The idea here is to make it a bit easier to see how well the various players in the fediverse support the C2S side of the ActivityPub spec.

You can punch in any ActivityPub discoverable web url or fediverse handle, and BrowserPub will discover and display the underlying AP:

e.g.

social profiles: https://browser.pub/https://mastodon.social/@mastodon

or posts:
https://browser.pub/https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/113005517546136592

or fediverse handles:
https://browser.pub/@Gargron@mastodon.social

or even usernames (defaults to mastodon.social for now):
https://browser.pub/Gargron

BrowserPub defaults to a visual representation of the object (if a known type)

everything here is powered by ActivityPub, no server-specific APIs

you can also view the underlying ActivityPub object as JSON...

It'll work on ActivityPub-enabled wordpress sites:

https://browser.pub/fediversereport.com

... or posts:

https://browser.pub/https%3A%2F%2Fandypiper.co.uk%2F2024%2F08%2F11%2Fsynology-issues%2F

For known collection properties (like outbox, followers, featured, etc), it will preview the collection and support paging via a "next" link:

https://browser.pub/davew

Here's a Lemmy group

https://browser.pub/https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy

And here's @manton 's profile using micro.blog's AP endpoint

https://browser.pub/https://manton.org/activitypub/manton

Threads posts and profiles are also available, for users that have checked the magic box

Here's a post:
https://browser.pub/https://www.threads.net/@evanprodromou/post/C8qtHZEuA0Q

While Threads does not support the replies collection yet, they do support the inReplyTo pointer, which BrowserPub renders above

https://browser.pub/https://www.threads.net/@evanprodromou/post/C-0iXNmvgj7

BrowserPub also supports the new fediverse:creator discovery mechanism

https://browser.pub/https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/2/24190641/apple-vision-pro-headset-future-cheaper

Bluesky profiles that are bridged can also be rendered

e.g. @snarfed.org bridged bsky profile

https://browser.pub/https://bsky.brid.gy/ap/did:plc:3ljmtyyjqcjee2kpewgsifvb

Here's a podcast from @dave 's podcastindex bridge

https://browser.pub/@[email protected]index.org

BrowserPub also tries to render custom emojis in content and profile headers, these are in the ActivityPub payload after all

even animated ones

https://browser.pub/https://bolha.one/users/joaonaweb/statuses/112978564080782762

and of course Flipboard is supported (cc @mike) nothing special, just the same ActivityPub spec implementation

https://browser.pub/https%3A%2F%2Fflipboard.social%2Fusers%2Farunshah

so even though Threads doesn't return collection items in the ActivityPub payload yet, it _does_ include the counts - so at least I can display those

just pushed it live

https://browser.pub/https://threads.net/ap/users/17841401083120503/

Polls are not a Mastodon-specific feature, they can be expressed well in standard ActivityPub, which means standards-based apps like BrowserPub can render them

Here is a recent poll example from @evan

https://browser.pub/https://cosocial.ca/@evan/113005485605693174

looks like someone submitted it to hacker news!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41351408

and looks like Ghost got their outbox and posts ActivityPub working

although they are not in reverse chron like everyone else (@johnonolan, was this intentional?)

https://browser.pub/index@activitypub.ghost.org

So as I'm bopping around looking at everyone's #ActivityPub in browser.pub, I wanted to have the ability to follow interesting people while I'm browsing.

I just pushed a new update that adds a "Follow" button next to every profile in the visual view

e.g. https://browser.pub/mastodon@mastodon.social

Ideally, I'd like to have these follows take effect here in my main account and not have to create a brand new profile on a brand new site.

This is where OAuth comes in - many existing fediverse servers supported federated login in a standard way

Just enter your account to start the login flow in browser.pub

... then stores the login info in the browser

For OAuth dorks, it'll show the token expiration and granted scope

Also whether or not the server supports the excellent OAuth server metadata spec, and whether the server supports PKCE (a security improvement that is a newer part of the spec)

now Pleroma is special here, it supports following like this in bog-standard ActivityPub!

ie just posting a small json payload to the logged-in user's outbox endpoint

hopefully more ActivityPub servers support this soon, as it should be very similar to what they already do for S2S

misskey and micro.blog from @manton both support client registration for clients like this by simply providing a website url

it's called "indieauth" (displayed in the login info row, otherwise falls back to mastodon-style app-creation-based registration)

there is a newer emerging standard for dynamic client registration, but no one supports it yet - I'll add it when one does!

micro.blog doesn't support C2S follows via the outbox yet, but we can fallback to the micro.blog api here

you'll notice that browser.pub not only requests the ability to follow, but _also_ to read, generally

this gives the logged-in user the ability to explore ActivityPub collections that may not be public, only accessible via auth (if the server supports such collections over ActivityPub C2S)

in theory, you could imagine building a thing on top of these collections that looks like your personal mastodon timeline, but using spec-standard ActivityPub

in practice, tho, here is my mastodon inbox 🤦‍♂️

Pleroma, however, is a different story - a better story

here is my Pleroma account, listing my private inbox collection - essentially my home timeline

this is not public, but available to ActivityPub C2S clients like browser.pub with a valid auth token

Under the hood, the personal inbox is represented as an essentially infinite ActivityPub OrderedCollection, with no 'totalItems' count property, and no 'last' pointer

I can keep iterating down my inbox reverse chron this way in the json...