Fetch nearby blocks in full block view

[marcolilli]

How I personally use Are.na most of the time is by opening a channel's first block and then right-arrow-clicking through the channel. For each new image block, I have to wait a few seconds until it's loaded and displayed.

Proposal

In the full block view: We could reduce the wait time to zero if we'd not only fetch the current block, but also the previous and next one and – if they are image blocks – also download the image.

I had a quick look into the code and noticed that something similar is already implemented but not in full: When hovering over the left arrow in the top right corner, the content of the previous block gets requested. The image is not being downloaded, though. Also, this doesn't happen for the right arrow, which seems odd to me because I'd assume it is the more common action a user would take.

I'm a big Are.na fan and would love to contribute, therefore I don't hesitate with creating a PR for this optimization myself. I just wanted to hear from the maintainers if such a PR would be accepted. If yes, I'd need the env variables.