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Awesome Features! Beautiful default theme Join multiple rooms and start private conversations Get notified when new messages arrive Ignore spam

Awesome Features! Beautiful default theme Join multiple rooms and start private conversations Get notified when new messages arrive Ignore spammers and people you don't like Moderation: Kick and ban users, change the subject of the room Um. So basically, they just reinvented IRC, based it on an XMPP backend and spiced it up with a load of funky buzzwords?

erikpukinskis 15y ago
Except that only techies are able to use IRC. You can throw this on a web server and anyone will be able to use it. You could use it for your church chat room or something.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  Er, no. That's like saying Linux is only CLI. It's outdated misinformation. There are loads of web clients, and you wouldn't believe what kinds of tech illiterate people I've seen on some networks.
  - kaylarose 15y ago
    I can't tell the difference between IM and IRC in Adium. It's the best non-IRC, IRC client.
    - ciupicri 15y ago
      Pidgin is another multi-protocol popular option.
      - click170 15y ago
        Does Pidgin do IRC? I didn't think it did. I wanted to switch to Pidgin a while back because it had support for the kind of encryption I wanted (public key) and Adium didn't, but I ended up not doing it and I thought the reason was because Pidgin doesn't do IRC. Am I misinformed?
        StavrosK 15y ago
        I just checked to make sure, it does. I think it's had it for years, too.
        saurik 15y ago
        Yep: Pidgen has supported IRC so long that back when I was still using it, and the project hadn't yet been renamed from Gaim, it already supported it; it had a few stupidities, and didn't support userhost-masks for buddy bindings (something that simply "makes sense" if you use IRC enough), but it definitely worked and still does (I have friends who use it all the time for IRC, and one who even contributes patches to it).
        sciurus 15y ago
        IRC is listed as a supported protocol on the front page of http://www.pidgin.im/ http://www.pidgin.im/
        krakensden 15y ago
        The Pidgin developers are also the libpurple developers- if Adium supports it, so does Pidgin.
        onedognight 15y ago
        This hasn't always gone the other way however. Adium finally added support for IRC recently, though pidgin and libpurple have had it for years.
        Terretta 15y ago
        Both Pidgin and Adium are based on libpurple[1], which does support IRC. 1. http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple "Pidgin is compatible with the following chat networks out of the box: AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr."[2] 2. http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/pidgin http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/pidgin
      - darklajid 15y ago
        Uhm. Some clarifications. http://www.adium.im/about/ http://www.adium.im/about/ -> "Based on the _libpurple_ protocol library, Adium can connect you to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services (see further down for the list) and then chat with other people using those services." (Emphasis mine) http://trac.adium.im/wiki/LibPurple http://trac.adium.im/wiki/LibPurple -> "Libpurple is the library which provides network-level connectivity for most services in Adium. Like Adium itself, it is licensed under the GPL. In addition to Adium, libpurple is the core of the Linux and Windows IM clients Pidgin and Finch. (...) Libpurple was previously named Libgaim. " So yeah, Pidgin is an option, because neither Adium nor Pidgin speak IRC, libpurple does. The support should be ~the same~, of course depending on the version of the library used. More info: http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple
  - ellyagg 15y ago
    It's funny that your parent is downvoted below zero when he's absolutely right. I don't use IRC very much, but the last time I did, I wanted to use the name I'd registered with previously. Unfortunately, Pidgin kept telling me my name was already in use or some crap. It was quite difficult at the time, not being an initiate in the appropriate vocabulary, to figure out the search terms to use to discover that I needed to "ghost" the user or some ridiculous unintuitive incantation. I may have got the details wrong, but that only confirms my point. IRC is too hard for non-techies. I'm a programmer by profession, and if it gives me the slightest hassle, it's too hard for other people. Maybe a nice client could make this pain go away, but I doubt it. All the ones I've tried have suffered from the same learning curve problem and the same in-grained assumptions that come from regular use of IRC. Even if one were easy and elegant, I'm not sure that could overcome the negative network effects of so many clients, billed as IRC, doing it badly. I'm not going to analyze it in detail right now, but there's myriad subtracting reinforcements from a community that mostly uses user-unfriendly clients and protocols. You can't just make one good client and get a tipping point. In fact, desktop linux does look like a good analogy here. Moreover, it would be disingenuous to claim that IRC being techie-unfriendly is "outdated" when the majority of clients and tech how-tos pointing to clients are the same as they ever were. I would guess that the majority of IRC use is still done on unfriendly clients, e.g., Pidgin. One or two low share clients existing don't speak for IRC. Now, I'm not saying XMPP or this client is an answer. But, yes, IRC is and always will be unpopular with the non-tech population.
- temphn 15y ago
  You are absolutely right and I have no idea why you are being downvoted. When is the last time anyone has done IRC in the browser? What this widget does is potentially bring Facebook Chat or Gmail style Chat to your site. That's worthwhile.
  - mtogo 15y ago
    Mibbit is actually pretty good if you want to chat on IRC via a web browser.
darklajid 15y ago
I don't get it. XMPP already has everything IRC has. - Federation - Multiple (persistent) rooms (Look up XMPP Groupchat) - Permissions (think chanserv, /mode +ov etc.) - Private messages What am I missing? I'm hanging out on IRC every day, on multiple networks. No, I don't use XMPP groupchat so far - just to counter that argument. The reason for that is, that - XMPP clients usually suck in that area, in my opinion. So the protocol would be fine for me and I'd like to see IM tied in with groupchat/channels, but really.. Look at the clients and it's like really, really crappy IRC clients (to get back to your point: Yes, those UIs are usually following IRC designs, just with look like from a decade in the past) - Adoption. For company internal stuff XMPP is great. If someone with high profile (GTalk? Facebook Chat?) would build a product based on this protocol, it would boost the adoption tremendously. On the other hand, as I stated a couple of days earlier in another XMPP discussion: As long as Google or Facebook are not supporting federation, they are not really supporting the core feature of XMPP in my book. Did they reinvent IRC? No, XMPP did. Years ago, it's an XMPP standard. This is just an IRC client look-alike that doesn't suck completely.
- hamidpalo 15y ago
  FB and GTalk DO use XMPP. I also imagine that AIM, MSN, and Skype all have some sort of a XMPP implementation as well since they all can talk to FB.
  - darklajid 15y ago
    You misread my post - or I was just not clear enough. I KNOW that they use XMPP. That's why I listed them. But both don't (as far as I know) support the multi user chat extension, the whole point of my answer. What I wanted to say was this: I don't use the MUC in XMPP (a lot) instead of IRC, because it's just not used anywhere. Google, Facebook, could hopefully "just" add it to their existing chat infrastructure. Better?
- pyre 15y ago
  IIRC Google does support federation. At least with Google Apps for Domains, you can add some records to your DNS that enable federation for your domain.
temphn 15y ago
Don't get the negativity. Is there a Javascript-API scriptable, browser-based IRC client out there?

erikpukinskis 15y ago

Except that only techies are able to use IRC. You can throw this on a web server and anyone will be able to use it. You could use it for your church chat room or something.

slowpoke 15y ago
Er, no. That's like saying Linux is only CLI. It's outdated misinformation. There are loads of web clients, and you wouldn't believe what kinds of tech illiterate people I've seen on some networks.
- kaylarose 15y ago
  I can't tell the difference between IM and IRC in Adium. It's the best non-IRC, IRC client.
  - ciupicri 15y ago
    Pidgin is another multi-protocol popular option.
    - click170 15y ago
      Does Pidgin do IRC? I didn't think it did. I wanted to switch to Pidgin a while back because it had support for the kind of encryption I wanted (public key) and Adium didn't, but I ended up not doing it and I thought the reason was because Pidgin doesn't do IRC. Am I misinformed?
      - StavrosK 15y ago
        I just checked to make sure, it does. I think it's had it for years, too.
        saurik 15y ago
        Yep: Pidgen has supported IRC so long that back when I was still using it, and the project hadn't yet been renamed from Gaim, it already supported it; it had a few stupidities, and didn't support userhost-masks for buddy bindings (something that simply "makes sense" if you use IRC enough), but it definitely worked and still does (I have friends who use it all the time for IRC, and one who even contributes patches to it).
      - sciurus 15y ago
        IRC is listed as a supported protocol on the front page of http://www.pidgin.im/ http://www.pidgin.im/
      - krakensden 15y ago
        The Pidgin developers are also the libpurple developers- if Adium supports it, so does Pidgin.
        onedognight 15y ago
        This hasn't always gone the other way however. Adium finally added support for IRC recently, though pidgin and libpurple have had it for years.
      - Terretta 15y ago
        Both Pidgin and Adium are based on libpurple[1], which does support IRC. 1. http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple "Pidgin is compatible with the following chat networks out of the box: AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr."[2] 2. http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/pidgin http://socghop.appspot.com/org/home/google/gsoc2009/pidgin
    - darklajid 15y ago
      Uhm. Some clarifications. http://www.adium.im/about/ http://www.adium.im/about/ -> "Based on the _libpurple_ protocol library, Adium can connect you to any number of messaging accounts on any combination of supported messaging services (see further down for the list) and then chat with other people using those services." (Emphasis mine) http://trac.adium.im/wiki/LibPurple http://trac.adium.im/wiki/LibPurple -> "Libpurple is the library which provides network-level connectivity for most services in Adium. Like Adium itself, it is licensed under the GPL. In addition to Adium, libpurple is the core of the Linux and Windows IM clients Pidgin and Finch. (...) Libpurple was previously named Libgaim. " So yeah, Pidgin is an option, because neither Adium nor Pidgin speak IRC, libpurple does. The support should be ~the same~, of course depending on the version of the library used. More info: http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple
- ellyagg 15y ago
  It's funny that your parent is downvoted below zero when he's absolutely right. I don't use IRC very much, but the last time I did, I wanted to use the name I'd registered with previously. Unfortunately, Pidgin kept telling me my name was already in use or some crap. It was quite difficult at the time, not being an initiate in the appropriate vocabulary, to figure out the search terms to use to discover that I needed to "ghost" the user or some ridiculous unintuitive incantation. I may have got the details wrong, but that only confirms my point. IRC is too hard for non-techies. I'm a programmer by profession, and if it gives me the slightest hassle, it's too hard for other people. Maybe a nice client could make this pain go away, but I doubt it. All the ones I've tried have suffered from the same learning curve problem and the same in-grained assumptions that come from regular use of IRC. Even if one were easy and elegant, I'm not sure that could overcome the negative network effects of so many clients, billed as IRC, doing it badly. I'm not going to analyze it in detail right now, but there's myriad subtracting reinforcements from a community that mostly uses user-unfriendly clients and protocols. You can't just make one good client and get a tipping point. In fact, desktop linux does look like a good analogy here. Moreover, it would be disingenuous to claim that IRC being techie-unfriendly is "outdated" when the majority of clients and tech how-tos pointing to clients are the same as they ever were. I would guess that the majority of IRC use is still done on unfriendly clients, e.g., Pidgin. One or two low share clients existing don't speak for IRC. Now, I'm not saying XMPP or this client is an answer. But, yes, IRC is and always will be unpopular with the non-tech population.
temphn 15y ago
You are absolutely right and I have no idea why you are being downvoted. When is the last time anyone has done IRC in the browser? What this widget does is potentially bring Facebook Chat or Gmail style Chat to your site. That's worthwhile.
- mtogo 15y ago
  Mibbit is actually pretty good if you want to chat on IRC via a web browser.

darklajid 15y ago

I don't get it. XMPP already has everything IRC has. - Federation - Multiple (persistent) rooms (Look up XMPP Groupchat) - Permissions (think chanserv, /mode +ov etc.) - Private messages What am I missing? I'm hanging out on IRC every day, on multiple networks. No, I don't use XMPP groupchat so far - just to counter that argument. The reason for that is, that - XMPP clients usually suck in that area, in my opinion. So the protocol would be fine for me and I'd like to see IM tied in with groupchat/channels, but really.. Look at the clients and it's like really, really crappy IRC clients (to get back to your point: Yes, those UIs are usually following IRC designs, just with look like from a decade in the past) - Adoption. For company internal stuff XMPP is great. If someone with high profile (GTalk? Facebook Chat?) would build a product based on this protocol, it would boost the adoption tremendously. On the other hand, as I stated a couple of days earlier in another XMPP discussion: As long as Google or Facebook are not supporting federation, they are not really supporting the core feature of XMPP in my book. Did they reinvent IRC? No, XMPP did. Years ago, it's an XMPP standard. This is just an IRC client look-alike that doesn't suck completely.

hamidpalo 15y ago
FB and GTalk DO use XMPP. I also imagine that AIM, MSN, and Skype all have some sort of a XMPP implementation as well since they all can talk to FB.
- darklajid 15y ago
  You misread my post - or I was just not clear enough. I KNOW that they use XMPP. That's why I listed them. But both don't (as far as I know) support the multi user chat extension, the whole point of my answer. What I wanted to say was this: I don't use the MUC in XMPP (a lot) instead of IRC, because it's just not used anywhere. Google, Facebook, could hopefully "just" add it to their existing chat infrastructure. Better?
pyre 15y ago
IIRC Google does support federation. At least with Google Apps for Domains, you can add some records to your DNS that enable federation for your domain.

temphn 15y ago

Don't get the negativity. Is there a Javascript-API scriptable, browser-based IRC client out there?