Not entirely sure how possible this is, but it’s a pretty large pitfall I just discovered. If someone links a thread in a comment and I click it, my browser will open the thread in their instance, not mine. Therefore, if I want to interact with the post they linked, I have to copy it, paste it into my instance’s search bar, find the same post, and then open it. Unfortunately that’s a pretty far cry from the convenience of just clicking a link.
This is something we need to figure out, it shouldn’t be too complicated for instances to rewrite links and open the content “locally”. The option should also be a user configurable preference, and perhaps have an override method available. For example, hovering over the link will show a context menu with the option to open the post in it’s original instance (in the event your instance isn’t federated with it or you want to see it in the other instance for whatever reason).
I’m wholeheartedly in favor of it, and I think ernest is also in favor of it, because I asked him. A matter of time.
I’m not sure how feasible that is to do server-side. Mastodon for example only does this with a browser plug-in (or in its apps,), so I assume that would also ve required here.
We really need fediverse schemas / protocol handlers to be added to mobile and Desktop OSes - that’s really the only native way this is going to be solvable. Even with PWAs or mobile apps - you have to specify what domains your app can handle, but because the fediverse can be literally any domain, it really needs to be handled with a protocol like skype:// briar:// whatsapp:// etc already use.
In the mastodon space, folks are figuring out this exact same issue. For that space my team wrote about 100 lines of javascript code that made it far better. If you click on a remote link, it asks you ONCE what your home server is. And after that the JS automatically writes all URL’s to funnel you back to your home server to interact with them. Can share that if folks want maybe it could be adapted.
Yeah, I was just thinking I have a browser extension that accomplishes this for Mastodon as well. I wonder if something similar could be thrown together quickly and easily for kbin.
