6 ms·

Dispatch: web-based IRC client in Go

119 points by buovjaga 8y ago

Cu3PO42 8y ago
This seems like a promising project, but right now it still is lacking some features that are very nice to have in my opinion: * Colored nick-names * Theme-ability, even if only through user-provided CSS overrides * Nickname autocompletion when hitting tab, preferably with some logic such as "you talked to this user recently" * A locked down mode in which only authorised users can connect That said, I really like the fact that you can search the history right from the client. Since I am not using this in production, maybe someone with more experience can tell me about how well it scales? Also I feel that the separation of channels and DMs with users is very sensible. I personally use The Lounge (https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge) for my web IRC needs, which solves my main issues outlined above, but doesn't have searchable history nor separated users and channels (there might be a setting for this that I haven't found yet).
- MaxLeiter 8y ago
  What do you mean separated users and channels?
  - mkesper 8y ago
    Maybe seperate channel info and chat messages (like e.g. kvirc enables to do)?
  - Cu3PO42 8y ago
    I should have been more clear about that. I meant a visual separation between the channels I join in a network and the users in the same network that I open DMs with. I realize I can achieve this by hand, but I frequently join/leave channels and open new DMs and it would just be a nice to have thing for it to happen automatically. So far it hasn't bothered me enough to actually open a feature request, so take this with a grain of salt.
- cjbprime 8y ago
  I've been using The Lounge too, but noticed that my IRC sessions often time out silently and don't reconnect automatically, which is a dealbreaker since I don't check IRC that often.
  - MaxLeiter 8y ago
    This shouldn’t happened in recent versions. What version are you on?
- jtreminio 8y ago
  > doesn't have searchable history nor separated users and channels (there might be a setting for this that I haven't found yet). Yes it does: https://thelounge.chat/docs/server/users.html https://thelounge.chat/docs/server/users.html
  - Cu3PO42 8y ago
    I didn't express myself very clearly, I'm afraid. I didn't mean separated users as in user accounts, but that there is no visual separation between channels I join in a network and the users I open direct messages with.
    - xPaw 8y ago
      They have different icons by default. If that's not enough, I'm sure you could write some CSS to make the difference stand out even further. There's a custom CSS box in settings that you can put your styles in easily.
      - Cu3PO42 8y ago
        Thank you, I'm aware of that and currently using the custom CSS for some things. I realize I didn't say exactly what I meant to say (again; sorry about that)... By visual separation I meant for example a vertical line with all channels being above that line and all users below it. I realize I can rearrange them manually, but I frequently join/quit channels and message new users in some networks and have that happen automatically would be a "nice to have" feature for me. Clearly this didn't bother me enough to actually implement it or even open an issue with a feature request, so please do take this with a grain of salt. Thank you for working on this awesome project and responding to my feedback!
eat_veggies 8y ago
I really like this! It's such a pretty client. Minor nitpick though: The SSL checkbox shows up as two checkboxes (one regular, one fancy), the regular one way out in the middle of nowhere: https://i.imgur.com/tFqN4HK.png https://i.imgur.com/tFqN4HK.png If you don't have a large monitor to test it on, you can use Chrome's dev tools to emulate a higher resolution.
- adtac 8y ago
  Completely offtopic, but what DE/WM is that?
  - eat_veggies 8y ago
    I'm using i3-gaps and polybar. My GTK theme is Arc [0] and the paper icon set [1] My dotfiles are really disorganized, but here's my polybar config which I copied from some reddit post: https://github.com/veggiedefender/dotfiles/blob/master/polybar/config https://github.com/veggiedefender/dotfiles/blob/master/polyb... You'll need fontawesome 4 and material icons [0] https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme [1] https://snwh.org/paper https://snwh.org/paper
gnarbarian 8y ago
I've been using a similar client called thelounge for the past year and I really love it. https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge It's a node based IRC client you can install on a server and then connect to with a web browser. It essentially turns IRC into slack/irc cloud, it has inline images/video, URL prefetching, push notifications, themes and custom css, mobile support, and allows you to idle indefinitely persisting your connection to your favorite channels across numerous devices. You can even hook it into active directory if you wanted.
- gsich 8y ago
  I am using that too. It was my way to use Slack before they shut down the IRC channels.
- jtreminio 8y ago
  Several months ago I switched from MacOS to Fedora. Two things I really missed from MacOS that I thought didn't have a good alternative in Linux were Colloquy and Sequel Pro. The Lounge via Docker Container and https://applicationize.me/ https://applicationize.me/ : docker run --detach \ --name thelounge \ --publish 9100:9000 \ --volume ~/.config/thelounge:/home/lounge/data \ --env THELOUNGE_HOME=/home/lounge/data \ --restart always \ -u "$(id -u $USER):$(id -g $USER)" \ thelounge/lounge:latest solved my IRC itch, and it works even better than Colloquy. Still haven't found anything that comes close to Sequel Pro, though.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - gnarbarian 8y ago
    that's pretty slick, but you miss out on the best features (persistance/push notifications) if you're running it locally in a docker container.
    - jtreminio 8y ago
bitofhope 8y ago
Would take a lot to make me abandon trusty irssi, but I welcome this. The image of IRC seems tied to mIRC-era UI design and some attribute the current state with competing proprietary chat programs to perceived user unfriendliness of IRC, as if it's the protocol's fault the clients don't "look modern"
hendry 8y ago
Would like to get my colleagues on IRC, but a crucial element is missing which Slack nails: Copy link Conversations need to be able to referenced. Getting some logbot + archive going is way too painful.
thomasfedb 8y ago
It's quite amazing the longevity that IRC has enjoyed, still essential around a lot of the OSS community. I know a lot of my Fedora questions are answered on #fedora. I'm often a little baffled when I try to get help with a project and it doesn't have a chan on Freenode!
ishaanbahal 8y ago
I don't know why the underlying language for the code is important in the product description? Seems a little clickbait to me. Instead why not focus of the UX you provide or the speed that you have. I just don't get why the mention of GoLang is required, unless its a hobby project for someone learning GoLang. I've seen a lot of these projects mentioning Rust or GoLang lately, capitalising on their popularity, I get that Open Source projects help in understanding the language and hacking around it, but repetitive projects also do this! Is there some reason for it? Btw, I did like the UI, only ended up with this error "Error: tls: oversized record received with length 20306" post login.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  > Is there some reason for it? Attracting contributors who are familiar with the language might be one of the reasons?
- IshKebab 8y ago
  The language is important. If I want to customise it for example it helps to know that I know the language. Also it gives me a rough idea of how fast and robust it will be. Finally the language affects deployment. Given that it is Go I know it will be trivial to cross-compile a static binary.
- comex 8y ago
  For me as a user it would be important because programs written in Go tend to be more resource-efficient than programs written in, say, Python – so this program is more likely to run well as one of many daemons on a small personal server, and not fall over in high-volume IRC channels. (There's no guarantee, of course, especially since the client side is HTML/JavaScript.)
rplnt 8y ago
Wasn't able to connect to freenode. SSL didn't work at all, then without SSL I was "throttled" (few minutes later). So only one thing I can comment on is that the connect form shouldn't be reset every time.

119 points by buovjaga 8y ago

This seems like a promising project, but right now it still is lacking some features that are very nice to have in my opinion: * Colored nick-names * Theme-ability, even if only through user-provided CSS overrides * Nickname autocompletion when hitting tab, preferably with some logic such as "you talked to this user recently" * A locked down mode in which only authorised users can connect That said, I really like the fact that you can search the history right from the client. Since I am not using this in production, maybe someone with more experience can tell me about how well it scales? Also I feel that the separation of channels and DMs with users is very sensible. I personally use The Lounge (https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge) for my web IRC needs, which solves my main issues outlined above, but doesn't have searchable history nor separated users and channels (there might be a setting for this that I haven't found yet).

MaxLeiter 8y ago
What do you mean separated users and channels?
- mkesper 8y ago
  Maybe seperate channel info and chat messages (like e.g. kvirc enables to do)?
- Cu3PO42 8y ago
  I should have been more clear about that. I meant a visual separation between the channels I join in a network and the users in the same network that I open DMs with. I realize I can achieve this by hand, but I frequently join/leave channels and open new DMs and it would just be a nice to have thing for it to happen automatically. So far it hasn't bothered me enough to actually open a feature request, so take this with a grain of salt.
cjbprime 8y ago
I've been using The Lounge too, but noticed that my IRC sessions often time out silently and don't reconnect automatically, which is a dealbreaker since I don't check IRC that often.
- MaxLeiter 8y ago
  This shouldn’t happened in recent versions. What version are you on?
jtreminio 8y ago
> doesn't have searchable history nor separated users and channels (there might be a setting for this that I haven't found yet). Yes it does: https://thelounge.chat/docs/server/users.html https://thelounge.chat/docs/server/users.html
- Cu3PO42 8y ago
  I didn't express myself very clearly, I'm afraid. I didn't mean separated users as in user accounts, but that there is no visual separation between channels I join in a network and the users I open direct messages with.
  - xPaw 8y ago
    They have different icons by default. If that's not enough, I'm sure you could write some CSS to make the difference stand out even further. There's a custom CSS box in settings that you can put your styles in easily.
    - Cu3PO42 8y ago
      Thank you, I'm aware of that and currently using the custom CSS for some things. I realize I didn't say exactly what I meant to say (again; sorry about that)... By visual separation I meant for example a vertical line with all channels being above that line and all users below it. I realize I can rearrange them manually, but I frequently join/quit channels and message new users in some networks and have that happen automatically would be a "nice to have" feature for me. Clearly this didn't bother me enough to actually implement it or even open an issue with a feature request, so please do take this with a grain of salt. Thank you for working on this awesome project and responding to my feedback!

eat_veggies 8y ago

I really like this! It's such a pretty client. Minor nitpick though: The SSL checkbox shows up as two checkboxes (one regular, one fancy), the regular one way out in the middle of nowhere: https://i.imgur.com/tFqN4HK.png https://i.imgur.com/tFqN4HK.png If you don't have a large monitor to test it on, you can use Chrome's dev tools to emulate a higher resolution.

adtac 8y ago
Completely offtopic, but what DE/WM is that?
- eat_veggies 8y ago
  I'm using i3-gaps and polybar. My GTK theme is Arc [0] and the paper icon set [1] My dotfiles are really disorganized, but here's my polybar config which I copied from some reddit post: https://github.com/veggiedefender/dotfiles/blob/master/polybar/config https://github.com/veggiedefender/dotfiles/blob/master/polyb... You'll need fontawesome 4 and material icons [0] https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme https://github.com/horst3180/arc-theme [1] https://snwh.org/paper https://snwh.org/paper

gnarbarian 8y ago

I've been using a similar client called thelounge for the past year and I really love it. https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge It's a node based IRC client you can install on a server and then connect to with a web browser. It essentially turns IRC into slack/irc cloud, it has inline images/video, URL prefetching, push notifications, themes and custom css, mobile support, and allows you to idle indefinitely persisting your connection to your favorite channels across numerous devices. You can even hook it into active directory if you wanted.

gsich 8y ago
I am using that too. It was my way to use Slack before they shut down the IRC channels.
jtreminio 8y ago
Several months ago I switched from MacOS to Fedora. Two things I really missed from MacOS that I thought didn't have a good alternative in Linux were Colloquy and Sequel Pro. The Lounge via Docker Container and https://applicationize.me/ https://applicationize.me/ : docker run --detach \ --name thelounge \ --publish 9100:9000 \ --volume ~/.config/thelounge:/home/lounge/data \ --env THELOUNGE_HOME=/home/lounge/data \ --restart always \ -u "$(id -u $USER):$(id -g $USER)" \ thelounge/lounge:latest solved my IRC itch, and it works even better than Colloquy. Still haven't found anything that comes close to Sequel Pro, though.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gnarbarian 8y ago
  that's pretty slick, but you miss out on the best features (persistance/push notifications) if you're running it locally in a docker container.
  - jtreminio 8y ago

bitofhope 8y ago

Would take a lot to make me abandon trusty irssi, but I welcome this. The image of IRC seems tied to mIRC-era UI design and some attribute the current state with competing proprietary chat programs to perceived user unfriendliness of IRC, as if it's the protocol's fault the clients don't "look modern"

hendry 8y ago

Would like to get my colleagues on IRC, but a crucial element is missing which Slack nails: Copy link Conversations need to be able to referenced. Getting some logbot + archive going is way too painful.

thomasfedb 8y ago

It's quite amazing the longevity that IRC has enjoyed, still essential around a lot of the OSS community. I know a lot of my Fedora questions are answered on #fedora. I'm often a little baffled when I try to get help with a project and it doesn't have a chan on Freenode!

ishaanbahal 8y ago

I don't know why the underlying language for the code is important in the product description? Seems a little clickbait to me. Instead why not focus of the UX you provide or the speed that you have. I just don't get why the mention of GoLang is required, unless its a hobby project for someone learning GoLang. I've seen a lot of these projects mentioning Rust or GoLang lately, capitalising on their popularity, I get that Open Source projects help in understanding the language and hacking around it, but repetitive projects also do this! Is there some reason for it? Btw, I did like the UI, only ended up with this error "Error: tls: oversized record received with length 20306" post login.

dcbadacd 8y ago
> Is there some reason for it? Attracting contributors who are familiar with the language might be one of the reasons?
IshKebab 8y ago
The language is important. If I want to customise it for example it helps to know that I know the language. Also it gives me a rough idea of how fast and robust it will be. Finally the language affects deployment. Given that it is Go I know it will be trivial to cross-compile a static binary.
comex 8y ago
For me as a user it would be important because programs written in Go tend to be more resource-efficient than programs written in, say, Python – so this program is more likely to run well as one of many daemons on a small personal server, and not fall over in high-volume IRC channels. (There's no guarantee, of course, especially since the client side is HTML/JavaScript.)

rplnt 8y ago

Wasn't able to connect to freenode. SSL didn't work at all, then without SSL I was "throttled" (few minutes later). So only one thing I can comment on is that the connect form shouldn't be reset every time.