Well, LBRY is a great option for video publishers. One of the interesting things about LBRY is that it gives the option to publish files as well, any file! Amazing!! In fact you can serve static HTML pages or Markdown files inside LBRY! How cool is that?!
So many channels are trying to make use of this feature. For example, OYE News publishes articles on LBRY. Brendon J. Brewer has many interesting tips and articles on his channel. LBRY itself is not shying away. They are also publishing a copy of their newsletter on LBRY as markdown files that neatly renders as formatted text, just like a webpage would do.
That's all perfect and wonderful, but recently when I tried to click a link on their newsletter, it didn't open within the app. It opened on my browser, despite of it being a link to a video. To be completely honest, this is expected, since the software is being developed and under beta. So I posted about it on their subreddit. They said that this is going to take a while to fix.
I didn't want to wait. I went on to creating a temporary fix (like I always do). I created some JS code to handle the link appropriately. It opens the link on the same instance of LBRY whether on app or on web. It is not battle tested yet, but let me know if it causes any trouble.
I think LBRY is the best thing that happened to video sharing. It's FOSS and it's getting popular everyday.
As users and content creators we need to link to content from time to time. I prepared a test content to see how linking different ways work on LBRY.
I included 4 types of links here for testing – (1) open.lbry.tv link that we get from the share option, (2) lbry.tv link that the share link goes to, (3) lbry:// protocol url, (4) protocol url without lbry://.
Test Markdown
I included something like this:
link test description:
1-> https://open.lbry.com/@lbry:3f/android-fireworks:d
2-> https://lbry.tv/@lbry:3f/android-fireworks:d
3-> lbry://@lbry#3f/android-fireworks#d
4-> @lbry#3f/android-fireworks#d
I tested these 4 links on both the app and lbry.tv...
From app:
Opens the lbry.tv equivalent link on browser
Opens the lbry.tv link on browser
Opens the content in app, as expected
Opens the content in app, as expected
From LBRY.tv
Opens the content on same tab/browser, as expected
Opens the content on same tab/browser, as expected
Opens the content on same tab/browser, as expected
Opens the content on same tab/browser, as expected
*NOTE: I will post this on LBRY subreddit, so this behavior might change in future.
Whether I placed the links on comment or description worked the same way. From my test attempts, it seems sharing the lbry protocol links is better, since it let's me enjoy the linked content on the medium I am currently on (either app or browser). This is better for continuity with the experience.
So what about links opening on browser from app? I think it should be best if they could also be kept within the app. (at least for the open.lbry.com link, I understand that someone might want to link to lbry.tv directly for some reason.)
I noticed this when I was watching a content where there was links inside the markdown content that linked to open.lbry.com and the linked content did not open on the app. Instead it opened on the browser. So it would be a better experience if it opened inside the app.