Agora

Follow your interests across social networks!

Features

• You can log in to a Mastodon, Bluesky, or Nostr account on Agora and it'll pull in your following/followers list from that account, while still allowing you to view/interact with posts from the other 2 protocols using bridges behind the scenes.
• Intelligently loads your instance's version of a post so that you can like/boost/comment on it without having to think about what instance it's on.
• I've integrated those bridges into the search, so that if you search for a Bluesky handle like aoc.bsky.social or a nostr users hex code like Jack Dorsey's, and it'll automatically know to use the bridges for those protocols and search for the bridged profile. You can even search for [email protected] and it'll treat Twitter like another instance, and load up the bridged version of the account!
• When you follow a hashtag like #linux, it'll automatically follow the corresponding Lemmy community for that topic in your feed.
• 👪 Multiple accounts
• 🪟 Compose window pop-out/in
• 🌗 Light/dark/auto theme
• 🔔 Grouped notifications
• 🪺 Nested comments thread
• 📬 Unsent draft recovery
• 🎠 Boosts Carousel™️
• #️⃣ Multi-hashtag timeline

Subtle UI implementations

User name display

• On the timeline, the user name is displayed as [NAME] @[username].
• For the @[username], always exclude the instance domain name.
• If the [NAME] looks the same as the @[username], then the @[username] is excluded as well.

Boosts Carousel

• From the fetched posts (e.g. 20 posts per fetch), if number of boosts are more than quarter of total posts or more than 3 consecutive boosts, boosts carousel UI will be triggered.
• If number of boosts are more than 3 quarters of total posts, boosts carousel UI will be slotted at the end of total posts fetched (per "page").
• Else, boosts carousel UI will be slotted in between the posts.

Thread number badge (e.g. Thread 1/X)

• Check every post for inReplyToId from cache or additional API requests, until the root post is found.
• If root post is found, badge will show the index number of the post in the thread.
• Limit up to 3 API requests as the root post may be very old or the thread is super long.
• If index number couldn't be found, badge will fallback to showing Thread without the number.

Hashtag stuffing collapsing

• First paragraph of post content with more than 3 hashtags will be collapsed to max 3 lines.
• Subsequent paragraphs after first paragraph with more than 3 hashtags will be collapsed to 1 line.
• Adjacent paragraphs with more than 1 hashtag after collapsed paragraphs will be collapsed to 1 line.
• If there are text around or between the hashtags, they will not be collapsed.
• Collapsed hashtags will be appended with ... at the end.
• They are also slightly faded out to reduce visual noise.
• Opening the post view will reveal the hashtags uncollapsed.

Filtered posts

• "Hide completely"-filtered posts will be hidden, with no UI to reveal it.
• "Hide with a warning"-filtered posts will be partially hidden, showing the filter name and author name.
  • Content can be partially revealed by hovering over the post, with tooltip showing the post text.
  • Clicking it will open the Post page.
  • Long-pressing or right-clicking it will "peek" the post with a bottom sheet UI.
  • On boosts carousel, they are sorted to the end of the carousel.

Development

Prerequisites: Node.js 18+

• npm install - Install dependencies
• npm run dev - Start development server
• npm run build - Build for production
• npm run preview - Preview the production build
• npm run fetch-instances - Fetch instances list from instances.social, save it to src/data/instances.json
  • requires .env.dev file with INSTANCES_SOCIAL_SECRET_TOKEN variable set
• npm run sourcemap - Run source-map-explorer on the production build

Self-hosting

This is a pure static web app. You can host it anywhere you want. Build it by running npm run build (after npm install) and serve the dist folder.

I personally use Vercel to host Agora.

Tech stack

• Vite - Build tool
• Preact - UI library
• Valtio - State management
• React Router - Routing
• masto.js - Mastodon API client
• Iconify - Icon library
  • MingCute icons
• Vanilla CSS - Yes, I'm old school.

Some of these may change in the future. The front-end world is ever-changing.

Alternative web clients

• Pinafore (retired) - forks ↓
  • Semaphore
  • Enafore
• Cuckoo+
• Sengi
• Soapbox
• Elk - forks ↓
  • elk.fedified.com
• Mastodeck
• Trunks
• Tooty
• Litterbox
• Statuzer
• Tusked
• More...

💁‍♂️ Notice to all other social media client developers

Please, please copy the UI ideas and experiments from this app. I think some of them are pretty good and it would be great if more apps have them.

If you're not a developer, please tell your favourite social media client developers about this app and ask them to copy the UI ideas and experiments.

License

MIT.