Darkoshi

I won't be using Pinafore for viewing Mastondon anymore.

A couple of weeks ago (based on my browser history), I opened the Pinafore page, and I remember that it showed no new toots since early September.

Today I again opened the Pinafore page, and again, no new toots were shown. I clicked the link to view the Galaxy timeline, and got some error about the internet connection.

So then I opened my Mastodon's instance page (on https://im-in.space), and I was surprised to see that there were a few new toots on my timeline, that Pinafore hadn't shown.

When I opened the Pinafore page again, then it did show the new entries.

My instance seems to be very slow; when I open pages it takes a long time for them to load. Maybe that causes trouble for Pinafore.

I opened https://pinafore.social and entered my im-in.space mastodon instance. I was already logged into the latter. It popped up a verification window, asking to allow the Pinafore web app access to my im-in.space account. I allowed it. I updated some of the settings on the Pinafore site.

Then I closed my browser and reopened it (my browser is set to delete cookies when the browser is closed, except for sites I've added as exceptions). That first time, Pinafore lost my prior settings. So I added an exception for the site and tried again.

Then when I closed and reopened my browser, the Pinafore site kept my settings. But my browser shows no cookies saved for the pinafore.social website.

So I removed the cookie exception for pinafore.social. But now when I close and reopen my browser, the Pinafore site still keeps me logged in and keeps my settings.

If I open the pinafore site from a different browser, it doesn't have my settings. So it has to be specific to the browser.

The About Pinafore page says:
Pinafore does not store any personal information on its servers, including but not limited to names, email addresses, IP addresses, posts, and photos.

Pinafore is a static site. All data is stored locally in your browser and shared with the fediverse instance(s) you connect to.

How can it be saving my settings, if it is not using cookies?

..

I think I've figured it out. It saves the settings in "site data".

The latest Waterfox version doesn't yet display site data on the cookies window, so that is one reason why I wasn't seeing it. Clearing "Cache" and "Offline Website Data" didn't clear the site settings. Yet, clearing all "Cookies" did.

The latest Firefox version seems to have some quirks as to when it does and doesn't show the site data in the "Manage Cookies and Site Data" window. I haven't figured those quirks out. But it seems to be related to when the site data was saved (before or after changing certain settings), and the "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" setting, and maybe also my uMatrix settings. That's the other reason I wasn't seeing it. But for now it is being shown.

For the site settings to be saved when the browser is set to delete cookies upon exiting, one needs to have saved an exception for the site.

I have signed up for a Mastodon account on the https://im-in.space/ instance. The "I'm in space" name seemed nicely amusing to me, and the site has a cute spinning spaceship gif too. More importantly, the instance still had open sign-ups available, which many of the other smaller instances I looked at didn't, due to spam or capacity issues.

I looked up the name before signing up, so I did realize that it (and the spaceship gif) are actually references to Portal 2, even though I've never played the game.

Trying to use Mastodon, I'm feeling sort of like I did when I started using Facebook. I've never had a Twitter account, so I'm a newbie in terms of micro-blogging sites too. Some things aren't very intuitive to me. Some things which I feel one surely ought to be able to customize, apparently can't be. Im-in.space is a GlitchSoc instance, so I'm not sure if that makes a difference to these things or not.

There's a page which shows the stuff I've posted: https://im-in.space/@darkoshi

There's a "dashboard"-style page: https://im-in.space/web/getting-started
with 4 columns:
1st column has a text box where I can post a message.
2nd column shows notifications
3rd column shows a feed of posts from the people I've followed.
4th column shows navigation options.

But what if I want the text box for writing posts to be larger, rather than in that narrow column?
What if I want to view the posts of the people I've followed on it's own page (like DW's reading page), rather than having it squeezed into less than 25% the width of my browser?
The only way I've seen to do that is to switch the layout to mobile view... which actually doesn't look that bad now. So, guess this is no longer an issue for me.

When I tried the mobile view on my laptop before, it looked different (dunno why), awful. Now it's ok, but I still wish the text would be centered, and take up say, 50 to 75% of the browser width (more like my DW page) rather than being left-adjusted on the page. And I don't see a way to customize the page colors.

The other thing that has been confusing me is how protected posts are handled between instances.

When I view my feed (on my instance), it includes the protected entries posted by the people I've followed on another instance. When I view their page (on their instance), it doesn't show the protected posts. That makes sense in retrospect, as the other site doesn't know who I am, as I'm logged into my instance, not their instance.

But there are some posts that I see when viewing the posts on the other instance, which I don't see in my feed. The reply button only shows up on posts in my feed, not when viewing the page on the other instance. So I can't reply to those mystery posts.
I think it has something to do with whether the entry was posted public vs unlisted vs followers-only, but I'm not sure. (I was thinking there was a way to post only to one's own instance? Maybe then it doesn't go out to followers on other instances?) Maybe it's a bug, but I'm not sure.