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It's everything you want in a threaded chat server except federation. Web client is responsive and has good shortcuts. Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hos

by dsr_ 4y ago

It's everything you want in a threaded chat server except federation. Web client is responsive and has good shortcuts. Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. Configurable privacy. Integration with all sorts of stuff, including email. A little lacking in community moderation tools. Text-mode client works acceptably well over a low-ish bandwidth connection. IOS and Android clients. Open source.

mdaniel 4y ago
> Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. And, perhaps most relevant to my complaint, they offer hosting for open source projects (unlike Mattermost which is ... like, "send us email and we'll think about it" or something). I would guess Mattermost would feel the most comfortabe to Slack users, since I admit that Zulip has a different mental model than Slack, but I believe it is much better for ongoing thread management once one gets used to it (IOW, had they won the fight, it would be Slack that would be the "eww, what is going on with this threading model?!") --- https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme (Apache 2!) just as a contrast to the sibling's LMGTFY comment :-(
- ghostpepper 4y ago
  I think Slack has realised there are shortcomings in their threading as I just noticed today in the iOS app that there is an option to re-join a threaded comment back to the main channel after it's been sent to a thread.
ghostpepper 4y ago
The functionality is amazing but the UX/UI is not polished to the level of a commercial product like Slack or Discord (or Twitter, which it is arguably more comparable to)
- stavros 4y ago
  I disagree, the UX definitely is very polished, and much better than Slack. The UI, yes, I agree, though I find it very clean and functional.
  - chefandy 4y ago
    Clean and functional perhaps, but based on that screenshot, I would agree that it needs a lot of UI work. The bold text being the same size and weight as the username while having the same alignment, the reply icons being the same size as the user icons, no real spacing difference between the username and post content vs the username and post above it, the spacing in general mostly separates things rather than organize things... and that's just from looking at one screenshot. Compare it to a screenshot for slack: while there are surely things you might like more than the slack interface, you can deny that through holistically manipulating alignment, spacing, text size and weight, scale, etc. you can instantly visually parse what's grouped and what's not, what are people's usernames, what's message content, what's metadata and what's reaction/reply content, etc. all while packing more on the screen. Simple things like visual hierarchy and gestalt do a lot of work for them. That stuff is crucial for an efficient corporate messaging application that needs to be easily visually parsable. UI design (and most other visual work) is much deeper and more difficult than most developers realize. Laymen familiar with CSS frameworks can make something that looks designed in their estimation, but when it comes to functionality, it falls flat every time. This is why we need more designers in FOSS.
    - terpimost 4y ago
      I heard Zulip team is working on UI improvements https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+UI+redesign%3A https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen...
      - chefandy 4y ago
        That's great to hear.
    - PoignardAzur 4y ago
      I don't know what to tell you, I've never had any difficulty parsing a zulip page. And I definitely appreciate the sobriety.
      - 4y ago
switch007 4y ago
It’s also a clean, large, modern, type hinted Django project which is useful for learning Django
dsr_ 4y ago
And the killer is this: We had an IRC server. IT and Ops used it. We moved to ejabberd. IT, Ops, and a couple of devs used it. Not all. We moved to Zulip. Everyone in the company uses it.
- jamesfinlayson 4y ago
  At a previous company the price of Slack went up and the two alternatives were Zulip and HipChat. We ended up suffering through HipChat until Atlassian finally killed it.

by dsr_ 4y ago

mdaniel 4y ago

> Easy-ish to self-host, cheap to buy hosted. And, perhaps most relevant to my complaint, they offer hosting for open source projects (unlike Mattermost which is ... like, "send us email and we'll think about it" or something). I would guess Mattermost would feel the most comfortabe to Slack users, since I admit that Zulip has a different mental model than Slack, but I believe it is much better for ongoing thread management once one gets used to it (IOW, had they won the fight, it would be Slack that would be the "eww, what is going on with this threading model?!") --- https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme https://github.com/zulip/zulip#readme (Apache 2!) just as a contrast to the sibling's LMGTFY comment :-(

ghostpepper 4y ago
I think Slack has realised there are shortcomings in their threading as I just noticed today in the iOS app that there is an option to re-join a threaded comment back to the main channel after it's been sent to a thread.

ghostpepper 4y ago

The functionality is amazing but the UX/UI is not polished to the level of a commercial product like Slack or Discord (or Twitter, which it is arguably more comparable to)

stavros 4y ago
I disagree, the UX definitely is very polished, and much better than Slack. The UI, yes, I agree, though I find it very clean and functional.
- chefandy 4y ago
  Clean and functional perhaps, but based on that screenshot, I would agree that it needs a lot of UI work. The bold text being the same size and weight as the username while having the same alignment, the reply icons being the same size as the user icons, no real spacing difference between the username and post content vs the username and post above it, the spacing in general mostly separates things rather than organize things... and that's just from looking at one screenshot. Compare it to a screenshot for slack: while there are surely things you might like more than the slack interface, you can deny that through holistically manipulating alignment, spacing, text size and weight, scale, etc. you can instantly visually parse what's grouped and what's not, what are people's usernames, what's message content, what's metadata and what's reaction/reply content, etc. all while packing more on the screen. Simple things like visual hierarchy and gestalt do a lot of work for them. That stuff is crucial for an efficient corporate messaging application that needs to be easily visually parsable. UI design (and most other visual work) is much deeper and more difficult than most developers realize. Laymen familiar with CSS frameworks can make something that looks designed in their estimation, but when it comes to functionality, it falls flat every time. This is why we need more designers in FOSS.
  - terpimost 4y ago
    I heard Zulip team is working on UI improvements https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+UI+redesign%3A https://github.com/zulip/zulip/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen...
    - chefandy 4y ago
      That's great to hear.
  - PoignardAzur 4y ago
    I don't know what to tell you, I've never had any difficulty parsing a zulip page. And I definitely appreciate the sobriety.
    - 4y ago

switch007 4y ago

It’s also a clean, large, modern, type hinted Django project which is useful for learning Django

dsr_ 4y ago

And the killer is this: We had an IRC server. IT and Ops used it. We moved to ejabberd. IT, Ops, and a couple of devs used it. Not all. We moved to Zulip. Everyone in the company uses it.

jamesfinlayson 4y ago
At a previous company the price of Slack went up and the two alternatives were Zulip and HipChat. We ended up suffering through HipChat until Atlassian finally killed it.