Kara

🏳️‍⚧️ t4t

i feel the wind in my dreams

Ⓐ

Kara @kaara2/22/2023, 9:42 PM

cohost dot org @staff

cohost dot org @staff2/22/2023, 9:31 PM

cohost patch notes vol. 51

happy wednesday! this was a short week but we still somehow managed to land a lot of small changes while making big progress on larger ones.

a brief aside to complain about Notion and the AI hype wave

Notion, a piece of software we pay for and have all quite liked using for the past three years to draft every piece of written material on this site (including these patch notes!), decided to roll out a bunch of stupid new “AI” functionality today, in the most obnoxious possible way — activating an open language model query every time you hit the space bar on an empty paragraph, and suggesting that you use it instead whenever you start typing a slash command, which has traditionally been reserved for doing things like “creating section headings” or “embedding a file.”

we’re not going to post an overarching stance on AI today but in the past month or two there has been a wave of otherwise uninvolved companies deciding to just rub GPT on their product and call it a feature. this is both obviously unsustainable and actively harmful to any sort of human-centered design, and we fucking hate it and wish it would go away.

actual patch notes time

Tomorrow morning (February 23rd), we’re making some internal changes to how we store the state of your login internally to prepare for 2fa and our public API release in the coming weeks. This shouldn’t affect you directly, but if you’re experiencing any weirdness, log out and back in and you should be fine.
Made several improvements to the PWA experience
- PWA = progressive web app, the marketing buzzword for the thing you get when you add a shortcut to cohost to your phone’s home screen
- Added support docs. check them out if you want an app-like experience on your mobile device!
- Fixed a bug where the icon was always missing on Android
- Made the app properly “installable” on Android, which means links to cohost can open in the cohost “app” instead of your browser
- We’ve got more changes we’d like to make here to make cohost feel more app-like on mobile but those will be coming later.

#cohost corner

Kara @kaara2/22/2023, 9:42 PM

anything, you say...

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in reply to @staff's post:

Izvy Raspberry @Izvy2/22/2023, 9:40 PM

thank you for making cohost better every week!

Katooooooo🌲@saturns2/22/2023, 9:44 PM

Thank you as always for all your work

Lapis the Nevrean @lapisnev2/22/2023, 9:45 PM

Thanks for all the hard work you guys do! This place is amazing 💙

Jaxsun @jaxsun2/22/2023, 9:49 PM

I'm super appreciative of the PWA improvements! missing the icon on my homescreen was one of those little things that annoyed me too much and I'm super happy it's better now!

Sciman101 @Sciman1012/22/2023, 10:42 PM

Same, it also changed the extra margins on my weird aspect ratio phone to be the right color, noticed it like immediately

Daisy @dsy2/22/2023, 9:58 PM

thanks for making cohost!!! :host-love: I gave up on the PWA experience some time ago, but I am giving it another shot now!

jess had talked about a new posting guide before she left; is that still in the pipes at all?

jae @jkap2/22/2023, 10:03 PM

yep! it's on my plate now, harassing me from the "To-Do" column in trello. i am gonna land it hopefully by next patch notes but forgot to mention it in here.

Vertxsees @Vertxsees2/22/2023, 10:07 PM

ty cohost :eggbug:

@AndreL2/22/2023, 10:10 PM

I noticed the other day that Kara had handled all of my (no longer) open bug reports!

Lotte 'just an idiot' May @LotteMakesStuff2/22/2023, 10:23 PM

thank you for the update, can you please let us know what eggbug did this week?

sapphire @arkflash2/22/2023, 11:05 PM

another +1 on the PWA fixes, the blank circle was unreasonably disturbing on my home screen, and carrying the UI color under the status bar is also real nice.

jeroknite @jeroknite2/22/2023, 11:13 PM

So no hats for our chosts then? u_u

Jectoons @jectoons2/22/2023, 11:16 PM

I appreciate how easy it is to access these reports and how transparent you all are. Thank you for building this space.

q1 @quewon2/23/2023, 12:46 AM

tyty :)

Kristian @z4282/23/2023, 7:54 AM

Cool work, nice communication. Only been here for a few days, stumbled across some rough edges along the way and have quite a bunch of questions left open, but in general really like what I see here. 🙂️

jess🦎 Joose🍹@jesscookie2/23/2023, 8:01 AM

oh i am unreasonably happy to be able to see Host on my phone home page now :host-joy:

Mr. Hands @mrhands2/23/2023, 8:10 AM

Another fan of the improved PWA experience here! I've "installed" Cohost on my phone since day one, and while the missing icon wasn't bothering me, it's definitely giving that Eggbug Seal of Quality now. :eggbug:

Jack @MrNuclearMonster2/23/2023, 8:23 AM

Really like the PWA! I had to remove my year old homescreen thing and readd it to get the updated experience.

Jess🌺@CyanSorcery2/23/2023, 8:48 AM

so it wasn't just my bad internet making cohost show images in posts, get rid of them, and then show them again

Alex2beta @Alex2beta2/23/2023, 11:34 AM

definitely can't wait for that 2FA to be added, thank you all for all the work you put into this!

greg @impiri2/23/2023, 4:16 PM

thank you for focusing on making a good PWA experience rather than doing the whole web-wrapper-app thing

aino @kisszem2/24/2023, 11:29 AM

didn't even occur to me to put the webpage on my homescreen but im gonna do that now 👍

aino @kisszem2/24/2023, 11:44 AM

matchy: my phone screen showing my background photo of rainbow umbrellas and various icons. the cohost icon matches the colour of the umbrella that's next to it

Dana Callista Lexa 🏳️‍⚧️@authorx2/27/2023, 5:33 PM

Not sure if it's related to these fixes but a bit ago, I stopped using the PWA link on my android home screen because every time I clicked to another page and hit the "back" button it exited completely. Just tried removing that link and using the "install" button in Chrome, and in addition to a better icon, the back button works as expected, thank you!