25 ms·

Spaces launch in Element

379 points by liotier 5y ago

vaylian 5y ago
> [Spaces] come in three main flavours: This is what I still find confusing about spaces. How do I create each of these 3 different flavours? Is there a default flavour? Do I have to upgrade a personal space into a private/public space?
- callahad 5y ago
  Which you click the "Create a Space" button in the sidebar, you get a clear prompt to choose between "Public" and "Private" (and a note that you can change this later in the Space's settings). Personal Spaces are just a special case of a Private Space where you haven't invited anyone else. It's worth calling out this use case separately, as we've otherwise seen users assume that Spaces were only for shared hierarchies, when in fact anyone can create a Space and put whatever rooms they want in it to create a personal system of organization, even if those rooms are already in other Spaces. If you want to turn your Personal Space into a shared Private space, you can invite people via the button on the Space's summary page. If you want to open it up to the Public, that's in the settings menu accessed from the same page.
- MayeulC 5y ago
  I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms. You can just create one (that's a personal space), invite some people in (private space), and make it public with a public link (public space). The distinction is artificial. I mostly want public or private spaces to regroup existing rooms, so the "private" space that wants to force me to create new rooms (in element) is a bad fit. I also think it's a bit early to come out of beta without peeking: you have to be joined to subspaces as well so that sub-rooms are sorted.
  - vaylian 5y ago
    > I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual level than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the rest of us still needs more explanations/analogies. The thing that is still missing for me: How can spaces/rooms contain other rooms? For example, could someone create a sub-room of #matrix:matrix.org?
    - nadc 5y ago
      (Blog post author here). > Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual level than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the rest of us still needs more explanations/analogies. Yep, you hit the nail on the head. On the Matrix/spec side, we ensured Spaces are generically useful and flexible enough to organise rooms. However, in testing and research we found users have specific goals in mind when organising conversations, which the Element UX speaks to. It's not dissimilar to where Direct Messages are today. Early thinking behind DMs in Matrix was that they're just rooms with few participants. In practise, there's a bunch of other semantics (e.g. room name/avatar exclusively informed by the other users profile, continual re-discovery of existing conversations when creating new ones, etc) which need to be met for them to be intuitively usable by more people.
    - MayeulC 5y ago
      Ah, sorry. I guess it took some time for me to grasp that, and I am now subject to the curse of knowledge. I maintain that for technical-minded people like me, knowing a bit of behind-the-scenes can help a lot with understanding (it did with git). > How can spaces/rooms contain other rooms? They don't per se. It's a list of rooms that's part of the room state. The room doesn't contain anything else than pointers to other rooms, like a linked list. And then other room-related stuff, like an avatar,name,memberlist,ban list, etc. ------- For the technical explanation: what's a room in Matrix? The basic functionality is to store some data. There's three different kind of data: ephemeral (online/offline "presence" state, typing notifications...), persistent (part of the history: join, leave, message, attachment, etc), and state (room name, avatar, member list, etc). You can define your own custom data. The added value is replicating that data across servers (that includes re-syncing after history diverges, like a CRDT), and checking it against some rules (somebody cannot join if they've not been invited and the room is private, or read history). So spaces are just rooms, which indicate a special type ("m.space") in their state/creation event. Also in that state, they contain addresses of other rooms. Some of these rooms can be spaces as well. -------- I'm not sure about a layman's perspective, but for me it always clicked that: - rooms are just places where you can chat with other people - you can be alone in the room, in which case stuff you write there is for yourself only - you can later share that room with someone else - or make it publicly accessible, maybe also discoverable by publishing it in the room directory That permission model is quite intuitive IMO. If you create a google doc, it's the same. I often create rooms, set the avatar and permissions before inviting people over or making it public.
callahad 5y ago
For an example of Spaces in action, the NixOS Community has a well-organized Matrix Space at #community:nixos.org https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org
- rakwoelq 5y ago
  The Fedora community also created one recently. https://matrix.to/#/#fedora-space:fedoraproject.org https://matrix.to/#/#fedora-space:fedoraproject.org
- thibaultamartin 5y ago
  GNOME says hi with #community:gnome.org :)
- Arathorn 5y ago
  or https://matrix.to/#/#space:ansible.im https://matrix.to/#/#space:ansible.im for Ansible :)
sanqui 5y ago
Super exciting. Time to start bridging Discord servers to Matrix Spaces and encouraging people to switch, one community at a time.
- crowbahr 5y ago
  I wish there was a good Discord:Matrix bridge but I've never been able to get anything useful working nor does it seem like Discord will ever allow something like that on their platform.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Except many servers are unreliable and overloaded. Plus, Discord audio just works and you don't have to worry about your chats randomly disappearing.
- podiki 5y ago
  Discord/Matrix bridging works well for me! I wrote up a guide here: https://boilingsteam.com/how-to-bridge-discord-in-matrix/ https://boilingsteam.com/how-to-bridge-discord-in-matrix/
- kovek 5y ago
  Setting up a matrix server on an ec2 took a few evenings (lots of reading docs). Then, setting up discord was supposed to be more configuration… Element has hosted instances for 10$/month and discord bridges for 20$/month? Does anyone else run hosted matrix instances with bridges? I might pay 10$/month for that. Or, are there AMI instances for that? I couldn’t find any.
  - gpanders 5y ago
    I found the Ansible playbook [1] on GitHub extremely easy to use. As long as you know how to configure DNS records and firewalls, the rest is taken care of. This is what I use today to manage my Synapse server. Also Oracle Cloud offers free ARM instances with 4 CPU cores and 24 GB of RAM, more than enough to run a very speedy Synapse server. [1]: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy
espacess 5y ago
I've been using the spaces to keep all my messenger bridged rooms from cluttering the home space, its been working quite delightfully.
- KitDuncan 5y ago
  Would be cool if you could tell the bridge to automatically move all telegram chats to your designated telegram space...
iruoy 5y ago
A graphic that shows the hierarchy/differences of all the possible spaces/groups/rooms would be nice. Because as I understand it these are 3 different things and there are different variants of each.
- callahad 5y ago
  Groups ("Communities") are a legacy, underspecified extension to the Matrix protocol; it's best to ignore them as they will go away soon. Spaces are the properly specced replacement for Groups. From a user perspective, Spaces are containers which can hold an arbitrary number of Rooms or other Spaces. Like Rooms, Spaces can be public, private (invite only), or "restricted" (only joinable by members of another specified Room or Space). At a technical level, Spaces are actually implemented as Rooms. In Matrix, Rooms maintain state. Spaces are just rooms whose state indicates that they should be treated as a space ("type": "m.space" on the m.room.create event), and which have pointers to other rooms/spaces which it considers as children (m.space.child events). This means that a single Room can exist in many Spaces, as membership points from the space to its children, rather than in the opposite direction.
  - liotier 5y ago
    Can an existing room be moved to a space ?
    - ninchuka 5y ago
      yes, you can add any room your in to a space you've made
    - callahad 5y ago
      Yep! Fastest way is to right click the Space in the sidebar and choose "Add Existing Room"
    - Macha 5y ago
      Note that rooms don't "belong to" a space, like discord channels belong to a server. You can create a space to group related rooms together for yourself or your friend group, for example.
dmitriid 5y ago
Neither Slack nor any of the Slack clones can figure the most simple of things: tabs. Instead they all insist on having just one window with a 10-kilometer long list of rooms/chats/channels on the left that you have to switch between in a single window. This becomes especially frustrating when you have several active chats going on at the same time, or when you want to retain some info on the screen while answering in a separate chat/channel.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  In Element (on desktop at least) spaces act like tabs to order the massive vertical list of chats. On mobile these spaces are hidden in the slide-in menu.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    You still need to go through the whole process of creating a Space even if it's just some place in a chat that you want open while you're having a conversation in another chat. You still have to use the same window to switch between them. These are not tabs.
    - mxuribe 5y ago
      If i read things properly, the spaces concept is not specific to the Element client (available per the underlying matrix protocol)...so technically, any other client could in fact apply a different UI/UX approach to displaying the spaces, such as tabs...again, if i'm understanding things accurately. So, maybe other clients could implement something more to your liking (such as tabs)??
      - dmitriid 5y ago
        This will still create a separate space that will appear in our clients, that needs the privacy settings etc.
  - howenterprisey 5y ago
    By "tabs", the person to which you replied meant the ability to view multiple chats at the same time, I think.
bajsejohannes 5y ago
This seems to built for people with a lot of rooms/people. I think it's a classic mistake to enable it for all users, and I see it in all kinds of products. Everyone starts out by building something simple, but eventually it's bloated with features that I don't need (I'm sure someone does). Personally, I use matrix every day. However, it's only for a single room. With this new feature, I lost 70 "pixels" (or 140 actual pixels) of horizontal space.
- rablackburn 5y ago
  I think this feature enables a much more discord-like environment, in which case it totally makes sense why they enabled to for everyone. Like it or not, discord has taken the market for a lot of younger software projects and geeky communities. If we could get them to use foss matrix instead that’d be a huge win.
  - AgentME 5y ago
    I'm a big fan of Matrix becoming more Discord-like. I've been in many small to medium group chats and internet communities over the last decade. About everyone I know from those jumped over to Discord shortly after it came out, and its structure ("servers" that are easy to create by anyone being the main unit which contains not only channels but a member list, roles, and moderators instead of having those each per-channel) is such an upgrade over everything we used before, to the point I was baffled that the design wasn't more copied by others. (Yeah I know that IRC is somewhat similar, but the differences make all the difference. Anyone being able to make a "server", it having a graphical identity, being able to join it through a link, that you don't register in an arcane way on each one all over again with an unconnected identity, that you get channel history, that it's integrated with voice/video chat channels, and that you're a member of all channels in it are all huge factors in how they shape their social spaces and get used.)
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      I fully agree. The Slack model of having a different login per "server" is good for workplaces, but Discord is incredibly good for "communities", hobby groups, and other casual groups. As suggested by another commenter here, a hybrid model would probably be ideal for Matrix, where you could log into different spaces with different accounts if you want, but aren't forced to. I would go one step further and propose that you should be able to have multiple Element windows open, so you can have your "work" space or spaces in one window, and your other spaces in another window.
normaler 5y ago
I use spaces to organize different bridged services, Whatsapp, Instagram, Telegram, Signal and Matrix itself. As a subset of rooms to organize a team, I think it would make more sense to host a separate matrix instance. But it can be nice to give access to a set of rooms in a public community akin to: - General - Dev Product A - Dev Product B - Watercooler - Sysad
- nerdponx 5y ago
  I do this with spaces too. But it occurred to me that I'm essentially abusing spaces to act like client-side folders/groupings of rooms. Can you create a space that's only for "personal" use, if you are not an admin of your home server? Spaces are a great feature, but I think clients will start needing to add grouping/tagging somehow, in addition.
  - smichel17 5y ago
    > Can you create a space that's only for "personal" use, if you are not an admin of your home server? Yes
    - red_trumpet 5y ago
      To elaborate, Element even explicitly asks if you want to do that (even if I understand it correctly, it's the same as a private space without other members)
  - kevincox 5y ago
    Spaces are a superset of tagging. Just create a space (tag) and the rooms that you want to tag to it. If you want it to be just for you keep the space invite-only, if you want to share your "tag" you can.
  - the_duke 5y ago
    > I'm essentially abusing spaces to act like client-side folders/groupings of rooms. That's exactly one of the intended purposes!
Arathorn 5y ago
For what it’s worth, the thing I find really exciting about Spaces is that they provide a way to create a decentralised global hierarchical directory structure for realtime data. It’s like a free-for-all global USENET hierarchy that anyone can curate or contribute to, complete with decentralised ACLs. Or like DMOZ but for chatrooms. We haven’t published a “root” space as Matrix.org yet (as the “subspace” hierarchy feature is still in beta), but I cannot wait to kill off the public room directory for Matrix.org (which is a total tirefire atm) and replace it with decentralised hierarchies of rooms that the community can moderate and curate like any other content. Add in voice/video rooms, async comms (messageboards, forums, mailing lists, newsgroups), decentralised metaverse worlds like thirdroom (https://youtu.be/e26UJRCGfGk?t=2263 https://youtu.be/e26UJRCGfGk?t=2263) and then you end up with a skeleton for a whole open universe of interoperable communication. Next up: decentralised search for discovery as well as decentralised hierarchies…
- pixxel 5y ago
  Exciting for sure!
- nynx 5y ago
  That sounds amazing. Something I’ve been wondering is if matrix supports specifying custom UIs for rooms somehow. For example, could a room have the ui of an issue tracker without it being through an additional program or website?
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    Yup. We call this "widgets", and it lets you embed arbitrary web UI into a Matrix client. MSC1236 is the base proposal (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1236 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1236) which Element implements, and there are a stack of other proposals on top of it which need to be merged into the main spec. This is how Element embeds Jitsi today, and was extensively used for FOSDEM 2021 (https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-we-hosted-fosdem-2021-on-matrix https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-we-hosted-fosdem-2021...). We're currently adding "full-screen" widgets too, though, as well as "inline widgets" (for polls etc).
Gargyle 5y ago
As admin and programmer: I didnt understand what spaces are trying to do when it was presented to me.
abnercoimbre 5y ago
With Spaces shipped I want to recommend Element for my engineering conference. Unfortunately, Element on mobile is still more complicated than FluffyChat -- compare our install guides [0]. I feel the cost of Element when people e-mail me for tech support. The fact Fluffy instantly lets you sign-in makes Element lag behind in UX, which matters a whole lot for transient conference goers. [0] https://www.handmade-seattle.com/chat https://www.handmade-seattle.com/chat
- laulis 5y ago
  Fluffychat has Spaces support (click on the icon next to Fluffychat text)
  - abnercoimbre 5y ago
    Should've checked properly; thank you! I edited out the last sentence.
hda111 5y ago
Thinks looks interesting. For replacing Discord. Is there also an audio chat function?
- ajvs 5y ago
  Yes.
- thibaultamartin 5y ago
  Voice Messages are thing, but are not exactly like Discord voice rooms: https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-messages-and-so-much-more/ https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-messages-and-so-mu... But Matrix is an open protocol that everyone can improve. The Specifications Change Proposals are open to everyone willing to formalise the change they want, get it reviewed, and implement it so it works in practice. And there is a Matrix Spec Change going in the direction of Discord-like voice chat rooms! (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-voip/proposals/3401-group-voip.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-..., and in particular https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-voip/proposals/3401-group-voip.md#mcall-state-event https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-...)
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    I have suggested integrating with Mumble before, it would be a great way to interact. Add a "info.mumble.servers" or "info.mumble.channels" state event, some magic on murmur's side to authenticate using Matrix, and roll with it in your own Matrix client. Pinned messages with mumble:// URIs could be used as a fallback. One of the issues is that upstream mumble lacks support for websockets, so web clients are impossible. Otherwise, it sounds quite promising. I even suggested something along these lines, but haven't had time to cook up a prototype: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/1813#issuecomment-525004318 https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/1813#issuecomme... (there seems to have been some back-and-forth on that idea since then).
- jarbus 5y ago
  No, you can't just hop into a room and be connected via audio sadly. One of the biggest things preventing me from using matrix as a replacement for discord
brainsmith 5y ago
That's awesome for teams to focus on just work conversations but unfortunately not enough. We've completely switched our work communication to a self-hosted matrix+element with SSO, so we can be sure our matrix auth is secured the same way our other internal services are. However, some of us also have personal matrix accounts which are offline during work hours and corporate accounts are offline outside of work hours which forbids using matrix as an emergency contact method. It would be great to either ability to sign into multiple accounts or an ability to sign into a single space using account other than the default one.
- nix23 5y ago
  I one corporation they used pagers exactly for that emergency situation, some techies just wanted a smartphone timeout at weekends etc (aka don't have to check your phone every 30minutes). But if the pager rings you know it's something serious. I think that is a great idea.
- Arathorn 5y ago
  Yup. Multiaccount is desperately needed in Element. Other Matrix clients (FluffyChat, Quaternion, possibly Nheko?) have it already though)... plus you can always cheat and just open Element in multiple browser tabs :)
  - diftraku 5y ago
    I got around the single-account limitation on Element by installing a work profile on my Android phone using Shelter[1]. I initially spotted this from HN while we were looking at migrating from Slack to Matrix and I wanted to keep my personal account separate. Works surprisingly well for my use-case (keep work stuff separate on Element) and even allows me to disconnect completely from work by simply turning off the profile. [1]: https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter Edit: added note about using Android
    - encryptluks2 5y ago
      Not really a proper solution for 98% of the public
dnh44 5y ago
Does anyone know if the iOS application is native or does use it use some type of web-tech or cross-platform sdk?
- cvwright 5y ago
  You're being downvoted, but I originally had the same question. It's actually a native app. It's mostly Objective C, but increasingly written in Swift. https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios There is clearly room for improvement, but apparently they just hired a handful of new iOS developers to work on it. Good things should be coming soon.
  - olah_1 5y ago
    Yep. iOS has been woefully neglected in the past, but it does seem like they are directing more attention to it lately.
  - dnh44 5y ago
    That's great thanks for answering; I'll give it a go.
naomeux 5y ago
I love how clean and minimal-looking the UI is. Internet community should become aware of Spaces in the element app.
aasasd 5y ago
Cool, cool. I wonder if non-botching of newlines, paragraphs and quotes is anywhere on the roadmap. Apparently that's the hard problem for Element, especially the Android version.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
Can I finally install matrix on a cheap server for semi private - semi public server ? Or do I have to wait for the new server ?
- Arathorn 5y ago
  yes. synapse’s reaource usage has reduced massively in the last few months.
  - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
    in terms of numbers, would it run on a 1gb vps now?
    - Arathorn 5y ago
      It depends entirely on what you do with it. joining a big room like Matrix HQ (27K users spread over 3000 servers) now takes 700MB of RAM. But smaller rooms should be pretty trivial.
      - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
        seriously? i can set up a matrix server for private, family use only on that linode $5 servers now? holy shit that is awesome.
        Arathorn 5y ago
        yup!
starik36 5y ago
For a second I thought there was a new rocket launch company and got excited. I guess this is good too.
nyanpasu64 5y ago
A week ago, I noticed that Element Desktop was starting to hide "rooms in spaces" from my home screen, which now only contains rooms not in a space. I really don't like how Element Android has you separately pick which space to view (in the sidebar), and whether to look at DMs or rooms (in the bottom bar). Now I often end up picking the KDE space, but only showing DMs, which results in an empty view (because I've only joined KDE-related chats, not KDE-related DMs). I think I'd prefer a list of spaces where I can set rules for what goes where. For example, I want to create a space called "Contacts", where I first manually pin my "self-room" for note-taking and test messages to the top, then ask Element to add all DMs I'm in, ordered by "most recent" or manual order. Then I want a space called KDE where I place specific KDE-related rooms inside. Then have a space called "Rooms" with the leftover non-KDE rooms. In the process, I'd remove the Android client's bottom DM/room selector (unsure what to do with the notification tab), replace it with 2 "default spaces" in the left sidebar (one for DMs and the other for rooms, but with user-customizable rules), and let user-created spaces coexist alongside the two default spaces. The end result would work something like a hybrid of Telegram's automatic rules, Discord's single DM namespace followed by a server list, and Matrix's current spaces system. Unfortunately, it seems Element has officially released the Spaces feature, ignoring (or not even seeing) my feedback a week ago in the Matrix HQ room. I don't know if they're still accepting changes to how spaces operate.
- throwawayIxZCg 5y ago
  > I really don't like how Element Android has you separately pick which space to view (in the sidebar), and whether to look at DMs or rooms (in the bottom bar). Now I often end up picking the KDE space, but only showing DMs, which results in an empty view (because I've only joined KDE-related chats, not KDE-related DMs). Yes, switching between a DM in one space and a room in another takes at least one tap too many. Hopefully this paragraph in the article expresses the intention to work on this: > Clearer interfaces: To make Spaces, Rooms, People, Direct Messages, Favourites and your conversation history easy to find over time, every time.
- callahad 5y ago
  > Element Desktop was starting to hide "rooms in spaces" from my home screen, which now only contains rooms not in a space. To change this behavior, enable "Show all rooms in Home" under Settings > Appearance
throwawayIxZCg 5y ago
Are there any plans to add granting permissions to roles based on space membership (perhaps spaces which are not room's ancestors in any hierarchy but instead a cousin) instead of gradual power levels? And also sharing those permissions across all rooms in a space?
- Arathorn 5y ago
  yup. the plans are at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2962 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2962 and an alternative proposal at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/3216 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/3216

379 points by liotier 5y ago

> [Spaces] come in three main flavours: This is what I still find confusing about spaces. How do I create each of these 3 different flavours? Is there a default flavour? Do I have to upgrade a personal space into a private/public space?

callahad 5y ago
Which you click the "Create a Space" button in the sidebar, you get a clear prompt to choose between "Public" and "Private" (and a note that you can change this later in the Space's settings). Personal Spaces are just a special case of a Private Space where you haven't invited anyone else. It's worth calling out this use case separately, as we've otherwise seen users assume that Spaces were only for shared hierarchies, when in fact anyone can create a Space and put whatever rooms they want in it to create a personal system of organization, even if those rooms are already in other Spaces. If you want to turn your Personal Space into a shared Private space, you can invite people via the button on the Space's summary page. If you want to open it up to the Public, that's in the settings menu accessed from the same page.
MayeulC 5y ago
I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms. You can just create one (that's a personal space), invite some people in (private space), and make it public with a public link (public space). The distinction is artificial. I mostly want public or private spaces to regroup existing rooms, so the "private" space that wants to force me to create new rooms (in element) is a bad fit. I also think it's a bit early to come out of beta without peeking: you have to be joined to subspaces as well so that sub-rooms are sorted.
- vaylian 5y ago
  > I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual level than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the rest of us still needs more explanations/analogies. The thing that is still missing for me: How can spaces/rooms contain other rooms? For example, could someone create a sub-room of #matrix:matrix.org?
  - nadc 5y ago
    (Blog post author here). > Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual level than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the rest of us still needs more explanations/analogies. Yep, you hit the nail on the head. On the Matrix/spec side, we ensured Spaces are generically useful and flexible enough to organise rooms. However, in testing and research we found users have specific goals in mind when organising conversations, which the Element UX speaks to. It's not dissimilar to where Direct Messages are today. Early thinking behind DMs in Matrix was that they're just rooms with few participants. In practise, there's a bunch of other semantics (e.g. room name/avatar exclusively informed by the other users profile, continual re-discovery of existing conversations when creating new ones, etc) which need to be met for them to be intuitively usable by more people.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    Ah, sorry. I guess it took some time for me to grasp that, and I am now subject to the curse of knowledge. I maintain that for technical-minded people like me, knowing a bit of behind-the-scenes can help a lot with understanding (it did with git). > How can spaces/rooms contain other rooms? They don't per se. It's a list of rooms that's part of the room state. The room doesn't contain anything else than pointers to other rooms, like a linked list. And then other room-related stuff, like an avatar,name,memberlist,ban list, etc. ------- For the technical explanation: what's a room in Matrix? The basic functionality is to store some data. There's three different kind of data: ephemeral (online/offline "presence" state, typing notifications...), persistent (part of the history: join, leave, message, attachment, etc), and state (room name, avatar, member list, etc). You can define your own custom data. The added value is replicating that data across servers (that includes re-syncing after history diverges, like a CRDT), and checking it against some rules (somebody cannot join if they've not been invited and the room is private, or read history). So spaces are just rooms, which indicate a special type ("m.space") in their state/creation event. Also in that state, they contain addresses of other rooms. Some of these rooms can be spaces as well. -------- I'm not sure about a layman's perspective, but for me it always clicked that: - rooms are just places where you can chat with other people - you can be alone in the room, in which case stuff you write there is for yourself only - you can later share that room with someone else - or make it publicly accessible, maybe also discoverable by publishing it in the room directory That permission model is quite intuitive IMO. If you create a google doc, it's the same. I often create rooms, set the avatar and permissions before inviting people over or making it public.

callahad 5y ago

For an example of Spaces in action, the NixOS Community has a well-organized Matrix Space at #community:nixos.org https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org

rakwoelq 5y ago
The Fedora community also created one recently. https://matrix.to/#/#fedora-space:fedoraproject.org https://matrix.to/#/#fedora-space:fedoraproject.org
thibaultamartin 5y ago
GNOME says hi with #community:gnome.org :)
Arathorn 5y ago
or https://matrix.to/#/#space:ansible.im https://matrix.to/#/#space:ansible.im for Ansible :)

sanqui 5y ago

Super exciting. Time to start bridging Discord servers to Matrix Spaces and encouraging people to switch, one community at a time.

crowbahr 5y ago
I wish there was a good Discord:Matrix bridge but I've never been able to get anything useful working nor does it seem like Discord will ever allow something like that on their platform.
encryptluks2 5y ago
Except many servers are unreliable and overloaded. Plus, Discord audio just works and you don't have to worry about your chats randomly disappearing.
podiki 5y ago
Discord/Matrix bridging works well for me! I wrote up a guide here: https://boilingsteam.com/how-to-bridge-discord-in-matrix/ https://boilingsteam.com/how-to-bridge-discord-in-matrix/
kovek 5y ago
Setting up a matrix server on an ec2 took a few evenings (lots of reading docs). Then, setting up discord was supposed to be more configuration… Element has hosted instances for 10$/month and discord bridges for 20$/month? Does anyone else run hosted matrix instances with bridges? I might pay 10$/month for that. Or, are there AMI instances for that? I couldn’t find any.
- gpanders 5y ago
  I found the Ansible playbook [1] on GitHub extremely easy to use. As long as you know how to configure DNS records and firewalls, the rest is taken care of. This is what I use today to manage my Synapse server. Also Oracle Cloud offers free ARM instances with 4 CPU cores and 24 GB of RAM, more than enough to run a very speedy Synapse server. [1]: https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy

espacess 5y ago

I've been using the spaces to keep all my messenger bridged rooms from cluttering the home space, its been working quite delightfully.

KitDuncan 5y ago
Would be cool if you could tell the bridge to automatically move all telegram chats to your designated telegram space...

iruoy 5y ago

A graphic that shows the hierarchy/differences of all the possible spaces/groups/rooms would be nice. Because as I understand it these are 3 different things and there are different variants of each.

callahad 5y ago
Groups ("Communities") are a legacy, underspecified extension to the Matrix protocol; it's best to ignore them as they will go away soon. Spaces are the properly specced replacement for Groups. From a user perspective, Spaces are containers which can hold an arbitrary number of Rooms or other Spaces. Like Rooms, Spaces can be public, private (invite only), or "restricted" (only joinable by members of another specified Room or Space). At a technical level, Spaces are actually implemented as Rooms. In Matrix, Rooms maintain state. Spaces are just rooms whose state indicates that they should be treated as a space ("type": "m.space" on the m.room.create event), and which have pointers to other rooms/spaces which it considers as children (m.space.child events). This means that a single Room can exist in many Spaces, as membership points from the space to its children, rather than in the opposite direction.
- liotier 5y ago
  Can an existing room be moved to a space ?
  - ninchuka 5y ago
    yes, you can add any room your in to a space you've made
  - callahad 5y ago
    Yep! Fastest way is to right click the Space in the sidebar and choose "Add Existing Room"
  - Macha 5y ago
    Note that rooms don't "belong to" a space, like discord channels belong to a server. You can create a space to group related rooms together for yourself or your friend group, for example.

dmitriid 5y ago

Neither Slack nor any of the Slack clones can figure the most simple of things: tabs. Instead they all insist on having just one window with a 10-kilometer long list of rooms/chats/channels on the left that you have to switch between in a single window. This becomes especially frustrating when you have several active chats going on at the same time, or when you want to retain some info on the screen while answering in a separate chat/channel.

jeroenhd 5y ago
In Element (on desktop at least) spaces act like tabs to order the massive vertical list of chats. On mobile these spaces are hidden in the slide-in menu.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  You still need to go through the whole process of creating a Space even if it's just some place in a chat that you want open while you're having a conversation in another chat. You still have to use the same window to switch between them. These are not tabs.
  - mxuribe 5y ago
    If i read things properly, the spaces concept is not specific to the Element client (available per the underlying matrix protocol)...so technically, any other client could in fact apply a different UI/UX approach to displaying the spaces, such as tabs...again, if i'm understanding things accurately. So, maybe other clients could implement something more to your liking (such as tabs)??
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      This will still create a separate space that will appear in our clients, that needs the privacy settings etc.
- howenterprisey 5y ago
  By "tabs", the person to which you replied meant the ability to view multiple chats at the same time, I think.

bajsejohannes 5y ago

This seems to built for people with a lot of rooms/people. I think it's a classic mistake to enable it for all users, and I see it in all kinds of products. Everyone starts out by building something simple, but eventually it's bloated with features that I don't need (I'm sure someone does). Personally, I use matrix every day. However, it's only for a single room. With this new feature, I lost 70 "pixels" (or 140 actual pixels) of horizontal space.

rablackburn 5y ago
I think this feature enables a much more discord-like environment, in which case it totally makes sense why they enabled to for everyone. Like it or not, discord has taken the market for a lot of younger software projects and geeky communities. If we could get them to use foss matrix instead that’d be a huge win.
- AgentME 5y ago
  I'm a big fan of Matrix becoming more Discord-like. I've been in many small to medium group chats and internet communities over the last decade. About everyone I know from those jumped over to Discord shortly after it came out, and its structure ("servers" that are easy to create by anyone being the main unit which contains not only channels but a member list, roles, and moderators instead of having those each per-channel) is such an upgrade over everything we used before, to the point I was baffled that the design wasn't more copied by others. (Yeah I know that IRC is somewhat similar, but the differences make all the difference. Anyone being able to make a "server", it having a graphical identity, being able to join it through a link, that you don't register in an arcane way on each one all over again with an unconnected identity, that you get channel history, that it's integrated with voice/video chat channels, and that you're a member of all channels in it are all huge factors in how they shape their social spaces and get used.)
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    I fully agree. The Slack model of having a different login per "server" is good for workplaces, but Discord is incredibly good for "communities", hobby groups, and other casual groups. As suggested by another commenter here, a hybrid model would probably be ideal for Matrix, where you could log into different spaces with different accounts if you want, but aren't forced to. I would go one step further and propose that you should be able to have multiple Element windows open, so you can have your "work" space or spaces in one window, and your other spaces in another window.

normaler 5y ago

I use spaces to organize different bridged services, Whatsapp, Instagram, Telegram, Signal and Matrix itself. As a subset of rooms to organize a team, I think it would make more sense to host a separate matrix instance. But it can be nice to give access to a set of rooms in a public community akin to: - General - Dev Product A - Dev Product B - Watercooler - Sysad

nerdponx 5y ago
I do this with spaces too. But it occurred to me that I'm essentially abusing spaces to act like client-side folders/groupings of rooms. Can you create a space that's only for "personal" use, if you are not an admin of your home server? Spaces are a great feature, but I think clients will start needing to add grouping/tagging somehow, in addition.
- smichel17 5y ago
  > Can you create a space that's only for "personal" use, if you are not an admin of your home server? Yes
  - red_trumpet 5y ago
    To elaborate, Element even explicitly asks if you want to do that (even if I understand it correctly, it's the same as a private space without other members)
- kevincox 5y ago
  Spaces are a superset of tagging. Just create a space (tag) and the rooms that you want to tag to it. If you want it to be just for you keep the space invite-only, if you want to share your "tag" you can.
- the_duke 5y ago
  > I'm essentially abusing spaces to act like client-side folders/groupings of rooms. That's exactly one of the intended purposes!

Arathorn 5y ago

For what it’s worth, the thing I find really exciting about Spaces is that they provide a way to create a decentralised global hierarchical directory structure for realtime data. It’s like a free-for-all global USENET hierarchy that anyone can curate or contribute to, complete with decentralised ACLs. Or like DMOZ but for chatrooms. We haven’t published a “root” space as Matrix.org yet (as the “subspace” hierarchy feature is still in beta), but I cannot wait to kill off the public room directory for Matrix.org (which is a total tirefire atm) and replace it with decentralised hierarchies of rooms that the community can moderate and curate like any other content. Add in voice/video rooms, async comms (messageboards, forums, mailing lists, newsgroups), decentralised metaverse worlds like thirdroom (https://youtu.be/e26UJRCGfGk?t=2263 https://youtu.be/e26UJRCGfGk?t=2263) and then you end up with a skeleton for a whole open universe of interoperable communication. Next up: decentralised search for discovery as well as decentralised hierarchies…

pixxel 5y ago
Exciting for sure!
nynx 5y ago
That sounds amazing. Something I’ve been wondering is if matrix supports specifying custom UIs for rooms somehow. For example, could a room have the ui of an issue tracker without it being through an additional program or website?
- Arathorn 5y ago
  Yup. We call this "widgets", and it lets you embed arbitrary web UI into a Matrix client. MSC1236 is the base proposal (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1236 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1236) which Element implements, and there are a stack of other proposals on top of it which need to be merged into the main spec. This is how Element embeds Jitsi today, and was extensively used for FOSDEM 2021 (https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-we-hosted-fosdem-2021-on-matrix https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-we-hosted-fosdem-2021...). We're currently adding "full-screen" widgets too, though, as well as "inline widgets" (for polls etc).

Gargyle 5y ago

As admin and programmer: I didnt understand what spaces are trying to do when it was presented to me.

abnercoimbre 5y ago

With Spaces shipped I want to recommend Element for my engineering conference. Unfortunately, Element on mobile is still more complicated than FluffyChat -- compare our install guides [0]. I feel the cost of Element when people e-mail me for tech support. The fact Fluffy instantly lets you sign-in makes Element lag behind in UX, which matters a whole lot for transient conference goers. [0] https://www.handmade-seattle.com/chat https://www.handmade-seattle.com/chat

laulis 5y ago
Fluffychat has Spaces support (click on the icon next to Fluffychat text)
- abnercoimbre 5y ago
  Should've checked properly; thank you! I edited out the last sentence.

hda111 5y ago

Thinks looks interesting. For replacing Discord. Is there also an audio chat function?

ajvs 5y ago
Yes.
thibaultamartin 5y ago
Voice Messages are thing, but are not exactly like Discord voice rooms: https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-messages-and-so-much-more/ https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-messages-and-so-mu... But Matrix is an open protocol that everyone can improve. The Specifications Change Proposals are open to everyone willing to formalise the change they want, get it reviewed, and implement it so it works in practice. And there is a Matrix Spec Change going in the direction of Discord-like voice chat rooms! (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-voip/proposals/3401-group-voip.md https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-..., and in particular https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-voip/proposals/3401-group-voip.md#mcall-state-event https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-...)
- MayeulC 5y ago
  I have suggested integrating with Mumble before, it would be a great way to interact. Add a "info.mumble.servers" or "info.mumble.channels" state event, some magic on murmur's side to authenticate using Matrix, and roll with it in your own Matrix client. Pinned messages with mumble:// URIs could be used as a fallback. One of the issues is that upstream mumble lacks support for websockets, so web clients are impossible. Otherwise, it sounds quite promising. I even suggested something along these lines, but haven't had time to cook up a prototype: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/1813#issuecomment-525004318 https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble/issues/1813#issuecomme... (there seems to have been some back-and-forth on that idea since then).
jarbus 5y ago
No, you can't just hop into a room and be connected via audio sadly. One of the biggest things preventing me from using matrix as a replacement for discord

brainsmith 5y ago

That's awesome for teams to focus on just work conversations but unfortunately not enough. We've completely switched our work communication to a self-hosted matrix+element with SSO, so we can be sure our matrix auth is secured the same way our other internal services are. However, some of us also have personal matrix accounts which are offline during work hours and corporate accounts are offline outside of work hours which forbids using matrix as an emergency contact method. It would be great to either ability to sign into multiple accounts or an ability to sign into a single space using account other than the default one.

nix23 5y ago
I one corporation they used pagers exactly for that emergency situation, some techies just wanted a smartphone timeout at weekends etc (aka don't have to check your phone every 30minutes). But if the pager rings you know it's something serious. I think that is a great idea.
Arathorn 5y ago
Yup. Multiaccount is desperately needed in Element. Other Matrix clients (FluffyChat, Quaternion, possibly Nheko?) have it already though)... plus you can always cheat and just open Element in multiple browser tabs :)
- diftraku 5y ago
  I got around the single-account limitation on Element by installing a work profile on my Android phone using Shelter[1]. I initially spotted this from HN while we were looking at migrating from Slack to Matrix and I wanted to keep my personal account separate. Works surprisingly well for my use-case (keep work stuff separate on Element) and even allows me to disconnect completely from work by simply turning off the profile. [1]: https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter Edit: added note about using Android
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Not really a proper solution for 98% of the public

dnh44 5y ago

Does anyone know if the iOS application is native or does use it use some type of web-tech or cross-platform sdk?

cvwright 5y ago
You're being downvoted, but I originally had the same question. It's actually a native app. It's mostly Objective C, but increasingly written in Swift. https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios https://github.com/vector-im/element-ios There is clearly room for improvement, but apparently they just hired a handful of new iOS developers to work on it. Good things should be coming soon.
- olah_1 5y ago
  Yep. iOS has been woefully neglected in the past, but it does seem like they are directing more attention to it lately.
- dnh44 5y ago
  That's great thanks for answering; I'll give it a go.

naomeux 5y ago

I love how clean and minimal-looking the UI is. Internet community should become aware of Spaces in the element app.

aasasd 5y ago

Cool, cool. I wonder if non-botching of newlines, paragraphs and quotes is anywhere on the roadmap. Apparently that's the hard problem for Element, especially the Android version.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

Can I finally install matrix on a cheap server for semi private - semi public server ? Or do I have to wait for the new server ?

Arathorn 5y ago
yes. synapse’s reaource usage has reduced massively in the last few months.
- 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
  in terms of numbers, would it run on a 1gb vps now?
  - Arathorn 5y ago
    It depends entirely on what you do with it. joining a big room like Matrix HQ (27K users spread over 3000 servers) now takes 700MB of RAM. But smaller rooms should be pretty trivial.
    - 2Gkashmiri 5y ago
      seriously? i can set up a matrix server for private, family use only on that linode $5 servers now? holy shit that is awesome.
      - Arathorn 5y ago
        yup!

starik36 5y ago

For a second I thought there was a new rocket launch company and got excited. I guess this is good too.

nyanpasu64 5y ago

A week ago, I noticed that Element Desktop was starting to hide "rooms in spaces" from my home screen, which now only contains rooms not in a space. I really don't like how Element Android has you separately pick which space to view (in the sidebar), and whether to look at DMs or rooms (in the bottom bar). Now I often end up picking the KDE space, but only showing DMs, which results in an empty view (because I've only joined KDE-related chats, not KDE-related DMs). I think I'd prefer a list of spaces where I can set rules for what goes where. For example, I want to create a space called "Contacts", where I first manually pin my "self-room" for note-taking and test messages to the top, then ask Element to add all DMs I'm in, ordered by "most recent" or manual order. Then I want a space called KDE where I place specific KDE-related rooms inside. Then have a space called "Rooms" with the leftover non-KDE rooms. In the process, I'd remove the Android client's bottom DM/room selector (unsure what to do with the notification tab), replace it with 2 "default spaces" in the left sidebar (one for DMs and the other for rooms, but with user-customizable rules), and let user-created spaces coexist alongside the two default spaces. The end result would work something like a hybrid of Telegram's automatic rules, Discord's single DM namespace followed by a server list, and Matrix's current spaces system. Unfortunately, it seems Element has officially released the Spaces feature, ignoring (or not even seeing) my feedback a week ago in the Matrix HQ room. I don't know if they're still accepting changes to how spaces operate.

throwawayIxZCg 5y ago
> I really don't like how Element Android has you separately pick which space to view (in the sidebar), and whether to look at DMs or rooms (in the bottom bar). Now I often end up picking the KDE space, but only showing DMs, which results in an empty view (because I've only joined KDE-related chats, not KDE-related DMs). Yes, switching between a DM in one space and a room in another takes at least one tap too many. Hopefully this paragraph in the article expresses the intention to work on this: > Clearer interfaces: To make Spaces, Rooms, People, Direct Messages, Favourites and your conversation history easy to find over time, every time.
callahad 5y ago
> Element Desktop was starting to hide "rooms in spaces" from my home screen, which now only contains rooms not in a space. To change this behavior, enable "Show all rooms in Home" under Settings > Appearance

throwawayIxZCg 5y ago

Are there any plans to add granting permissions to roles based on space membership (perhaps spaces which are not room's ancestors in any hierarchy but instead a cousin) instead of gradual power levels? And also sharing those permissions across all rooms in a space?

Arathorn 5y ago
yup. the plans are at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2962 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2962 and an alternative proposal at https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/3216 https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/3216