Fedibook Week 5

Welcome to the second Fedibook newsletter. I decided to change the week numbering from the calendar week to the week in the life of the Fedibook project. So here is the latest news from the 5th week of Fedibook.

Fedibook this week

It has been yet another great week, with more users coming online to test and giving feedback. Thank you once again — your feedback and eagerness to see things grow is a daily inspiration. The focus this week has been adjusting minor details to ensure a good user experience for potential new users. Getting ready for our friends!

Inform about email validation on signup

Users are now clearly informed that email validation is required after signing up. This depends on whether EASY_SIGNUP is set to true or false in .env.

In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU)

The Docker setup now uses two app containers, adding resilience against container failure and enabling new software releases to be pulled and deployed without any interruption to the service.

A deploy.sh script handles rebuilding one app at a time. Use it with --pull to also pull new software from Git, or do this yourself beforehand.

ISSU is an important detail for delivering small, incremental releases in production. Ship faster and don’t break things.

Dark mode

I have been building software and watching new products come to life many times. For all of them, there comes a dark mode moment — the moment users start asking for it. I take that as a first sign that users can actually see themselves using the software long-term. Why else ask for your favourite screen mode?

So I am proud to inform you that by popular request, Fedibook is now introducing dark mode. You find the setting in the icon menu, where Appearance can be set to Auto, Light, or Dark. The setting is stored in your browser, so it will be individual to each device.

I was able to deploy to fedibook.net using the new ISSU process without a single interruption of service. Learning a lot these days!

Favorite Combos

Alright — my brain has been buzzing, and I’ve come up with something I’m really excited about. I’m calling it Favorite Combo.

I know my focus for Fedibook has always been on Friends & Groups, and I still believe that’s the core. But to get people to switch to a new network, they need to find something compelling there — without too much noise.

Personally, I follow a lot of interesting people on Mastodon. The thing is, some of the most interesting ones also post a lot. And since there’s no algorithm filtering things for me, I see everything — which is how it should be; “The users are the algorithm.” I love that.

So here’s my idea: Favorite Combo lets users favourite a mix of specific writers and tags. For example, if you think I post too much but only care about my food-related posts, you could favourite a combo of me + #food. Or maybe add #foodphotography if you also enjoy my food photos (I don’t actually post about either, but bear with me).

In your Favourite feed, you would then only see posts from the combos you have set up. In The World feed you still sees all posts from everyone you follow.

To create a combo, just go to a user’s profile and add the tags you are interested in.

If you find in your Favourite Combo feed that you want to un-favourite a writer completely, just click the Fedibook purple heart at their profile icon. If you find a tag you want to remove from your Favourite Combo you can remove it strait from the post you reading or from the writes profile.

The longer term plan is to let users share their Favourite Combos as Featured Combos — so you can discover and follow the curation of people you trust. The users are the algorithm!

Profile screen makeover

The profile page has received a visual refresh. The action buttons — Unfollow, Follow, Friend Request, and Unfriend — are now displayed in Fedibook purple, clearly positioned in the top right corner of the cover image. Each button has a distinct icon making it easy to see your current relationship with another user at a glance and take the right action.

Remember your place

Fedibook now remembers how far you have scrolled in a feed — stored locally in your own browser. So if you are catching up with friends and jump over to check a Favorite Combo post, you can come straight back to exactly where you left off. No more scrolling back from the top.

Heroicons and Fedibook purple

All icons have been updated to use Heroicons, making it easier to introduce new icons consistently going forward. At the same time, the UI has been updated to use what is now called Fedibook purple to indicate the selected menu item — giving the navigation a cleaner and more consistent look across light and dark mode.

Bug: Signed friend request

From user feedback I found that Fedibook was not sending signed friend requests. It should — some Fediverse applications will not accept an unsigned request. This has been fixed.

Bug: Cancel join group request

There was a bug causing an error when clicking the cancel request button on the group page. This has been fixed.

Report issues and share ideas

As a relative newcomer to open source development I have discovered the value of GitHub-style issue tracking. A well-written issue — a clear bug report, a specific feature request, or a concrete suggestion — is genuinely useful. It creates a record, makes things actionable, and means nothing gets lost in a conversation thread.

If you run into a bug or have a specific idea for how Fedibook should work, please open an issue on Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/sindum/fedibook/issues

For looser conversations, questions, and general ideas, come join the talk on Mastodon using the #thefedibookproject tag, or join the group @fedibook-grp@fedibook.net — accessible from both Fedibook and Mastodon.

Also this week:

Large funding to Mastodon

Before wrapping up this week’s update, I’d like to highlight some big news from the wider Fediverse. The Mastodon team has secured significant funding to develop a robust security feature set that will benefit the entire Fediverse and ActivityPub ecosystem. You can read more about it here.

This development holds a lot of potential for the future of Fedibook. For instance, blocklist synchronization could greatly assist future Fedibook operators in managing moderation more effectively. Remote media storage is another exciting feature — beneficial for instance operators who don’t want to handle large amounts of media storage, and it empowers users to host their media in a secure location of their choice. This is a feature I have planned to implement in Fedibook, but having a standardised method will be far superior.

While automated content detection might raise some privacy concerns, it could also significantly ease the burden and responsibility on instance operators.

The Linux kernel on AI Coding Assistants

The Linux kernel project has just published an official policy on the use of AI coding assistants in kernel development. The position is reasonable: AI can help write the code, but a human must understand and own what gets submitted.

A significant signal that the question is no longer theoretical in open source. Worth following.