My initial thoughts on these new aggregator apps like Reeder and Tapestry are:
*If you ever plan on replying, creating new posts, or using native features other than merely reading.
@matt My thoughts exactly! Reading your toot in Reeder struck a chord with me, but I had to come over to Mona, find your toot in my timeline again to make this reply. Not a good workflow.
@jimmitchell Go to Settings > Default Apps > and change Mastodon from default to Mona
You can then open the toot directly from reeder in Mona to reply.
@Davey Fair enough, but that’s three taps and a swipe in iOS I don’t want to make just to reply to a toot from a different app. It is better than hunting the toot down in my timeline like I did though. Thanks for the tip.
@Mtt I am assuming using other apps to write posts anyway. I'm still trying Reeder out and already prefer it to Tapestry. As @DaveyCraney said, you can set default apps to open to reply. Maybe it would help if it takes fewer taps or holds. I wonder if the platforms' features like boosts or likes can made available (for Mastodon but not for Micro.blog) There's still plenty of opportunity in the UI.
BTW @DaveyCraney, I set up Micro.blog as the default app but your post (coz it has a custom domain?) opens on your blog and not the Mb app which may be a good thing
@pratik aha you’re right. It appears if it’s a reply, it will open in Micro.blog but if it’s a blog post it opens to the blog. Just recreated that behaviour with a couple of posts.
@jimmitchell no worries!
I see this as an extension of an RSS reader, so it’s read only for me, with some bookmarking along the way. I can see where it blurs the expectations now however due to it not being a pure RSS reader.
Who knows though, with how ambitious these universal timeline apps are it very well may get there with replies. Would be neat.
@jimmitchell @matt You can define a Mastodon client, swipe left on the toot you’d like to reply to, and it will open the app showing that, ready to reply.
@pratik actually I still had Micro blog set to default. Set to Micro.blog they are all (including my own posts) opening in the app for me…
@jimmitchell that swipe left is the way for sure. It was annoying me that YouTube videos wouldn’t open in the app and couldn’t be set to be a default app. But swiping does indeed open videos directly in the app. Seems like that is supposed to be “the way”.
@pratik ah that happened to me. First time I authenticated micro.blog the feed just stayed empty.
Delete the account and add it again hopefully it’ll work. Had the same thing with tapestry as well.
@DaveyCraney Yup. Worked now. It’s unreliable though. Opens in the app sometimes otherwise the browser
@pratik It’s definitely an improvement with the open in thing. And yes, lots of room for more. If they continue to develop, I can see them both being useful.
@pratik I haven't tried the new Reeder yet, but I thought that Tapestry can allow a toot to be opened in a chosen Mastodon app? At least I have set to do that. This is not to defend the workflow, just saying that I believe it can be done.
I have not tried the same for other platforms.
@Mtt @pratik I loaded it up with @sod’s custom feed (before I realized about the “open in” gesture) and was surprised and delighted to see it loaded conversations in-line perfectly (and included the quick links on every post to reply in-app on on the web. Probably not necessary with the gesture, but nice to know the option works.
@Mtt @pratik @numericcitizen And, honestly, with proper position sync and fluid save-for-later, this might be my new favorite way to browse the timeline. It’s the only thing I have loaded up in New Reeder for now, so it’s kind of like a new dedicated Mb app.
@jarrod @mtt @numericcitizen We’ve been waiting for timeline sync and threading in replies for a long time. I was just done trying to duplicate my Micro.blog timeline on Mastodon when this came along.
@pratik Right? Just when you finally get out, they pull you back in. I’d still like to see better conversation threading on the timeline in some Mb app, but Reeder’s detail view at least looks quite nice.
It’s these things that I’m sure are going to drag me into app development myself one of these days.
@jarrod Yup :) So much Corleone feels. Or even Hotel California vibes ☺️ If I had a do-over and could do a tech-centric job, it would in HCI. Have you checked out the OpenVibe app?
@pratik What is your current cross post strategy? Are you maintaining separate accounts everywhere? I currently just use the Micro.blog Mastodon account thing.
@pratik No, haven’t heard of it. Glancing at it on the App Store, looks like another unified timeline. Automated posting from the @HeyDingus account is the only things I do on Mastodon-proper, so I don’t really need that functionality. As you were saying, I’m just looking for a really polished and native-feeling Mb app on Apple platforms.
@Mtt I use Echofeed coz I want more granular control on my crossposting although for Mastodon, I could use the native Micro.blog one since I want to duplicate my posts on a separate Mastodon account. I sometimes delete stuff off there without having to delete it from my blog.
@jarrod Yup. It doesn’t have Micro.blog support yet but could easily if we write to the developer. I love its UI though and it shows platform supported features (comment counts, likes, etc.). One thing I wish Reeder gets is to show if a post has replies so we could check them if we wanted to.
