Can anyone explain what Matrix is and why is this interesting? Feels like we’re reinventing Jabber?
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Gitter now speaks Matrix
11–20 of 122 posts
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#12Can anyone explain what Matrix is and why is this interesting? Feels like we’re reinventing Jabber?
Jabber needed reinventing. XMPP grew and thrived in the early 2000s and died as every participant fragmented off to spin up a proprietary walled garden replacement. You then need something better than XMPP to fight back against that partitioning of the messaging space because XMPP implementations became too fragmented in feature compatibility to reliably compete.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#13"In the medium/long term, it’s simply not going to be efficient for the combined Element/Gitter team to split our efforts maintaining two high-profile Matrix clients. Our plan is instead to merge Gitter’s features into Element (or next generations of Element) itself and then - if and only if Element has achieved parity with Gitter - we expect to upgrade the deployment on gitter.im to a Gitter-customised version of Element. The inevitable side-effect is that we’ll be adding new features to Element rather than Gitter going forwards."
It seems that Gitter will be shelved after a while.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#14"In the medium/long term, it’s simply not going to be efficient for the combined Element/Gitter team to split our efforts maintaining two high-profile Matrix clients. Our plan is instead to merge Gitter’s features into Element (or next generations of Element) itself and then - if and only if Element has achieved parity with Gitter - we expect to upgrade the deployment on gitter.im to a Gitter-customised version of El…
As long as the actual system still does what Gitter does (i.e. provide a quick way to have project-related chatrooms), I don’t think anyone will care what it’s powered by.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#15That was impressively quick. Looking forward to Github/Gitlab repository rooms and activity integration. In the acquisition announcement they also mentioned threading though, which is the most important feature Element is missing for me. Without it I'm very hesitant to use it in a professional setting. I do hope that threads will look much more like Zulip rather than Slack (which is a mess), or offer different view m…
A lot of people, including me, dislike threading in Slack. It breaks the algorithm for reading new messages. I use it when teammates do, and acknowledge it's useful sometimes, but I would prefer not to have that feature. Discord also does not have threads. I've heard some complaints about it, but not many. Threads in Zulip seem to change it into a different kind of app. I don't see how the Slack workspaces that I've…
Zulip threads (topics) are fundamentally different from slack threads.
TL;DR Slack threads are an after-thought add-on, Zulips topics are a first-class citizen.
Slacks threads can branch of at any point from any message in a channel - if you miss the start of the thread message, it disappears unless someone cross-posts to the channel or mentions you. This is by far the biggest problem I have with slack threads.
Zulip organizes into streams and topics, streams being roughly equivalent to channels and topics similar to threads. However, unlike slack, every message must live in a topic. Topics that have seen a message lately bubble to the top, topics that don't see activity fall to the bottom. You can still see the full stream in chronological order, but messages are grouped by and visibly marked with the topic they belong to. This makes it much easier to both follow a stream and still mentally follow multiple conversations in the same stream.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#16That was impressively quick. Looking forward to Github/Gitlab repository rooms and activity integration. In the acquisition announcement they also mentioned threading though, which is the most important feature Element is missing for me. Without it I'm very hesitant to use it in a professional setting. I do hope that threads will look much more like Zulip rather than Slack (which is a mess), or offer different view m…
A lot of people, including me, dislike threading in Slack. It breaks the algorithm for reading new messages. I use it when teammates do, and acknowledge it's useful sometimes, but I would prefer not to have that feature. Discord also does not have threads. I've heard some complaints about it, but not many. Threads in Zulip seem to change it into a different kind of app. I don't see how the Slack workspaces that I've…
I think threads, used sparingly, are nice. They're good to have semi-private messages, so you can keep the more irrelevant conversation that would normally go to PM public and searchable, while not spamming the channel.
They're also good for support channels, to have a thread per support message.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#17That was impressively quick. Looking forward to Github/Gitlab repository rooms and activity integration. In the acquisition announcement they also mentioned threading though, which is the most important feature Element is missing for me. Without it I'm very hesitant to use it in a professional setting. I do hope that threads will look much more like Zulip rather than Slack (which is a mess), or offer different view m…
Can you explain a bit more on "threading" and its relation to a chat service? And why Zulip's implementation is better?
He’s talking of threads as in “email threads”, not “process threads” - i.e. indentation and grouping of messages and replies.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#18That was impressively quick. Looking forward to Github/Gitlab repository rooms and activity integration. In the acquisition announcement they also mentioned threading though, which is the most important feature Element is missing for me. Without it I'm very hesitant to use it in a professional setting. I do hope that threads will look much more like Zulip rather than Slack (which is a mess), or offer different view m…
A lot of people, including me, dislike threading in Slack. It breaks the algorithm for reading new messages. I use it when teammates do, and acknowledge it's useful sometimes, but I would prefer not to have that feature. Discord also does not have threads. I've heard some complaints about it, but not many. Threads in Zulip seem to change it into a different kind of app. I don't see how the Slack workspaces that I've…
I like threads a lot in the way we use it. With 60+ people in one channel, being able to ask a question and get answers in the thread, while not spamming the channel with replies and potentially interweaving multiple question & answer "threads" is really useful.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#19oh this is huge. and right in time for the slack acquisition !
gitter fixes one of the biggest issues with matrix - the product/ux/ui.
one thing im not sure of is the conscious decision to deprecate mobile apps and instead recommend mobile web. https://gitlab.com/gitterHQ/webapp/-/issues/2281
is that a strategic decision ? because this wont be a pleasant experience is potentially a massive blocker for any type of serious usage.
Re: Gitter now speaks Matrix
#20That was impressively quick. Looking forward to Github/Gitlab repository rooms and activity integration. In the acquisition announcement they also mentioned threading though, which is the most important feature Element is missing for me. Without it I'm very hesitant to use it in a professional setting. I do hope that threads will look much more like Zulip rather than Slack (which is a mess), or offer different view m…
A lot of people, including me, dislike threading in Slack. It breaks the algorithm for reading new messages. I use it when teammates do, and acknowledge it's useful sometimes, but I would prefer not to have that feature. Discord also does not have threads. I've heard some complaints about it, but not many. Threads in Zulip seem to change it into a different kind of app. I don't see how the Slack workspaces that I've…
Discord has a feature (recently added?) in which you can reply to something -- it gets miniquoted above your reply. It does a good job of 'flattening out the tree'.