Updated! Updates are shown in quote text like this. Some scores are updated following app updates.

An Apps Experiment

Introduction

This is an experiment I performed out of curiosity, and I have a few big disclaimers at the bottom. Basically, I’ve seen a lot of comments recently about one app or another not displaying something right. Lemmy has been around for a while now and can no longer be considered an experimental platform.

Lemmy and the apps that people use to access the platform have become an important part of people’s lives. Whether you are checking the app weekly or daily, and whether you use it to stay up on the news or to stay connected to your hobby, it’s important that it works. I hope that this helps people to see the extent of the challenge, and encourages developers to improve their apps, too.

How I did it

I wanted to investigate objectively how accurately each app displays text of posts and comments using the standard Lemmy markdown. Markdown is a standard part of the Lemmy platform, but not all apps handle it the same. It is basically what gives text useful formatting.

I used the latest release of each app, but did not include pre-releases. I only included apps that have released an update in the last 6 months, which should include most apps in active development. I was unable to test iOS-exclusive apps, so they are not included either. In all, 16 apps met the inclusion criteria.

I also added Eternity, which is in active development, although it has not had a recent update. I was able to include several iOS apps thanks to testing from @[email protected] – Thanks, Jordan! This made for 20 apps that were tested.

Each app was rated in 5 categories: Text, Format, Spoilers, Links, and Images. I chose these mostly based on the wonderful Markdown Guide from @[email protected], which was posted about a year ago in [email protected] (here).

I checked whether each app correctly displayed each category, then took the overall average. Each category was weighted equally. Text includes italic, bold, strong, strikethrough, superscript, and subscript. Format includes block quotes, lists, code (block and inline), tables, and dividers. Spoilers includes display of hidden, expandable spoilers. Links includes external links, username links, and community links. Images included embedded images, image references, and inline images.

Thanks to input from others, I also added a test to see if lemmy hyperlinks opened in-app. There was a problem with using the SFFA Community Guide that caused some apps to be essentially penalized twice because there was formatting inside formatting, so I created this TEST POST to more clearly and fairly measure each app.

In each case, I checked whether the display was correct based on the rules for Lemmy Markdown, and consistent with the author’s intent. In cases where the app recognized the tag correctly but did not display it accurately, that was treated as a fail.

Results

Out of a possible perfect 10, 7 apps displayed all markdown correctly:

Alexandrite - 10.0

Connect - 10.0

Jerboa (Official Android client) - 10.0

Photon - 10.0

Quiblr - 10.0

Summit - 10.0

Voyager - 10.0

Arctic - 9.3

Interstellar - 9.1

Lemmuy-UI - 9.0

Thunder - 8.9

Tesseract - 8.6

mlmym - 8.0

Racoon - 7.6

Boost - 7.3

Eternity - 7.0

Lemmios - 6.9

Sync - 6.9

Lemmynade - 6.1

Avelon - 5.7

More details of testing here

Disclaimers

Disclaimers

I Love Lemmy Apps (and their devs)

Lemmy apps devs work very hard, and invest a lot in the platform. Lemmy is better because they are doing the work that they do. Like, a LOT better. Everyone who uses the platform has to access it through one app or another. Apps are the face of the entire platform. Whether an app is a FOSS passion project, underwritten by a grant, or generating income through sales or ads, no one is getting rich by making their app. It is for the benefit of the community.

This is not meant to be a rating of the quality or functionality of any app. An app may have a high rating here but be missing other features that users want, or users may love an app that has a lower rating. This is just about how well apps handle markdown.

This is pretty unscientific

You’ll see my methodology above. I’m not a scientist. There is probably a much better way to do this, and I probably have biases in terms of how I went about it. I think it’s interesting and probably has some valuable information. If you think it’s interesting, let me know. If you think of a better way, PM me and I’d be happy to share what I have so you don’t have to start from scratch.

My only goal is to help the community

I do think that accurately displaying markdown should be a standard expectation of a finished app. I hope that devs use this as an opportunity to shore up the areas that are lagging, and that they have a set of standards to aim for.

I don’t have any Apple things

Sorry. This is just Android and Web review. If someone would like to see how iOS apps are doing, please reach out and I’ll share how we can work together to include them.

  • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    This is helpful!

    If you have a list handy for each of the apps, it could be easier to share it with devs and have them look into it. For example, I know Boost doesn’t handle spoiler links, which makes using [email protected] a little dicey until I’ve already solved them.

    I also wish that Lemmy had a nicer spoiler syntax in general. I’d prefer something like code formatting to support both inline and block spoilers.

    Example:

    I can’t believe the real culprit was the butler.

    I was suspicious when the character was sneaking around, but I didn't think he would go so far as to steal the pets.
      • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        Thanks! I’ll see about making some posts in the communities for these apps (if others haven’t already)

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
      0·
      3 months ago

      Spoilers on Lemmy are pretty quirky to be sure. It’s really a collapsible menu. I think it would be nice if the devs created true spoilers like you describe. It would also be nice if you could nest spoilers inside of other spoilers to create a multi-layer menu.

      I’m not really holding out for either one, I just think it would be nice.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
      0·
      3 months ago

      I don’t ultimately understand why the creator decided that this review of markdown accuracy was too much for the app to bear. I don’t know why the creator decided to create a post saying that it was the “worst Lemmy app” - half an hour after I informed them that I made an error in the initial review and then corrected it. I don’t know why the creator decided to remove their app and source after many of their loyal users - including myself - pleaded with them no to. The dev offered several different reasons, some of which were conflicting. However, I respect their decision. They are an adult and a professional. It is their work and their name on the project.

      Thankfully, the code was rescued by another user before being taken down, so any dev who wishes to continue the work is free to do so. I would happily welcome it!

      As I personally told the dev multiple times over the past months, it was an excellent app, and my personal daily driver. I am as disappointed as anyone that one user’s opinion about one aspect of an app was the “last straw” that led to the developer’s decision to pull the app.

      I am heartened that several other devs have reached out to to thank me for raising this issue, and are working to close these gaps. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I hope for all apps to improve. I hope that the original dev will return or another programmer will be willing to carry on the legacy of the app so that it can rise as well.

    • mashbooq@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s not OP’s fault that Raccoon’s developer chose to be extra and delete their app from the internet for scoring low on a Markdown implementation rating, especially since the level of implementation was a design decision. Further, a pull request was coming soon that would have dramatically improved it. It’s too bad that the developer being dramatic killed off a very nice app.

    • shinratdr@lemmy.ca
      0·
      3 months ago

      How thin does your skin need to be to discontinue your app because one person mentions it has a markdown formatting issue?

      I don’t think you can put that on OP, unless there is context I’m missing.

      • kijetesantakalu@feddit.it
        0·
        3 months ago

        Unfortunately there was some error in the first version of the benchmark and the app’s score was 4.1.

        The project was tightly tied to personal information about the dev, so he feared to be affected on his real life after negative comments started being posted.

        The last post on the community told that either a fork would continue or he would republish everything under a different GitHub account.

        A fork has indeed committed to continue his work and it has a couple of knowledgeable people working on it already, so it looks like nothing is lost. Plus the leaderboard has been amended 😉

    • GBU_28@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      This isn’t kindergarten, if your application can’t stand up to scrutiny, and objective, no personal attack review, then your team wasn’t ready for the real world

      • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
        0·
        3 months ago

        It was not your fault either. The dev made a decision. Many of the App devs saw this post and commented, and some have already made updates to their app.

        It is disappointing, to be sure.

    • Akesi Seli@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s unlikely that any dev “kills” his work after being so committed to it and leaves users, whom he knew almost one by one, with a handful of dust.

  • IMALlama@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Jerboa user checking in. My biggest gripes with it are:

    • not always showing me that I have things in my inbox when refreshing my feed
    • links from a post to another post seem to render in my default browser (Firefox) vs Jerboa
    • every once in a while gbord’s spell check stops working. I haven’t experienced this in other apps, so… maybe something is going on here?

    Everything else is pretty solid though. The only nice to have feature would be saving draft replies locally automatically. Reddit is fun did that and spoiled me. Nothing is worse than starting a long reply, life getting in the way, coming back to Lemmy, and being greeted b my refreshed feed.

    Your other post on this same topic, with a cross post to this one, renders this way when I clicked the cross post link:

  • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.comEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Please post the detailed results, the developers (I’m a small contributor to Thunder, for instance), would appreciate it.

  • scottywh@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Your results with Sync are drastically different than mine.

    I’m seeing 6 out of 6 and 5 out of 5 on the first two tests.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
      0·
      3 months ago

      From the image above, it looks like the subscript did not render (and the superscript did not terminate correctly, although that would not be a deduction). The two separate quotes were rendered as one continuous block. This image doesn’t show the table, but on my device the table does not render the correct column alignment. Maybe you can show me what you mean?

      • scottywh@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        The table looks to be correct to me… Looks like maybe you’re right about the sub and superscripts actually though.

        • KubeRoot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          In the table, the Center and Right text is supposed to be center and right-aligned within their respective cells

  • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Surprised to see Boost that low in the rankings. Literally the only issue I’m aware of is the spoiler syntax isn’t supported. I’ve always considered it much more solid in the way it feels compared to the other apps. I think I’ve used most of them.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
      0·
      3 months ago

      I was not joking about this not being an indication of overall quality. My favorite apps are lower on this list but have other great features! I hope to have a better resource in the future to provide App reviews for different features.

      Spoilers are pretty important though. That’s one or like to see in every app.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        Gotcha. Like some other users, I’m quite curious to see the details of how you arrived at these scores. The spoiler thing can be important, but for some reason it doesn’t bother me personally all that much. I’m very curious if there are other rendering issues with Boost outside of that one.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    @[email protected] iOS testing, not sure how you score these so I just listed out the broken stuff.

    Arctic - Link opens in App. Headings fail, images fail, everything else looks fine.

    Avelon - Link opens in browser, not app. Manually went to test post. Bold+Italic fails (Italic works, not Bold). Table fails. Horizontal Rule fails. Spoiler fails. Everything else looks good.

    Bean - Link opens in browser, not app. Manually went to test post. Text formatting block fails so hard, it’s not even visible(!) Heading fails. Code Block fails, Inline Code fails. Links and Image work, but not inline, only at the bottom of the post. Table fails. Horizontal rule fails.

    CheeseBot - Did not test. $2.99, no free version.

    Lemmios - Link opens in app. Everything looks and works great EXCEPT Spoilers.

    Mlem - Link opens in browser, not app. Manually went to test post. As with Lemmios, everything looks and works great EXCEPT spoilers.

    Remmel - Instant fail. No development in 2 years, unable to even add an instance or an account. Non-starter.

    Thunder - Hard to test. Lots of lag for some reason. Link opens in browser, not app. Manually went to test post. That being said, EVERYTHING worked. The lag may have been because I had just linked my account. Testing everything above, then coming back to Thunder, I found it fast and responsive.

    Voyager - Link opens in app. EVERYTHING worked. No notes.

    So, ranking them:

    Voyager - EVERYTHING worked. No notes.

    Thunder - Everything worked, but laggy to start with when using a year old account with lots of data. Once it caught up, everything was fine. Would probably be great with a new account.

    Lemmios - Link opens in app by default. Spoilers don’t work.

    Mlem - Link opens in browser by default but is user configurable. Spoilers don’t work.

    Arctic - A few minor failures.

    Avelon - A few more failures than Arctic.

    Bean - Hey, it works better than Remmel.

    Remmel - Instant fail.

    CheeseBot - Did not test. $2.99, no free version.

  • wason@lemmy.zip
    0·
    3 months ago

    Hi. Did you include spoliers in preview as part of the test? I mean, some apps show a preview of the post when you are scrolling the feed, before opening a post, so my question is if the tests included checking that post with a spolier is hidden both on the preview and when opening the post.

    • gedaliyah@lemmy.worldOPM
      0·
      3 months ago

      No, I did not test previews. I’d like to eventually test more user-requested features like that!

  • idunnololz@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Hello! I’m the dev of Summit. Do you remember what Summit failed on? I would be very interested so I can fix it (seems like it failed maybe one or two things I’m guessing?)

    Anyways thanks for doing this!