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Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

developers.facebook.com

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Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I don't do web or software development, let me tell you^W^Wrant about how chat in 2015 feels to use. I'm 27, I grew up on IRC, I know my ICQ UIN by heart. Chat has always replaced SMS for me, and most groupware as well. I was happy when Facebook came along, and suddenly even the non-nerdy friends were compatible with my preferred way of having an endless conversation about random things. Chatting feels natural to…

> ... persistent group chat, shared chat history with a search function, synchronized unread/read statuses.... Across all my devices - Web, Linux, Android and FirefoxOS. No advertising. Telegram - http://telegram.org I've been using it for several months now and am very happy. Would love integrated voice calling, especially to landlines/mobiles, and hope someone develops a plugin for this soon (perhaps the guys at Ja…

Wow, Telegram looks great! Now if I only could convince all of my friends to switch...

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#152

Also it is worth mentioning that Google Talk !== Google Hangouts Everyone who uses XMPP/iMessage/Adium to connect to Google Talk is: 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Haven't been able to track it down but it's gotten me in trouble with my girlfriend a few times for "ignoring her" 2) Your friends see you as "Online" on hangouts and send you messages, which often seem to relate to #1 (you never…

> 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Shit, Hangouts itself is an unreliable message delivery system. [0] At least once an month in both group chats and one-on-one chats I will get messages that seem out of context. Somewhere between many minutes and an hour later, the messages between the OOC one and the previous [1] message will silently appear. The "new" messages are inserted between the previ…

Hangouts/google voice have been really bad in this regard for me. Lots of sms drops a year or so ago. No message drops in a while but constant notification drops getting me in trouble.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#153
post #100

Sigh , yet another nail in the XMPP coffin, at least as far as the general public is concerned. Remember when we had ICQ, and AIM, and MSN Messenger, and Gadu-Gadu, and we were dreaming of a unified messaging system?

I've been saying for years that an update to the IRC protocol to allow for push notifications without requiring users to have a shell and set up a bnc would be pretty much ideal. The constant ping-pongs really dissuade me from using IRC on my mobile as it kills my battery life. Being able to set some kind of "mobile" mode and receive push notifications if I get a hilight would be ideal.

Some of the cloud-based IRC clients do a lot of this (I'm a big fan of IRCCloud). But it would be nice these kinds of features were baked into the protocol. When something like a majority of users want a feature, it should probably be part of the protocol.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XEP-0313 I think: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0313.html

I was actually thinking about XEP-0136: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html . I was completely unaware of XEP-0313, thanks for the info!

XEP-136 is a good example why it's a bad idea to squeeze everything into a single specification (or XEP in this case): The reason it was not implemented by most XMPP stacks was, because it's so much you have to implement. XEP-313 focuses on what is important to achieve WhatsApp like persistent chats in XMPP. Functionality which is lacking in XEP-313 can be specified later on in a different XEP. After all that's why it is called the "Extensible Message and Presence Protocol (XMPP)".

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#155
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may not be unique to XMPP...I use regular Google Hangouts with my fiancee (also on stock Google Hangouts) and have found that occasionally messages to my fiancee get to her hours later or not at all. Apparently the Hangouts team doesn't consider "reliable message delivery" to be a key feature. I think people don't realize just how unreliable the major messaging networks are. There was a Reddit thread a year or s…

What is worse is that all Internet banking and debit card transactions online(in India at least) depends on SMS for OTP as mandated by RBI guidelines. I have had OTP messages arrive 6 hours late while trying (and failing) to initiate banking transactions (which have a timeout period of 1 - 2 minutes).

Hmm.. we get it within a few minutes.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#156
post #100

Sigh , yet another nail in the XMPP coffin, at least as far as the general public is concerned. Remember when we had ICQ, and AIM, and MSN Messenger, and Gadu-Gadu, and we were dreaming of a unified messaging system?

I've been saying for years that an update to the IRC protocol to allow for push notifications without requiring users to have a shell and set up a bnc would be pretty much ideal. The constant ping-pongs really dissuade me from using IRC on my mobile as it kills my battery life. Being able to set some kind of "mobile" mode and receive push notifications if I get a hilight would be ideal.

I've ended up using the www.ircCloud.com service as my bouncer. It gives lovely native mobile apps with proper push and has a much nicer/more usable interface than any other solution I was capable of rigging up myself.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#157
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also have clients and servers implement http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0357.html .

ejabberd doesn't support 0357 [0]. Presumably because their 'pro' version has mobile support. MongooseIM doesn't support it either, although there is talk of it being implemented [1] To be fair though, it was only accepted on the 18th March 2015. [0] - https://www.ejabberd.im/protocols [1] - https://github.com/esl/MongooseIM/issues/405

Hehe, over a week of time and it's still not there!

FWIW, somebody is working on an ejabberd module [1], and there's some discussion [2] on the mailing list.

(And ejabberd's community edition supports the XEPs that are relevant to mobile clients too, BTW.)

[1] - https://github.com/royneary/mod_push [2] - http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/standards/2015-March/thread...

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#158
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free Software gets you nice, simple, easy to use services While there are many upsides to free software, usability and user friendliness were never one of them. Hackability, sure. But most people don't care, let's be frank. I will use Hacker News because it works despite being proprietary software.

Hacker News is not proprietary software. It's open source under the Perl Foundation Artistic License 2.0 (FSF compatible). It's even written in Arc Lisp, which is nifty. Some of us do care.

Nice, I did not know. Really

Where is the source code?

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#159

Also it is worth mentioning that Google Talk !== Google Hangouts Everyone who uses XMPP/iMessage/Adium to connect to Google Talk is: 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Haven't been able to track it down but it's gotten me in trouble with my girlfriend a few times for "ignoring her" 2) Your friends see you as "Online" on hangouts and send you messages, which often seem to relate to #1 (you never…

Why IRC isn't the foundation for all chat I still don't know. I assume a lot of the typical workflow (logging in, choosing a nick) can be automated for users who don't care to know what chat protocol they are using.

Re: Facebook Messenger XMPP is going away

#160

Also it is worth mentioning that Google Talk !== Google Hangouts Everyone who uses XMPP/iMessage/Adium to connect to Google Talk is: 1) Apparently missing some messages from Hangouts users. Haven't been able to track it down but it's gotten me in trouble with my girlfriend a few times for "ignoring her" 2) Your friends see you as "Online" on hangouts and send you messages, which often seem to relate to #1 (you never…

What I'm more disappointed in is that third-party developers aren't even trying anymore.

Back in the day, there were some truly impressive efforts to reverse-engineer AIM's protocol (and Yahoo! and MSN...) despite AOL actively trying to defeat them.

Nowadays, nobody even tries. When Google launched Hangouts, there was no massive reverse-engineering effort. Just people saying "I'll stick with XMPP and just not use the new Hangouts features". It's sad.

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