Towards the end of November I was trying out the Tooot app, singing its praises, and saying that it was now my main app for Mastodon. However, I've recently discovered and have been beta testing the Mammoth app, written by Shihab Mehboob, the guy who wrote the Aviary app for Twitter. If you know that app, you'll probably already be ahead of me and demanding to know where you can get Mammoth. I'll tell you that later.

Mammoth already has most of the features contained in most other apps and not only has extra ones but some of them are surprising. Such as View Post in AR. No, I can't think of a use for that, either, but it works. And Picture in Picture allows you to use PiP to view a post while doing something else on your iPhone's Homescreen or another app. And there's an iPad version, too.

Here are the features I've found so far:

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]Choose colours, fonts, spacing, media sizes and more for posts[]Relative or absolute timestamps[]Scheduled posts[]Automatic post threading[]Post translation, biography translation[]Pull to refresh keeps your place in the timeline[]Unread count on all timelines[]Tabs at bottom: Home, Activity (notifications), Messages, Explore, Profile[]Dropdown at top of Home tab: Refresh, Home, Community, Everything, then your Lists[]Search icon at top left, new post icon at top right[]Explore tab has Trending Posts, Follow Suggestions, Profile Directory (for your server), Browse Other Communities, Lists, and Hashtags[]Browse Other Communities is a searchable list of hundreds of Mastodon instances showing name, description, number of people, and language[]Dropdown at top of the list: Popular, Academia, Activism, Anime, Art, Books, Food, Games, Humor, Journalism, LGBT, Music, Sports, Tech[]Searchable Profile shows Following, Followers, number of posts, when last posted[]Profile not editable at this point but soon will be[]Dropdown at top right of Profile: Recent Media, Likes, Bookmarks, Filters, Explore, Muted, Blocked, Scheduled Posts, Endorsed Users, Translate Bio, Edit Profile, Share Profile[]Post Edit box has icons for media, camera, poll, CW, DM[]A … menu at the bottom right of the edit box has: Collaborate via SharePlay, Undo Post, Schedule Post, Translate Post, Add Custom Emoji, Add ASCII Faces, Add Drawing, Add GIF (from Giphy), Add Image from Files[]A … menu at the bottom of all posts in a timeline: Bookmark, Translate Posts, View in Browser, Picture in Picture, View in AR, Share Post[]Share Post options: Share Link, Share Text, Share as image, Copy Link, Copy Text[]A … menu at the top of any open post: To Top of Thread, Favourite, To Bottom of Thread, Show All Sensitive Content, Translate Post, Emotion Analysis, View Profile, View in Browser, Picture in Picture, View in AR[]The … menu in someone's profile: Mention, Message, Recent Media, Manage Lists, Translate Bio, Endorse User, Private User Note, Danger Zone, Share ProfileThe Danger Zone submenu: Mute @user, Block @user, Report @userMost of this is working right now, though a couple of fairly major features are still in the works. For example, you can't edit your Profile or change your avatar image or banner. You'll need to use another app or the web interface for that. I bet I've missed a few things out, though. The programmer seems to be working flat out to implement the missing stuff.

So, how can you get the beta?

Go here:

Read the important bits of the page, install the TestFlight app, then install Mammoth. Enjoy! But do submit feedback.

Oh, and as some of you know, mammoths aren't at all the same thing as mastodons. Different family. Elephantidae. But I bet the programmer knows this already.

#Mastodon #Mammoth #iOS

On a couple of Diaspora servers where I've had accounts, there were Javascript bookmarks that I could drag onto my browser's bookmark bar. When I visited a web page and wanted to share the article I was reading, I could highlight some text and click the bookmark. A typical Diaspora edit box would pop up with the article's title, then the text I'd highlighted, then the lead picture on the page, all of which the Javascript had extracted from the web page's Opengraph/Embed header. I could then add extra text, hashtags, or anything else I chose, and then hit the Post button and my new post would go to the server.

Perhaps you can see how useful it might be to those of us who curate content for Mastodon. Perhaps you know how to program such a bookmark. And perhaps you might like to code it.

Obviously, the instance address would need to be embedded or fed into the code somehow. And the Mastodon API would need to have hooks for receiving the post. I don't know how easy or how possible this would all be as a) I haven't done any coding for years, and b) none of it included the REST code that I imagine would be needed.

So I welcome any comments, especially as to whether it can be done or not. Thanks.