Is a “new comments” feature planned? Highlighting the newly posted comments in a post since last time visited?
It’s a very handy feature to follow discussions in a post.
This is a highly requested feature for many apps, however it is not something that is available via the Lemmy, or Piefed API.
Some apps have that feature, like Boost. Dunno how the dev did it though.
If you have a specific example in mind (like another Lemmy client), could you post a screenshot so I can get an idea of what this looks like?
It looks like this on e.g. Boost. Greyed comments are new comments since I visited the post.
(Sorry about the volume bar on the right…)
I’m not sure if this is correct, but I could track when a comment is first seen. I could say “if you first saw these 50 comments 1 hour ago, but these 50 comments 1 minutes ago, then highlight the latter”. I’m not entirely sure when the highlight should go away. When you close and reopen the post, or maybe 5 minutes after the comment is first seen?
Boost change the status and highlighting of comments when you leave the post. Highlighting stays even if you shut off the screen and come back, so long as you didn’t leave the post.
I do not know how Boost does it, but I would not be surprised it is something along the lines you’re suggesting.
Thanks for your interest in that feature.
