Add draft for 4.2 blog post

content/posts/2023-09-16_Mastodon-4.2/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+title: "Mastodon 4.2"
+subtitle: "A new search experience and more!"
+description: "In this massive update we've added search and removed friction. What's not to love?"
+date: 2023-09-16
+author: gargron
+draft: true
+tags:
+- mastodon
+- changelog
+categories:
+- New Features
+resources:
+- name: hero
+  src: hero.png
+---
+
+As Mastodon increases in popularity, we'd like to make sure we're doing all we can to help you connect with your friends and your interests.
+
+In this version we overhauled search. The interface for searching is completely new and inspired by the app Ivory—as you type, a popout provides you with quick actions, such as, go directly to hashtag, search only for profiles, or, when writing or pasting a URL, open URL in Mastodon. Your recent searches are now available for quick access, and search results use infinite scroll. But that’s only the surface—we reworked and fine-tuned all of the data indexes to make searching for people’s profiles more intuitive, so you can now find people by their bio and not only their name. And to make distinguishing real results from impersonators or third-party bots easier, we’re now surfacing verified links prominently in the search results. But the most exciting news is that for the first time, you can now search for posts. And we support a wide variety of operators to help you narrow down your search, such as only retrieving posts that have an embedded link, or a poll, or is from a specific user, or posted between specific dates. Correspondingly, we’ve reworked our settings to assemble all privacy choices in one easy to overview place, so you can control if you want your posts to appear in search or on the explore page--both are opt-in.
+
+<video src="search.mp4" autoplay playsinline muted loop class="rounded-md shadow-lg"></video>
+
+Speaking of overhaul, we’ve also polished and adjusted many details in Mastodon’s web interface, such as adding more thread indicators, making article previews more beautiful, and removing cropping from image previews, but by far the biggest changes are to the sign-up flow and what users see the first time they login after sign-up. User tests have shown where the cracks are where people fall through, so we’ve added progress indicators to guide people through the multi-step sign-up process and rewrote copy and labels to be more intuitive. Upon login, you are pointed to recommended first steps that include filling our your profile, following people, making your first post, and sharing your profile outside Mastodon. After deploying these changes on our own servers, we’ve noticed an increase in the average number of profiles a new user follows from 2.6 to 6.8. This number is one of primary indicators of a successful onboarding, as the home feed is the center point of Mastodon. For comparison, the average number of profiles a new user follows after signing up through our official Android app is around 8.
+
+<video src="onboarding.mp4
+" autoplay playsinline muted loop class="rounded-md shadow-lg"></video>
+
+You can also expect a major overhaul of the interaction experience when you’re logged out. When people land on a Mastodon server other than their own—for example, when following a link shared through an instant messenger—they find themselves on a website that does not know who they are, and therefore cannot allow them to perform certain actions they can perform through the logged-in interface. To perform those actions, we must take them back to that logged-in interface. Previously, we overestimated how often such a scenario would occur to someone who’s on their own Mastodon server but isn’t logged-in, and overemphasized the login option. At the same time, we offered instructions on how to get to the given profile or post in the user’s own Mastodon server or app using copying and pasting URLs to the search box, which ended up being confusing, and perceived as overly complicated. In the new experience, you are asked to type in the domain of your Mastodon “home” while being offered autocomplete as you type, and are then redirected to the given post or profile in your logged-in interface.
+
+<video src="interaction.mp4" autoplay playsinline muted loop class="rounded-md shadow-lg"></video>
+
+We’re excited to bring you these major improvements today and have much more we’d like to bring. All of these changes will be available to you once your Mastodon server operator upgrades to this new version. Thanks to all of you that have supported and continue to support our Patreon. You make it possible for us to continue to invest and build more new experiences on Mastodon.
+
+{{< donate >}}
+
+### Other changes
+
+We've changed so many things, but here are just some of our favourites...
+
+- Search results now load more results as you scroll, just like other feeds
+- Search results are generally better in a lot of tiny technical ways
+- Boosts no longer pollute the Posts and Replies tab on profiles
+- Server administrators and custom role enjoyers have new badges on their profiles
+- Link cards have a new design featuring more details
+- Polls finally have a button to see results without voting
+- Pictures and videos are no longer cropped to 16:9 in feeds
+- Edit profile screen has been refurbished
+- With new Privacy and Reach tab to control all the privacy and reach preferences
+- Dropdowns look fresher, dangerous options tinted red
+- Bot be gone, it's "Automated" profile now
+- Media with alternative text now features ALT badge
+- Reply chains are now connected with lines for easier reading
+- Search can now be found more easily on small screens
+- Clicking on links to posts in posts no longer takes you out of the interface
+- Clicking usernames in people's bios no longer takes you out of the interface
+- Direct Messages now called Private Mentions for consistency
+- Local and federated timelines have been moved to Live Feeds
+- Hashtags at the end of posts now display as a hashtag bar
+- Higher resolution and quality for uploaded images and videos
+- Lots of minor color and typography adjustments to make Mastodon feel slick
+- Lots of optimizations and performance improvements

themes/mastodon/layouts/shortcodes/donate.html

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+<div class="not-prose rounded-md p-8 flex flex-col items-center mt-8 border border-blurple-500">
+  <h3 class="text-lg font-bold mb-2">Thank you for supporting Mastodon</h3>
+
+  <p class="text-md mb-8 text-center">We develop and maintain the free and open-source software that powers the social web. There is no capital behind this—we rely entirely on your support through platforms like Patreon.</p>
+
+  <div class="flex gap-4">
+    <a href="https://joinmastodon.org/sponsors" class="flex-0 text-sm items-center justify-center rounded-md border-2 border-blurple-500 py-2 px-4 !font-semibold text-blurple-500 transition-colors hover:border-blurple-600 hover:text-blurple-600 flex">View our sponsors</a>
+    <a href="https://patreon.com/mastodon" class="flex-0 text-sm items-center justify-center rounded-md border-2 border-blurple-500 bg-blurple-500 py-2 px-4 !font-semibold text-white transition-colors hover:border-blurple-600 hover:bg-blurple-600 flex">Donate on Patreon</a>
+  </div>
+</div>

themes/mastodon/tailwind.config.js

@@ -4,9 +4,9 @@ const colors = require('tailwindcss/colors')
 module.exports = {
   content: [
     "./themes/**/layouts/**/*.html",
-    "./content/**/layouts/**/*.html",
+    "./content/**/layouts/**/*.md",
     "./layouts/**/*.html",
-    "./content/**/*.html"
+    "./content/**/*.md"
   ],
   theme: {
     colors: {