Today, we released a new version of Diaspora*, the decentralized, open-source social network. This new version contains a bunch of interesting new features, a few of which I will introduce here.
Post preview
Probably one of the most requested features of the past was to be able to preview posts before they are submitted. This is now possible thanks to the work of @svbergerem. Here is how it looks:
Usage is as easy as it looks: simply use the big, bright "preview" button before posting and you will know exactly how your post will end up looking in the stream. The preview has a slightly different color than the regular posts. This is to visually separate the preview to avoid confusion.
Locator
The experienced user will notice another addition in the above screenshot: a second icon next to the photo upload symbol. It allows you to attach your current location and share it as part of the post. This is, of course, completely optional and not enabled by default. Also, the browser will most likely ask for your permission, first. The pull request that introduced this feature by @marco-gallardo was open for quite a long time, but in the end the code was polished to perfection and we're happy to include it in this release. Another illustrating screenshot:
Just in case you were wondering, it uses the OpenStreetMap API to resolve the coordinates to named locations for user-friendly display.
Keyboard navigation
Another notable feature we also owe to @svbergerem is basic keyboard navigation for the stream.
j will scroll to the next post
k will take you back to the previous post
c will get you to the comment input for the highlighted post
l will like the highlighted post.
A highlighted post has a colored border on the left side (you really can't miss it). So, with these shortcuts in place, prepare to navigate the stream faster than ever before.
Epilogue
Those are just the most noteable changes, that you will immediately notice in the UI. The release contains a total number of 192 commits by 30 contributors and we've got 66 merged pull requests. As always, you can see the detailed list of changes in our changelog.
