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 @[email protected] – 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 @[email protected], which was posted about a year ago in [email protected] (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.
Hey, I’m the Photon dev. I’d like to know which parts Photon incorrectly displayed, so far I only see tables rendering incorrectly. I’ll have this fixed soon.
Update: fixed table displays, pushed to main
Could this be updated now? 🥺 (you can test here)
Unrelated, but photon keeps randomly redirecting pages to what is previously viewed. It has screwed me over by making me post to the wrong community.
I don’t understand what this means. There are no redirect calls at all in photon other than for /comment urls, and certain layouts.
Not exactly redirect, but sometimes it just goes back to the previous page. Maybe something to do with window.history?
It was a while ago. I haven’t used it after the incident (July 12)
Holy shit, Photon has gotten this good now? When I tried it a few months back it felt like just yet another Lemmy client. Now it feels so smooth and polished. Works great on mobile even. Thanks for making this!
Hey, the admin of slrpnk.net has been thinking of making Photon the default frontend but updates to it sometimes cause breaking issues? Any chance you could get into contact with them so it can become the default in a way that updates wont break it?
I contacted them about it.
Amazing, thank you!
tell the admin to make a post on [email protected], xylight is vfry responsive.
Photon is so great i honestly feel like it should replace the default
Agreed, translating it to french made me discover so many little features, did you knoe it can show the political bias of a linked article?
Thats really cool i didnt know that
Voyager is premo.
deleted by creator
Voyager, bruh.
Voyager gang!
wefwef 🫡
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
This is awesome, thank you. I switched from memmy (iOS only) to voyager because it doesn’t display code blocks properly (usually doesn’t even show what’s in them) so reading certain posts or comments about computers or programming was a disaster.
Memmy was the first app I used, but it is abandoned now, sadly. But Mlem is actively being developed. I have not tried Voyager yet.
There are a lot of image/gif(?) posts that I haven’t been able to view either on the Memmy (Apple) app or in-browser with either Safari (Apple) or Google Chrome. I imagine it comes down to the file types as well as the lack of native hosting to standardize posts of different media types, but I’m not the techiest person to consult on that. One downside of the fediverse is the lack of standards for file hosting/conversion/displaying to ensure that all media can be accessed regardless of the browser/app (or, alternatively, the lack of an all-encompassing app for all devices [Jerboa sounds like the closest to this to me but it is not available for iOS yet]), as well as the self-funded nature of the instances commonly not having the budget to natively host multimedia content such as videos.
Browser master race😎
That’s Lemmy UI
What features does the browser UI not display properly? 👀
It doesn’t link usernames correctly. The editor has the option to convert usernames to links, but does not handle plaintext usernames:
Oh, cool. Nice analysis! I know spoilers not rendering correctly is a big one.
And the spec says plaintext usernames should be rendered as links?
Clients should convert automatically (unless the user doesn’t want it to)
Says who/what?
FYI, how wrote “Lemmuy - UI” in the post, I thought it was another app I didn’t hear about.
That’s just what it’s called.
Really? Not just Lemmy UI?
I seriously did not catch that typo, even when you pointed it out 🫢
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.
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
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.
Woohoo Voyager!
Voyager da 🐐 no 🧢
Voyager gang, let’s scroll
It’s the best PWA ever made, to my knowledge.
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.
PWA?
Progressive web app
I have to use desktop mode here to make sense of the posts
Left this comment in the other thread too, but posting here for visibility:
Quiblr should now have each of the markdown criteria fixed. Huge thanks for the feedback and for all this analysis. Consistent markdown is important for a great and consistent user experience across the lemmy ecosystem
Great! Thank you for the gorgeous app. I really love the style, and I think the personalized feed is brilliant.
On my device, the lemmy hyperlink in the test post is still opening outside the app. I’m not sure how other web apps handle this but it would be the only additional change that would make it a perfect score.
As an aside, I would love to see it as a PWA or standalone app. I don’t know if that’s on your roadmap but I think it would be neat.
Thanks for the Quiblr compliments! And Post and Comment links should now open in-app. I think that covers everything
And Quiblr is a PWA. Native apps are in the works
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.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.
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.
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!
I’ve yet to find an app which uses the same Lemmy crossposting function that is in the web UI.
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.