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Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

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Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#501

Post by jbob2000 »

zersiax wrote: post #87
jbob2000 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most accessible users use JAWS on windows. I focus on accessibility a lot for my job. In fact, we have an entire department dedicated to accessibility design, implementation, and testing. The reason why accessible users use JAWS is that it works across the entire OS and all the programs you have installed; start menu, PowerPoint, web browser, control panel, Google, etc. etc. The problem with the native accessibility…

By tools, what do you mean exactly? The only tool you require on the OS-level is a screen reader, and it talks to the native Windows APIs depending on what application you are using. If you are referring to the different accessibility API implementations like MSAA, UIA etc. that is not something that should at all impede a native app of any kind, so what exactly are you referring to here?

I am referring to the native screen readers and the extensions browsers provide. Accessible users don't give a shit about the APIs, they aren't programming screen readers for themselves...

The native screen reader built into windows doesn't work well with web pages, so you have to get your own tool (sorry, screen reader) specifically for reading webpages. The browsers all have some extensions for this. So yes, now you have two tools to use - the native screen reader and the browser. And they both are garbage (I've used both while my license for JAWS was pending).

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#502

Post by raydev »

dman wrote: post #274
arvinsim wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If doesn't affect their bottomline, then why will they bother?

Customers are fickle beasts, they mutter and keep on using a product until they dont.

Sure, but it'll ultimately be because of a hot new UX or feature that Slack didn't think of, not battery life.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#503

Post by freddie_mercury »

tomsmeding wrote: post #392
freddie_mercury wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way to edit a message I've already sent. I'll stick with Slack.

You can't do that in IRC at all, so it would be impossible for a UI to offer that feature. ;)

It is almost seems like you are saying there are technical reasons for them dropping IRC....

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#506

Post by salvar »

dman wrote: post #492
salvar wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So rewriting all their clients would be a more sensible approach to user retention compared to keeping the current Electron client that most users seem quite happy with?

Nokia had users who were happy with the solid phones they were building.

So rewriting all their clients would be a more sensible approach to user retention compared to keeping the current Electron client that most users seem quite happy with?

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#507

Post by boomlinde »

saagarjha wrote: post #436
amedvednikov wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm working on a native client for Slack, Skype and others. It's only ~100 KB(!) It will be out of alpha this month. https://eul.im

I was excited when this came out, but I'm ambivalent about it now. First of all, it doesn't actually solve the issue I mentioned, since it's not actually "native" in the sense I was talking about; it's just a cross-platform Go app. Second, it's not open source, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable trusting such an app with my login credentials.

> I was excited when this came out, but I'm ambivalent about it now. First of all, it doesn't actually solve the issue I mentioned, since it's not actually "native" in the sense I was talking about; it's just a cross-platform Go app.

"C. There's also some Objective-C for macOS UI."

> Second, it's not open source, and I'm not sure I'm comfortable trusting such an app with my login credentials.

"eul doesn't ask for your passwords and doesn't store them anywhere. Authentication is performed in a browser directly on the messenger's website."

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#508

Post by mwcampbell »

tvararu wrote: post #470
fyfy18 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer who should probably pay more attention to this than I do, can you recommend some reading material about how to make an app accessible, and how to make sure it stays accessible (i.e. is there a good way to CI test this?).

The only way I'm aware of today is to learn to use assistive technologies and use them on the right combinations of browser/OS/version. These are recommendations for common combinations. [0] I've given the CI deal a good amount of thought. You'd have to go through the trouble of: - Provisioning a Windows VM with specific versions of browsers (e.g. IE11) and AT (e.g. JAWS 17, the versions differ quite significantly) -…

I wouldn't recommend using JAWS and IE for CI. For this purpose, I think it would be much better to use NVDA (https://www.nvaccess.org/) with any browser that can be controlled by a test framework like Selenium. (NVDA supports all the major browsers now.) Then, to feed the text-to-speech output back into your test framework, you can write a simple TTS driver for NVDA, in Python.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#509

Post by FooBarWidget »

jmiserez wrote: post #402
FooBarWidget wrote: post #46

Everybody here is disappointed at Slack, and I like open protocols and open platforms just like everybody else, but I still have a contrarian view. Instead of blaming Slack, why not accept that the open protocols indeed suck? IRC does not specify encoding, netsplits are a common issue, file sending sucks, etc. XMPP also has file sending problems, does not play nice with mobile, is fragmented (not every client impleme…

All valid points, but this makes me sad: > and there must be tons of marketing to promote it. It used to be “build it and they will come”. Open source projects don’t have millions to spend on marketing.

That is false. It has never been "build it and they will come". Open source projects do need to spend millions on marketing. They just aren't necessarily paid for in money or by a single party. The Linux hype of the late 1990s came from the effort of thousands, tens of thousands of advocates who devoted their free time (which costs money). And just look at any popular devops tools today -- the most popular projects have very slick-looking websites and organize tons of community events, all of which cost time and money to implement.

This is what I mean by "it may feel wrong". We developers like to buy into this fantasy of "build it and they will come" but it has never been true.

Re: Tell HN: Slack decides to close down IRC and XMPP gateways

#510

Post by mwcampbell »

fyfy18 wrote: post #378
ndarilek wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, makes me so happy to see the accessibility concerns at the top of this thread. I hate Slack so much. Nothing has made me say "is 10 AM too early for a beer?" quite so much as that absolute pile of uselessness. I thought they'd actually improved their accessibility story when my screen reader read various elements as buttons. Later I discovered that, while they'd likely added the correct ARIA role to a , they…

As a developer who should probably pay more attention to this than I do, can you recommend some reading material about how to make an app accessible, and how to make sure it stays accessible (i.e. is there a good way to CI test this?).

For guidelines on making an app accessible, check out the W3C's WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices: https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/
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