Happy Friday everyone! I'm making a post to see if anyone wants to beta test my Tildes.net iOS app Backtick.

Background

I've been wanting to create a Reddit app for quite a while, and just when I got started, the API change chaos happened. Thankfully, I remembered signing up for Tildes.net a few years ago and decided to pivot to make an app for this site instead! The app is still a work in progress, but I believe releasing early and getting as many eyes on it during development results in a better end product (and it's more fun for me 😊).

Features

Here are the current features of Backtick:

• Light mode/dark mode
• Login to Tildes.net (suports 2FA)
• Front page feed with sorting support
• View, vote, and comment on posts
• Reply and vote on comments
• Collapse comments
• View notifications
• Full markdown rendering
• Text-to-speech for posts and comments

Here is a video demo of the app in its current state (updated for v1.8.1): https://youtube.com/shorts/iukQJyJbtw8?feature=share

I know there missing features, but as I mentioned before, I would love to get as many people in as early as possible to help shape Backtick's future.

Testing

If you're interested in testing the app as I continue to work on it during my free time you will need:

• An iOS 16 device
• TestFlight (Apple's testing app)

You can access the beta here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/gNH18NE9. If you have any issues please DM me your Apple ID email and I will send you an invite manually.

Thanks, everyone! Have a great weekend.
- Ash

Edit:
Getting some great feedback! I'll be tracking bugs and potential features here if anyone is curious: https://chatter-brick-3d3.notion.site/Backtick-Tracker-888150b641ae4c0ab39dc0345783bc50?pvs=4

Edit2:
I created the Discord server to help facilitate better collaboration with those who wish to be more involved. It will be a place for discussion around potential features, bugs, and general chat. I will still be taking in feedback via TestFlight and Tildes.net, so it's perfectly fine if you don't want to join.
Join here: https://discord.gg/aah7nkfpBY

A common theme in web development, and the crux of the so-called "Web 2.0" is scrolling through dynamic lists of content. Tildes is such an example: you can scroll through about 50 topics on the front page before you reach a "next" button if you want to keep looking.

There's a certain beauty in the simplicity of the next/previous page. When done right it's fast, it's easy, and fits neatly into a server-side rendered model. However, it does cause that small bit of friction where you need to hit the next button to go forward -- taking you out of the "flow", so-to-speak. It's slick, but it could be slicker. Perhaps more importantly, it's an interesting problem to solve.

A step up from the next/previous button is to load the next page of content when you reach the end of the list, inserting it below. If the load is pretty fast, this will hardly interrupt your flow at all! The ever-so-popular reddit enhancement suite does precisely that for reddit: instead of a next button, when you reach the bottom, the next page of items simply plops into place. If the loading isn't fast enough, perhaps instead of loading when they reach the last item, you might choose to load when they hit the fifth from last item, etc.

To try to keep this post more concrete, and more helpful, here's how this type of pagination would work in practice, in typescript and using the Intersection Observer API but otherwise framework agnostic:

/**
 * Allows the user to scroll forever through the given list by calling the given loadMore()
 * function whenever the bottom element (by default) becomes visible. This assumes that
 * loadMore is the only thing that modifies the list, and that the list is done being modified
 * once the promise returned from loadMore resolves
 *
 * @param list The element which contains the individual items
 * @param loadMore A function which can be called to insert more items into the list. Can return
 *   a rejected promise to indicate that there are no more items to load
 * @param triggerLoadAt The index of the child in the list which triggers the load. Negative numbers
 *   are interpreted as offsets from the end of the list. 
 */
function handlePagination(list: Element, loadMore: () => Promise<void>, triggerLoadAt: number = -1) {
    manageIntersection();
    return;

    function handleIntersection(ele: Element, handler: () => void): () => void {
        let active = true;
        const observer = new IntersectionObserver((entries) => {
            if (active && entries[0].isIntersecting) {
                handler()
            }
        }, { root: null, threshold: 0.5 });
        observer.observe(ele);
        return () => {
            if (active) {
                active = false;
                observer.disconnect();
            }
        }
    }

    function manageIntersection() {
        const index = triggerLoadAt < 0 ? list.children.length + triggerLoadAt : triggerLoadAt;
        if (index < 0 || index >= list.children.length) {
            throw new Error(`index=${index} is not valid for a list of ${list.children.length} items`);
        }

        const child = list.children[index];
        const removeIntersectionHandler = handleIntersection(child, () => {
            removeIntersectionHandler();
            loadMore().then(() => {
                manageIntersection();
            }).catch((e) => {});
        });
    }
}

If you're sane, this probably suffices for you. However, there is still one problem: as you scroll,
the number of elements on the DOM get longer and longer. This means they necessarily take up
some amount of memory, and browsers probably have to do some amount of work to keep
track of them. Thus, in theory, if you were to scroll long enough, the page would get slower and
slower! How long "long enough" is would depend mostly on how complicated each item is: if each one
is a unique 20k element svg, it'll get slow pretty quickly.

The trick to avoid this, and to get a constant overhead, is that when adding new items below, remove the same number of items above! Of course, if the user scrolls back up they'll be expecting those items to be there, but no worries, the handlePagination from before works just as well for loading items before the first item.

However, this simple change is where a key problem arises: inserting elements below doesn't cause any layout shift, but inserting an item above ought to--right?

The answer is: it depends on the browser! Back in 2017 chrome realized that it's often convenient to be able to insert items into the dom above the viewport, and implemented scroll anchoring, which basically ensures that if you insert an item 50px tall above the viewport, then scroll 50px down so that there's no visual layout shift. Firefox followed suite in 2019, and edge got support in 2020. But alas, safari both on mac and ios does not support scroll anchoring (though they expressed interest in it since 2017)

Now, there's two responses to this:

• Surely Safari support is coming soon, they've posted on that bug as recently as April! Just use simpler pagination for now
• Pshhhh, just implement scroll anchoring ourself!

Of course, I've gone and done #2, and it almost perfectly works. Here's the idea:

• Right before loadMore, find the first item in the list which is inside the viewport. This is the item whose position we don't want to move. Use getBoundingClientRect to find it's top position.
• Perform the DOM manipulation as desired
• Use getBoundingClientRect again to find the new top of that item.
• Insert (or remove) the appropriate amount of blank space at the top of the list to offset the change in client rect (note that if there's scroll anchoring support in the browser this should always be zero, which means this effectively works as progressive enhancement)

Now, the function to do this is a tad too long for this post. I implemented it in React, however, and combined it with some stronger preloading object (we don't need all the items we've fetched from the API on the DOM, so we can use before, onTheDom, after lists to avoid getting a bunch of api requests just from scrolling down and up within the same small number of items).

What's interesting is that it still works perfectly on chrome even with scroll-anchoring disabled (via overflow-anchor: none), but on Safari there is still, sometimes, 1 frame where it renders the wrong scroll position before immediately adjusting. Because I implemented it in react, however, my current hypothesis is I have a mistake somewhere which causes the javascript to yield to the renderer before all the manipulations are done, and it only shows up on Safari because of the generally higher framerates there

If it's interesting to people, I could extract the infinite list component outside of this project: I certainly like it, and in my case I do expect people to want to quickly scroll through hundreds to thousands of items, so the lighter DOM feels worth it (though perhaps it wouldn't if I had known, when starting, how painful getting it to work on Safari would be!).

What do you think of this type of "true" infinite scrolling for web? Good thing, neutral thing, bad thing? Would you use it, if the component were available? Would you remove it, if you saw someone doing this? Are there other questions about how this was accomplished? Is this an appropriate post for Tildes?

The previous introductions thread was only a few days ago, but it's getting pretty long and we expect more people. So here's another one!

This is a place for new users to post an introduction with a few fun facts about themselves. You will find the post box at the bottom the page. Maybe say hi to someone else you see while scrolling down?

If you like, you can also write something about yourself in your profile. See "Edit your user bio" on the settings page. Anyone who clicks on your username will see it in your profile. (It appears on the right side of the page.)

You can find out more about how to use Tildes in this topic: New users: Ask your questions about Tildes here!

Hello everyone,

I have been craving a sort of game genre, but I'm not quite sure what it is or if it really exists as a genre at all.
It is a game with a lot of existential twists to it. I could call it Mystery though I feel it falls short.
The main story tends to be a complete upheaval of what we thought was the basic premise. Think of it like paradigm shift: the game.
They also tend to be games that you can really only play once. Lucky for me my memory is horrible.

So far I came up with these games:

• Outer Wilds
• Enderal (which is a "total conversion mod for Skyrim", but an amazing game)
• The Forgotten City
• Paradise Killer

Most of these have some kind of cycle involved in them, but I'm not sure if that's coincidental. All of them have you learn how the world works and it's never really what you first expected.
They tend to be light in battle, which is probably a skill issue bias on my part.

Honorary mention to:

• Strange Horticulture
• Horizon Zero Dawn, but the sequel less so (although still a very good game)
• The Zero Escape series, although I haven't played the first one yet
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (as it really breaks away expectations you got from earlier games too, and the existential dread is dripping off it)
• Nier Automata
• Doki Doki Literature Club

Do you know any others? Or do you know a good match to this list?
What do you think kind of links all this? Feel like playing one of these games?

In the spirit of the whiskey thread I wanted to do the same for beer. What’s the style of the evening or week?
I just returned from Indianapolis and IPAs definitely dominate the taps. I’ll drink most anything but I’m much more of a wheat guy, myself. Hoegaarden and Weihenstephaner are my go-to’s!

Anyone into SUP/iSUP? I got my iSUP about 3 years ago and use it all the time. It’s a big one, able to carry 400 lbs so my entire family gets on it and cruises around lakes and rivers sometimes. What does everyone else have?

It could be a fun way to get some more interaction going in this group instead of just the "what have you been watching/reading this past month?" posts. We could start with a short, 12 episode show just to see how it goes. If it goes well, maybe we could do it again with a longer show.

Since posts don't die from old age on tildes, we could keep it contained to one post. I believe we could just post a top-level comment each week with something like "Week 1 - Episodes 1-3", then keep all the discussion for that week's episodes as replies. Users could visit the post whenever, collapse all replies, and then only open up the episode discussions they want to participate in to avoid any spoilers.

This would prevent multiple posts cluttering up the front page for everyone, but would still be easy to navigate. It would take some self-policing to make sure that nobody else posts a top-level reply, but I think it could work.

What does everyone think? And any suggestions for a show? I'm thinking something like Erased might be good since it has a fairly broad appeal.

Edit: Assuming we do a 12 episode show to kick things off, what day of the week would everyone want me to post episode discussions? And how many episodes per post? We could do something like 3 episodes every Friday, or we could do 1-2 episodes say every Wednesday and Sunday if we don't want to wait a full week between discussions.

Edit 2: Sounds like we're gonna go-ahead with Erased! I'll put together a schedule and create the post later today with details.

I committed an embarrassing gaffe today. I had ordered a keyboard online from a store from the Tyneside of north-eastern England: an area with a regional accent and dialect often referred to as ‘Geordie’. I habitually speak in a ‘home counties’ accent, which is sometimes regarded as a contemporary variety of received pronunciation (RP), though it sounds quite different to historical and conservative varieties of that accent. A salesman called me earlier to inform me that the keyboard I wanted was out of stock, but that they would be happy to refund me if I didn’t want to wait for new inventory. Seemingly between the accent difference and the poor audio quality inherent to phone calls I misinterpreted ‘keyboard’ as ‘cable’, insisting with increasing urgency that I have USB-C cables in plenty and that they needn’t worry about supplying one with the order. We both went about in circles for a few minutes until it dawned on me what I was doing, at which point intense embarrassment flushed over me. Oops!

Accent diversity in Britain is rich and regional. It's not hard to place where someone grew up based on their accent. Would you consider your country to be diverse in accents? Even so, are there instances of accent discrimination?

Hey ~food! I'm relatively new here, but I would love to share my love of cookbooks with you all and discover some new ones to add to my collection.

While Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and The Food Lab are certainly some of my favorites. I have discovered others that I have repeatedly gone back to that aren't as decorated with rewards.

One of my favorite authors as of late, Olia Hercules, has a couple of cookbooks that I absolutely adore! She specializes in Ukrainian dishes and her recipes have helped dispel the myth of potatoes and cabbage being the only slavic ingredients. Mamushka is her first cook book with several great recipes, including a chicken marinade that is impossible for me to get away from. Summer Kitchens is another lovely cook book by her that reads like a love letter for documenting Ukrainian cuisine and has so many great vegetable recipes.

I'm curious to hear about other people's recommendations! Please give me a another reason for needing a devoted bookshelf for my collection.

So I've been wanting to host some gameplay sessions on Discord for a while now, and I figured the best option would be visual novels or adventure games and similar types of games that are more story-driven. You don't have to worry about the video lagging as much, and you can pretty easily pause playing to talk to people without worrying about getting distracted.

What I particularly want are games that have choices that matter so people can give input. Someone once mentioned playing "Your Turn To Die" with friends where they could vote on the choices, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. If you haven't played that game, there are multiple points where you have to choose between two characters dying, which definitely shapes later chapters. Obviously I know what goes on in that game though, and I'd prefer to be just as blind as everyone else.

So please give me suggestions! Funny games, mystery games, horror games, psychological thrillers, I'm open to anything! (Except most dating sims. Those can be long and tedious if they don't have some twist to them.)

Minor edit: It doesn't have to be just visual novels or adventure games. I'm open to basically any game that doesn't depend on real-time reaction speeds (e.g. most platformers), so that we don't have to worry about getting killed while talking, or the video lagging and/or quality dropping for some people. (That's the main reason I've eliminated movies as an option, video lag and connection quality issues can really hamper the experience.)

After reviewing all the beginner friendly tags on the GitLab and figuring out easy answers the hard way, I finally made my first merge request for issue #700 to an open-source project! It isn't much, and probably took me 10x the amount of time it would take for someone who knows what they are doing, and it probably has some issues that needs to be worked out (although I tried to test as thoroughly as possible), I still submitted it. Even if it doesn't get accepted, I'm sure if someone wants to pick up my pieces, they can do so and build out this functionality in a better way.

I just wanted to share and put it out there that you don't have to be a master programmer to make contributions to this site))

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

I recently discovered Paperless-ngx and have immediately fell in love. I must now decide whether to host it on my VPS (risky with personal documents), on a Pi at home or finally invest in a proper home server (something cheap but with a bit more power than a Pi4). It can totally be run a Pi, but performance may not be as good.

Does Tildes have a big self-hosted community? What are you self-hosting currently, and what do you enjoy about it?

I use Firefox for Android. One thing I love about some web apps are when they designed to be a "installable" Progressive Web App (PWA). It looks like Tildes doesn't support that. Perhaps it's a silly question, but does anyone by chance know if this can be forced to some degree? (Beyond adding a shortcut to one's desktop.)

Without an app available yet, that's my next go to normally. (Yep, I said yet. I'm eager to see your first release, @talklittle. 💜)

And ye

Notable album releases from today, or after June 3.

Squid - O Monolith

(Rock, Art Punk)
Bandcamp

King Krule - Space Heavy

(Art Rock, Neo-Psychedelia)
Bandcamp

Janelle Monae - The Age of Pleasure

(R&B, Pop)
Spotify

Boldy James & ChanHays - Prisoner of Circumstance

(Hip Hop, Boom Bap)
YouTube Music

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit - Weathervanes

(Country, Americana)
Bandcamp

Feel free to share more releases below.

Any feedback on the format is welcome!

Many of us listen to whatever music strikes our mood, but there are some out there who, in addition to mood, listen to and appreciate music in focused listening projects. It could be a discography of an artist you want to finish, or it could be listening to all the top 10 albums from each year. There's really no end to the listening projects we get ourselves involved in. I'd like to open a discussion about this.

I've been involved in a number of listening/appreciation projects over the years. For example, even though half the year hasn't elapsed, I've already finished my 2023 Listening Challenge, in which I listened to 50 albums on a variety of criteria.

Right now I'm discog diving some of my favorite artists, and the experience has really opened my ears to the lesser-known avenues of exploration. I've completed so many already, satisfying my urge to always be doing something goal-oriented. Right now, for example, I'm listening to The Musings of Miles as part of my Miles Davis discog dive.

So what are you into project-wise? Please share your experiences!

Liking a game is easy enough: they’re usually meant to be fun, engaging, or interesting.

But being impressed by a game is harder.

It could be a particularly impressive set piece in a level, or a clever, novel game mechanic. It could be quality animations or a plot twist you didn’t see coming.

Whatever it was that impressed you, share it here. What was it? How did it make you feel? What made it stand out so much from its peer games?

Note: please mark all spoilers

You can hide spoiler text inside a details block like this:

<details>
<summary>Spoilers here!</summary>

Our princess is in another castle!
</details>

Which looks like this: