I was encountering was a little more subtle.
If I type all the way to
@gedaliyah@
and click or press tab once it replaces only the second ‘@’, resulting in@gedaliyah[@gedaliyah@lemmy.world](https://lemmy.world/u/gedaliyah)
.It’s not even just that. It seems that the extra
acts as a separator, so you can’t even autocomplete e.g.
@threelonmusketeers@sh
as that’ll try to autocomplete@sh
instead of taking the instance domain as part of the mention.I’ve raised a GitHub issue for this now: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2652
Yes, I’m not sure if that is meant to be a placeholder or a substitute for native user links. What it actually does is generate markup that converts the username into a web link, which is fine for most circumstances, but not ideal. A plaintext username should automatically link to the user. This creates an inconsistent behavior between posts depending on where (and when) they were typed.
In other words, it’s a very helpful feature, but it is not recognizing and linking usernames.
It’s weird that community names are automatically rendered as links, but usernames aren’t. Isn’t it pretty much the same thing?
yeah exactly. On mbin it works this way and lemmy inserting the link breaks that. But it does it for communities in the community description sometime as well, though I don’t know if it is just a user “error” or a lemmy error
Yeah, it’s rather inconsistent. I opened an issue for it a while ago.
Actually that behaviour is very annoying to other platforms. Mbin for example can only link to the lemmy server this user is on and no longer the local profile of that user. Example:
gets converted to
[@ user @ lemmy.instance](https:// lemmy.instance/u/user
so on mbin this does not open the profile of the user on the local server, but instead links the lemmy instance, so you leave your instance to view the profile.(spaces included so this won’t get converted to mentions, etc)
Are those not two different users though? Joe at Hotmail and Joe at Gmail are different.
Yes they are, but you have my profile on your server and you do not need to leave the server to view my profile…
should link to
https:// mbin.instance/u/ .instance
and not tohttps:// lemmy.instance/u/user
I’ll have to try on desktop, in the app it isn’t very clear what exactly it’s looking at to see profiles.
Compare the source of your comment to the one you’re replying to. Those are two different things. I’d argue it’s a workaround of anything.
Dunno … I went to the linked page in the top post and everything seemed fine to me (using Lemmy-UI)
if you want to get fancy you can even use undocumented tables Works on Thunder.
Confirmed here on android
This surprisingly works on boost.
Tables are a very common markdown extension most(?) popular markdown parsers support them
for sure, but they’re neither mentioned on https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/02-media.html nor on the linked CommonMark tutorial.
Which is funny because the main part of that documentation is a Markdown table
Did I pass? lol
just as great as lemmy-ui
Works on Voyager.
I have an iOS device and am happy to repeat your methodology! Did you have a test thread or something with all the markdowns?
On it. I found 8 apps in the App store. I’ll PM you.
Arctic, Avelon, Bean, Lemmios, Mlem, Remmel, Thunder, Voyager.
There’s a 9th, CheeseBot, but it’s $2.99 and all the others are free.
Some of those are Multiplatform (this should be the same across devices)
Cheesebot is a watch app I believe
Who the hell is browsing Lemmy on their watch?
People who use cheesebot.
Bean is abandoned.
Given the performance, that does not surprise me!
App does say it was last updated 7 months ago, but I see comments saying it’s abandoned.
Yeah the dev took payments for the app and then vanished.
Thank you for this! I’m really going to appreciate your work.
did
u
know
u
can
nest
spoilers?
dog pic
I did not knew that. Works on Android Thunder.
Worth the effort for the good boy or girl.
Not on Jerboa apparently.
hello fellow client dev
Neat! I did not know that.
Awesome
Whoa that’s cool! It works in Thunder!
This displays incorrectly for me on Jerboa
:( It works on lemmy-ui/photon/alexandrite/voyager (maybe others too - these are just ones I’ve tested that work)
Why is your username color highlighted in voyager
I am the voyager dev!
Ouch, I use Boost and paid for ads free. Pls bring it up to 10.0.
Sync only got 6.9 but I have no complaints about the app
Woohoo Voyager!
Voyager gang, let’s scroll
It’s the best PWA ever made, to my knowledge.
PWA?
Progressive web app
Oh I didn’t know it was a web app, I’ve only seen it on droidify, among other “normal” apps. It looks amazing !
It was initially a pwa, but now it is a full and proper app, even available on Google play now!
I believe it can still be used as a pwa though.
Yup, still works great as a PWA.
Voyager da 🐐 no 🧢
Voyager, bruh.
Is there a list of what each app failed? It would be nice for the devs to be able to see. I use Mlem, and there is about to be a new release rebuilding it from the ground up. Hopefully it will rate higher once that happens.
Yes, I’ve linked it in the post, and you can find the test post and detailed results.
Thanks. Interesting how the apps, even those that have lower scores, perform better than a web browser. Using Safari and Firefox (on a laptop) and both open your links in Lemmy.world instead of that thread on my instance. Neither recognize the user as anything other than text.
Voyager gang!
Same here
Where are all my fellow voyagers at?
I usually use desktop, but when it’s not available I use Voyager.
Checking in.
Checking in
74656
Checking in
Checkin innnn
wefwef 🫡
test
~test~
The above feels wrong but idk if Lemmy has a formal markdown spec. I haven’t had time to dig into it. This is what it looks like in Jerboa. If it wasn’t 6 AM I’d try to file a big report.
So what’s the technological story here? I’m guessing lemmy itself uses a particular markdown parser that could probably be extracted and used in other contexts as it’s likely written in rust and should therefore be pretty portable without too much effort.
Are other apps just using whatever markdown parser is convenient to them? Is this something that the lemmy and threadiverse community could converge on? Even the fediverse as a whole where just about every platform other than mastodon supports writing in some for of markdown … feels like a pandoc like utility could go far.
I’m probably not the person to ask, to be honest. Lemmy as I understand it is the protocol that exchanges the information about posts, etc. The post content is stored and shared as plaintext, but Lemmy also has instructions about how a UI should interpret the text and serve it to the user.
Ideally, the same text should appear consistent across any UI. Obviously, some apps will use different fonts and colors and may interpret the style of an element differently.
Ideally, the same text should appear consistent across any UI. Obviously, some apps will use different fonts and colors and may interpret the style of an element differently.
Oh yea styling isn’t the issue here … it’s whether the markdown is correctly interpreted and rendered. AFAIU, lemmy doesn’t have any instructions about how to interpret the text, just some standard that they’ve chosen to use, along with their open source software for doing so (as they’ve built too clients, the default web UI and Jerboa).
What’s the score on Eternity?
It’s been a month since I’ve been able to post anything from my lemmy.world account using any app.
Weird, I use Boost all the time. Did you turn on 2FA or something? Maybe try removing and re-adding your account?
Yeah, I added 2FA. I will try disabling it to see if anything changes.
cross-posted
Minor nit pick, but did you know that Lemmy has actual cross posting functionality?
Either way, interesting study. This is the type of content that I
Reder… Lemmy for, so thanks for posting. I use Voyager myself, being an Apollo refugee.Ya I’ve only been able to cross post on the web UI. I’ve seen apps like Jerboa and Voyager at least show cross posting correctly, I just wish they made it easier to cross-post in app.
Boost has a very easy-to-handle implementation of crossposting
Oh nice. I don’t think I’ve tried that one yet now that I think of it.
I’ve yet to find an app which uses the same Lemmy crossposting function that is in the web UI.
Thunder allows cross-posting! It should follow the web UI implementation (where the body of the new post has a link to the original, plus the original contents in a quote block).
Oh nice! That’s the one I’ve probably tried the least so I’ll have to give that one another go. (Not for any particular reason, I just got used to the UI of the first couple other apps I tried). Thanks for the good news!
Yeah, cross posting is another quirky Lemmy thing. AFAIK it just generates a new post with the same content, and also maybe varies by app. That could be wrong though: I’m not sure.
AFAIK it just generates a new post with the same content
Yup, that is exactly what it does. So if the original post is edited, none of the changes propagate to any of the crossposts.
In my opinion, crossposts should embed the original post, not simply copy a snapshot of the content at the time the crosspost is made. That’s a Lemmy issue though, not an app issue.