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Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

getkaiwa.com

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Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#121
post #43

screen + ssh + irssi (+ bitlbee, if you need xmpp) > any web based solution. Why? Because I can see it on my phone and on my laptop, and it's as lightweight and simple as a `ssh -t irssi.myDomain.foo screen -DD -R` and I'm all caught up. This is, ofc, my $0.02. Stuck in the old way of doing things, I guess. Still pretty cool, particularly the deploy on DO.

Except for being almost unusable on smartphones (or barely usable on devices with qwerty keyboards), and bitlbee's arcane syntax for joining MUC chatrooms, this is the exact setup I am using.

And also getting zero uptake from non-tech people.

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#122
post #67

The very first sentence irks me: "[…] for the only standardized chat protocol [XMPP]" Haven't they heard about IRC (RFCs 1459, 2810–2813)?

There's also http://matrix.org ; though it's not going down the RFC route (at the moment at least). There seems to be this general assumption at the moment that a) XMPP is the only open chat protocol about and b) its dead, so everyone decides that the only logical course of action is to write and use custom proprietary protocol. This, of course, massively sucks from a UX perspective where I end up having 100s of iden…

(Long time lurker, only a reader till now) I've been looking for something like matrix for quite some time now (albeit probably in the wrong direction) and it seems like a really cool project. I've been wanting to build a chat application on top of a chat protocol like that for ages! Its a big boost to finally get started. Thanks!

Edit: whoops, I had commented once before, it was just so long ago that I forgot about it!

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#123
post #113
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of install instructions for anything, except the digital ocean automated installer, which also sets up a prosody server.

Seems like they have some instructions here[0], which is linked from http://getkaiwa.com/deploy [0] https://github.com/digicoop/kaiwa-server/blob/master/README....

Ah interesting, I didnt see that, I didn't consult that page much because it seemed to be solely focused on the Digital Ocean stuff

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#124
post #68
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for being almost unusable on smartphones (or barely usable on devices with qwerty keyboards), and bitlbee's arcane syntax for joining MUC chatrooms, this is the exact setup I am using.

I don't have any trouble at all using Colloquy on iOS and connecting back to my bouncer. It's about as seamless as you could expect all things considered.

Does your bouncer let you view the full scrollback from multiple clients, without having to keep them constantly connected (and preferably without lagging out one's mobile client when it connects and the bouncer deluges it with old messages)?

There are a few different solutions for this out there, especially clients that run some custom protocol between the GUI and the bouncer, like Quassel and Smuxi - but I've tried both, and each both (a) has poor mobile support and (b) once you get used to it, turns out to just suck in general. (These opinions are a few years out of date, though.)

Thankfully I don't actually care much about mobile support: I don't use IRC for time-sensitive discussions, and for recreational purposes, trying to participate in a real-time conversation where everyone can type several times faster than you is, IMO, a pain; I'm faster at typing on iOS than I used to be, but it's still just not comparable to a real keyboard. Better to save the chatting for when I have one. But I find ssh+screen an unacceptable solution: partly because of issues with notifications (i.e. out of the box, there are none) and copy+paste, though both can be fixed in theory, but mainly because of the latency. When the letters I type don't appear for 100ms or more, it really trips me up and I make a lot more typos. I could find a server with less latency at home, but that wouldn't help when traveling, especially on an unreliable connection - even though there is no fundamental reason chat should be latency sensitive in the slightest. Tried mosh (ssh + prediction) as a compromise for a while, and it works better, but it has some issues and doesn't fully hide the latency.

These days I'm using Glowing Bear, the web-based remote for weechat (that uses yet another custom protocol). Latency's gone, and like other web-based clients it has the neat feature of embedding YouTube videos and images, so I'm finally pretty satisfied with my IRC setup. (And I can be paranoid about security and run it on localhost rather than using their website directly.) But there are disadvantages: Glowing Bear is somewhat feature poor, it (again like other web-based clients) is relatively slow to render, and there is no native iOS weechat remote. (Guess I could still use weechat as a regular bouncer, or perhaps try Glowing Bear from mobile Safari...)

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, it does matter. Slack is pretty and familiar, so an app looking alike is a good thing.

"Familiar", eh? To me it's still "that weird new hipchat competitor people keep talking about", but it's still something operating at a couple of degrees' remove: I've never used it or met anyone who uses it or heard of any reason to use it, and the one time I went to the website it wasn't clear that there was any way for random people to sign up for it. I'm curious why you see it as the established standard - isn't…

Slack built up $11m in annual revenue in a really short time, and is adding $1m in contracts every 11 days. At what's about $7/person/month, that's a lot more than no one.

http://www.businessinsider.com/slack-growth-after-one-year-2...

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#126
post #124
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any trouble at all using Colloquy on iOS and connecting back to my bouncer. It's about as seamless as you could expect all things considered.

Does your bouncer let you view the full scrollback from multiple clients, without having to keep them constantly connected (and preferably without lagging out one's mobile client when it connects and the bouncer deluges it with old messages)? There are a few different solutions for this out there, especially clients that run some custom protocol between the GUI and the bouncer, like Quassel and Smuxi - but I've tried…

No, nothing I use supports synchronizing scroll buffers beyond ZNC's behavior of dumping the scroll buffer to whichever client is connected (Colloquy on iOS, Textual on OSX). I've not found the dumping behavior to be that terrible, but I don't frequent very popular channels so it's generally not pumping out thousands of lines every time I open the app. For the most part that doesn't inconvenience me, I can respond to any pings or queries as necessary and catch up on conversation. If I need to review anything outside of ZNCs buffers it's a super quick task to just go and read the logs from disk. The main critical feature is not losing private messages and pings when moving between client, which ZNC achieves without fail.

Like for you IRC isn't anything beyond recreational for me, so quirks in the workflow are just fine to work around. If it was my primary method of communication I'd be looking into improving it I suspect.

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#128
post #74
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GTalk has broken federation for Hangouts users, and they failed to enable s2s encryption, which is mandatory since February: https://github.com/stpeter/manifesto/blob/master/manifesto.t...

Actually we (most of the XMPP network) switched over to mandatory encryption last May and IMHO it's been pretty successful so far. Google is welcome to join the party anytime! :-)

Sounds a lot like Google's behavior on GTalk amounts to 'embrace, extend, extinguish'... except that they failed.

Re: Show HN: Kaiwa, a Modern Open-Source XMPP Web Client

#129
post #37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatedly, why are you recommending only Pidgin, and not Gajim? Gajim covers a lot more XEPs than Pidgin (e.g. editing sent message).

We have updated the page to recommend Gajim instead. It is a better choice indeed.

Also, I don't believe that Monal is open source. You might also want to add https://chatsecure.org/.
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