Some questions we missed at Micro Camp

At last weekend’s Micro Camp, we had a panel session with me, Jean, and Vincent where we answered questions from the live chat. We didn’t have time for all the questions, so I wanted to try to answer a few more that we missed. Here we go…

Re: long posts and how they get truncated in the timeline. Are there thoughts or plans for letting us control where that truncation happens? Using a tag in the feed or something. The way truncation works now seems rough.

No current plans, but it’s something that comes up from time to time and has been discussed on the Help Center. We use Hugo under the hood and it supports marking an intro paragraph summary by using the <!‐‐more‐‐> HTML comment. It’s possible that some form of summaries could be used in the timeline. In my experience, though, the more exceptions we add to the timeline, the more confusing it is. That’s why we’ve mostly stuck to a few very simple rules.

Is it likely that the success of updating the iOS and Android apps will influence development of the Mac app?

It will influence it only in that there will be more time for native Mac development using App Kit, because there will be less time trying to port features back and forth on iOS and Android. There are no plans to use the React Native code base on the Mac. The mobile UI doesn’t generally fit on the Mac, although there may be a few features we can borrow from Micro.blog 3.0 on iOS such as easier bookmark saving and the quick bar to switch between blogs.

Who is the best rock guitarist?

I just bought tickets to U2 in Vegas, so I’m inclined to say that The Edge has always been a favorite. Actually picking a single top guitarists is outside the scope of my skillset as the founder of Micro.blog. πŸ˜›

What are some of the features you can say “no” to?

One point I tried to make in the panel is that while we move quickly and often change priorities internally without much warning, the long-term vision for Micro.blog hasn’t changed. We want to make it easier for more people to use blogs, encouraging domain names and content ownership, and wrap that together with a safe, welcoming community. Every feature has some connection to one of those fundamental goals. So anything that goes against that is an easy “no”, like making posting more complicated with extra fields, adding ads, or turning the platform into more of a closed silo.

Manton Reece @manton