This is the second feature update for Planet, version 0.8.0, released on August 13, 2022. The code for this update comes from the following contributors.
The following link is the changes between version 0.7.0 and 0.8.0.
https://github.com/Planetable/Planet/compare/release-0.7.0...release-0.8.0
Here are the new features and improvements in this release.
Plausible.io is an open source web traffic analytics platform. You can now enter your Plausible.io domain and API key in the info panel of Planet. And a new button will show you the traffic stats of your Planet.
For example, the following link is traffic data for planetable.eth.
https://plausible.io/planetable.eth.limo
Another example is from the official Plausible.io website:
https://plausible.io/plausible.io
Plausible.io is privacy focused. The platform does not collect personal information and does not even use cookies, so there is no need for a cookie banner to pop up on pages that use Plausible.io.
We will add support for self-hosted versions of Plausible in a future update.
Podcast and Attachment Support
You can now attach an audio file when creating content, or drag and drop the audio file into the writing window. An audio player will then appear on the page when you publish.
When you access Planets with audio in Planet App after 0.8.0, you will see a headphone button in the toolbar, and clicking it will launch a global audio player to play the audio content. The playback will not stop when you click between posts.
We will continue to optimize this global audio player in future releases.
If you drag and drop other formats such as PDF or DMG into the writing window, they will be included as attachments. Visitors can click the attachment icon in the toolbar to download them.
Improvements to the Built-in Templates
Planet currently has two built-in templates.
In this update, we have implemented these improvements to both templates.
- Support for audio content
- Link to the home page from the top area of posts
- CSS improvements for video and image content
- CSS improvements for iOS safe-area
- Dark Mode support for the homepage of Plain
Feature parity of templates is an important goal of Planet. All of the built-in templates are open source, just like the Planet App, so if you find any issues with the templates, you can send us feedback via GitHub Issues or even PR:
Later this month, we will document how to build your custom templates.
For demoing what the template engine is capable of, here is a blog about retro gaming with the 8-bit template:
https://gamedb.eth.limo/
Built-in go-ipfs Version Update
Planet's built-in go-ipfs has been upgraded from 0.12 to 0.14. Starting with 0.13, Protocol Labs renamed the go-ipfs project to kubo, so when we need to mention go-ipfs in the documentation, we will use the new name kubo.
During the first startup after kubo update, there will be a migration for the repo. If your local IPFS repo has a large number of files, then this migration may take some time, just let it run for a while.
We will provide more GUI management features for the local IPFS repo in a future release.
RSS Reader
Actually, the initial release of Planet came with RSS capabilities. However, we didn't announce the feature because we felt some details were not good enough.
In this 0.8.0 update, we have improved and tested many aspects of the RSS feature, so now we would like to invite you to try it out.
Here are some interesting RSS feeds.
- Low Tech Magazine: A site powered entirely by solar power, so it may be down on cloudy days.
- Deep Look channel on YouTube: Amazing 4K videos of interesting creatures!
Many sites that update their content regularly are likely to have RSS feeds. An example is YouTube Channels. You can try putting the URL of a website into Follow Planet, and if an RSS feed does exist on the website, then you can subscribe with Planet.
If you encounter problems with RSS feeds, feel free to send feedback to the following community channels.
Local Notifications
We have further improved Local Notifications in this update. When you receive a notification for content updates from a Planet, click on the Notification to take you to the article.
Misc Improvements
- The Markdown rendering engine has been replaced so that Planet now outputs GitHub Flavored Markdown, and that also cleared some crashes with Ink.
- Now, when viewing posts, if you try downloading anything from the page, it works. Previously it did not work because we did not implement
WKDownloadDelegate in web views.
- Improved support for DNSLink. Note that if you want to follow a site via DNSLink, you need to specify the planet protocol in the Follow Planet window, e.g., enter the domain name like this:
planet://zu1k.com
- The TTL for IPNS records published from Planet has been adjusted from 1 week to 1 year. However, the lifetime of IPNS records depends on many factors. So, if you want to keep your IPNS records active, we recommend running Planet at least once a week. In an upcoming blog post, we will go into more details about this complex topic, IPNS and Pinning.
Those are the main new features and improvements in the 0.8.0 update. If you encounter any issues, you can give feedback to the developers or seek community assistance from these channels.
If you are pretty sure you have encountered a bug, you can tell us how to reproduce it via GitHub Issues, and we'll investigate and fix it as soon as possible.
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