With v25 I’m seeing automatic link previews / unfurls in Talk and while editing Markdown text files. Nice! This is especially handy and pretty when sharing “internal” (canonical) links to files, e.g. https://nextcloud.example.com/f/198319.
I have a couple of improvement ideas.
First, allow disabling this feature entirely, either from the author’s point of view (when text is added), or the consumer’s (when text is read). I don’t always want or need the previews, each one is a hit to a remote server, etc. I especially do not want link previews in Markdown text files.
Second, leave it up to the content author. Construct the preview during the time the message is composed or right when a bare link is added to a Markdown text file instead of dynamically adding previews after the fact. Then the content author gets to choose if they generate and add link previews. This is how, for example, Signal private messenger handles link previews and I rather like it.
Thoughts?
Related:
- New Element: link preview or bookmark · Issue #683 · nextcloud/text · GitHub
- External link preview · Issue #3156 · nextcloud/spreed · GitHub
Aha, it’s already possible to disable previews in Talk. Nice! See Allow for setting to disable link previews · Issue #8227 · nextcloud/spreed · GitHub (except this is maybe broken? See [Bug]: setting reference_opengraph has no effect - link previews still appear · Issue #35685 · nextcloud/server · GitHub ). So my first suggestion is irrelevant. I’d love feedback on the second one still.