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
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?
Do you have any opinions on how they should work?
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/comment/xxxx
This also gives self-promotion to the person, a sense of identity on their content.