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Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

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Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#11

Post by wickedchicken »

akavlie wrote: post #10
wickedchicken wrote: post #9

YES. This is exactly what I've been planning in my head since IRCCloud doesn't seem to be handing out invites. Too bad this is in node/mongo otherwise I would love to contribute.

What tech stack would you use, if you built a client like this?

It has less to do with technical reasons and more that node (and javascript in general) rubs me the wrong way. If the tech works for you then roll with it. Personally I think go works where node is often used, but fits my style of development better.

Not to throw more feature work on you guys, but I always thought it would be neat to have an IRC client email you if someone mentions you while you were away...

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#13

Post by akavlie »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #8

Not to be negative, but what does this have that couldn't be done better with ZNC and a proper IRC client? I get a persistent connection to the IRC server, logs and push notifications to my phone when I'm not connected or paying attention, and I can connect from as any IRC client I want to, or connect from multiple clients simultaneously. [1] Granted, the web client does look really really nice, but as a whole it see…

Main advantages are:

  1. Accessible to those who don't have expertise or interest in setting up their own IRC bouncer
  2. Usable from any web browser
  3. More friendly UI
  4. Usable by sites that want a chat room for their users (look at twit.tv -- embedded IRC client front and center).
There is no proprietary backend; the whole client, and the library powering it (node-irc), are open source.

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#14

Post by akavlie »

daleharvey wrote: post #7

Looks nice, I couldnt install the irc module on node 0.4.10 though, if I get time later I will try to get that fixed

I've tried deployment on Nodester, which is running node 0.4.9. It had issues, though not caused by node-irc, as far as I could tell. Best to run it on 0.6 in any event; that's what we're using in development.

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#15

Post by akavlie »

hikkymemo wrote: post #12

Why not http://qwebirc.org/ ?

Actually, my work on web-irc started originally as an attempt to improve qwebirc. I found the code difficult to reason about, and thought we could do better with a clean start and socket.io-based messaging. So I started my own thing.

See the discussion that spawned the whole thing here: https://github.com/paulirish/lazyweb-requests/issues/31

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#16

Post by akavlie »

wickedchicken wrote: post #11
akavlie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tech stack would you use, if you built a client like this?

It has less to do with technical reasons and more that node (and javascript in general) rubs me the wrong way. If the tech works for you then roll with it. Personally I think go works where node is often used, but fits my style of development better. Not to throw more feature work on you guys, but I always thought it would be neat to have an IRC client email you if someone mentions you while you were away...

The majority of the code is in the front end... so even if you go with a different backend, you have to learn to love JavaScript when doing a project like this ;-)

JS used to really irritate me, but I've grown to appreciate it quite a bit after learning its idioms and getting more practice.

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#17

Post by mattdeboard »

wickedchicken wrote: post #11
akavlie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tech stack would you use, if you built a client like this?

It has less to do with technical reasons and more that node (and javascript in general) rubs me the wrong way. If the tech works for you then roll with it. Personally I think go works where node is often used, but fits my style of development better. Not to throw more feature work on you guys, but I always thought it would be neat to have an IRC client email you if someone mentions you while you were away...

Use a bouncer like znc (or this) and you don't have to get emails, it'll just be there when you get back

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#19

Post by patrickod »

akavlie wrote: post #3

The other collaborator here. I started with a similar client called web-irc, to make a better open source web IRC client. I combined forced with thedjpetersen because his tech stack was almost identical. And it looked better, to boot :-) Tech used: Node.js, node-irc, socket.io, Backbone.js, and MongoDB for optional message logging on persistent connections. Feedback and contributions welcome. This article is linked t…

The screenshots looks really beautiful. Unfortunately the demo link seems to be down at the moment

Re: Show HN: Subway, a persistent web client for IRC

#20

Post by wickedchicken »

mattdeboard wrote: post #17
wickedchicken wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has less to do with technical reasons and more that node (and javascript in general) rubs me the wrong way. If the tech works for you then roll with it. Personally I think go works where node is often used, but fits my style of development better. Not to throw more feature work on you guys, but I always thought it would be neat to have an IRC client email you if someone mentions you while you were away...

Use a bouncer like znc (or this) and you don't have to get emails, it'll just be there when you get back

I'm thinking more of a notification. Imagine monitoring a product support channel: if someone mentions you you want to know about it so you can pop into the channel if needed. I don't want to stare at a chat screen all the time.
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