Blorp lol. Don’t ask about the name. Very much a work in progress, but I’m aiming for a public beta in 2ish months. Though I know it’s very likely I’ll be the only one that uses it.

As an Android/iOS app, Blorp will cache the data (and optionally images) offline. So any feeds/posts that are already loaded you will be able to read offline.

Right now that’s the biggest feature setting me apart from Voyager, but I want to keep iterating and improving.

This is the website version, which admittedly is a bit more clunky than the iOS/Android app. https://blorpblorp.xyz/

Yeah I’m curious too! What technical sorcery is OP doing for presumably free API access

And this is actually the issue. As a developer I want to build and app based on what interests me. Then I want to write a post about it.

The comments:

• person 1: Why would you waste your time building an app for that platform, you should build an app for this platform that way less people use”
• person 2: “nah that’s a waste of time you should build an app for this even more niche platform with even less users”
• person 3: “you should just use RSS feeds and anything else is a waste of time”

Me as a developer “thanks guys I just wanted to build an app for a platform I’m passionate about”

Wrote this comment on my own lemmy client, because I like using about lemmy :)

Idk maybe I’m wrong. I worked for a news outlet for a couple years and I just remember generating and parsing XML to be more work then generating a JSON feed.

It’s not even just parsing. I just remember crawling the parsed JSON tree to not be as nice as navigating a JSON object.

But a lot of languages have native support for parsing JSON without the need for a library. When it’s handled by the language, it’s more likely to be done to spec, doesn’t increase bundle size (if that matters to you), and will be considered as updates to the language are made.

I get that the idea of rss is sort of a universal protocol for publishing articles, which is really cool, but damnit if you make me parse XML in 2025. As a developer, I would be ok if they modernized RSS feeds.

Something like this

Did the logo fix everything?

After all the other comments I was thinking randomly auto select one of the instances that meets certain criteria, but you make a good argument. Giving people choice over their server was what I was initially thinking when I came up with this planet analogy.

That’s what I was thinking! But I’m not sure that is better than just randomizing the default instance. Randomizing would have almost the same effect with much less user friction.

I’m so dumb. That literally solves so many problems. I just have to confirm that works with the login endpoint. Thanks!

Edit: I’m not dumb. You can’t login with your instance at the end of the username. I also need to check if @ is a valid username character.

I’ll look into it, thanks! Maybe I’ll run it by a non technical friend and see if they get it.

What I could do is pick an instance at random and see if I can write that instance to app storage that persists on reinstall. That way, they don’t lose their account by not remembering what instance. That doesn’t solve the web.

The issue is password managers save username and password, but I need to save instance as a 3rd value. I wonder if I can prepend the instance to the front of their username in a way that the password manager picks it up, then slice it off later when they log in. But that’s kinda hacky.

Ooo yes! But I would like keep it much shorter.

Remember this is an onboarding flow for an app. It has to capture the user and explain things well without losing their attention.

What I want to avoid is “hey, select an instance from this menu”. “Wtf is an instance?”

Voyager gets around this by defaulting to an instance (lemmy.ee I think) before you log in, but my plan was to have them select when they launch the app for the first time.

I don’t think anyone else runs a BlueSky server right now except for BlueSky. At last not one with any substantial amount of users. Imo this makes BlueSky a lot less resilient compared to Lemmy or other federated social media.

Write a letter to the lemmy devs and ask them to rewrite the backend to use htmx.

I disagree. I spent some time earlier this year working on a BlueSky client that would work completely without JavaScript. Working without JavaScript means it has to run on a web server somewhere. Using JavaScript means the client can run entirely on your computer with the only dependency being the Lemmy server you connect to. And since there are many Lemmy servers, this means no single entity that can pull the plug on you.

The only alternative I see is a native app that runs a non-JS client on your computer, or maybe WebAssembly? Seriously though, modern JavaScript is actually very capable. You might be dismissing it only because it’s popular to hate on JavaScript or maybe the current Lemmy clients aren’t good. That doesn’t mean the underlying issue is JavaScript.

I’ve abandoned my BlueSky client to work on a Lemmy client that will be written in JS but can run entirely on your computer.

I’m working on my own Lemmy client that I’m hoping will be both a better UI, but also universally better as an app (phone and tablet), MacOS app, and on the web. Voyager provides a web version, but it’s not optimized for larger screens.

My app will deliver the best experience on all screen sizes and will take the best of Reddit, Voyager, etc.

I’m 14 days in lol but if anyone is interested please DM me. I’m happy to share what I’m working on, but I just ask you have realistic expectations as this will likely be 6+ month project to deliver something that can actually compete with existing clients.

Will it brick the kid?

Oooo they finally released blog