Do you use comment permalinks? Do you like how they work?
I sometimes open comment permalinks when going through my inbox on the official web UI. I wasn't completely satisfied with how they work so I wanted to rethink permalinks.
Here's what I ended up with for now: https://lemminator.netlify.app/c/lemmyapps/post/3425509/comment/2569266
Lemmy.world's officially supported web UIs:
- https://lemmy.world/comment/2569266
- https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/comment/2569266
- https://photon.lemmy.world/post/lemmy.world/3425509?thread=0.2569136.2569266#2569266
- m.lemmy.world doesn't seem to support them
- https://old.lemmy.world/comment/2569266
Some design decisions I made (for better or worse):
- You can open a permalink by clicking a comment's timestamp. This minimizes UI clutter but trades off discoverability.
- The permalink page shows the linked comment near the top, skipping all post information except for its title
- The comment you link to is the one you'll see at the top (not the parent comment)
- Context is available behind a button
Are permalinks something you use at all? Do you have any opinions on how they should work?
My main issue with Lemmy permalinks is that they're instance-specific, so to load a comment link on my instance I need to search for it. There needs to be something like ! for communities. Same for post links.
Another issue is that if a commentisn'tf found (deleted, bad link), that isn't handled very gracefully I think. (Don't quite remember how atm.)
Apparently the link switcher extension fixes the issue, even for comments
https://gitlab.com/azzurite/lemmy-universal-link-switcher
Interesting, I hadn't considered that before.
Suppose I modified Lemminator's search bar so you could paste a link like https://lemmy.ml/comment/1234 or https://lemmy.ml/post/5678 in it and press Enter to navigate to the relevant comment/post within the web UI. I could automatically infer that these are permalinks from other instances. Would that help at all?
I guess? But the same thing works with Lemmy already, you can search for an url. I don't really know what needs to be done to have instance-agnostic permalinks...
given lemmy's heavy focus on purging a user's content on account delete, I think comment links should include the username.
lemmy.world/the_username@home_instance.tld/comment/xxxx
This also gives self-promotion to the person, a sense of identity on their content.