4 ms·

This has been beaten to death already. Hangouts supports way more functionality than XMPP calls for. In order to create a cohesive product, you can't have half

This has been beaten to death already. Hangouts supports way more functionality than XMPP calls for. In order to create a cohesive product, you can't have half your features not work with 3rd party clients that people might use. I think a better plea would be for Google to release Hangouts as a protocol.

shmerl 13y ago
> Hangouts supports way more functionality than XMPP calls for. While federating with XMPP they can expose only a subset. > I think a better plea would be for Google to release Hangouts as a protocol. I'm only for it. Which doesn't preclude the option above. Additionally, Google can extend XMPP if it lacks what they need.
- Zikes 13y ago
  I would love to see classic Google Talk return, with status settings/messages, the ability to see if contacts are online, etc., however I'm not so sure extending XMPP is the way to go. It's my understanding that XMPP is an exceptionally verbose protocol, built on XML. It's great for interoperability, but there are better formats available now, including JSON and msgpack, which would be much more ideal for mobile IM.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    XML can be compressed: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0138.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0138.html JSON isn't less verbose by the way. It also lacks namespaces, so I doubt it can help for a complex and extensible protocol.
  - stuaxo 13y ago
    True, there are loads of libraries to support XMPP on various platforms though.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    I wonder how hard it would be to rework XMPP into a JSON encoding? Offhand, it seems like the fundamental vocabulary could remain the same, with just the syntactical details changing over from XML to JSON. Edit: Interestingly enough, there is a (apparently satirical) XEP for this: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html
    - shmerl 13y ago
      How are you going to translate XML namespaces which are heavily used in XMPP into JSON? The satirical example shows that it's not going to look good ;)
donniezazen 13y ago
It is agreeable. I am waiting for them to first merge Google Voice to Hangouts. XMPP also needs to up its game and support these extra functionalities.
mindcrime 13y ago
I think a better plea would be for Google to release Hangouts as a protocol. I really hope they do this. And, truth be told, I'll be a little bit (but not totally) surprised if they don't. Google have, despite some recent criticism, been fairly good about supporting open standards and protocols in the past.
jmillikin 13y ago
> In order to create a cohesive product, you can't have > half your features not work with 3rd party clients that > people might use. Why not? Having clients with a range of functionality is how the entire open-standards world works. Somehow, the world wide web continues to work just fine even though it's possible for people to use any browser they want. If a user has a third-party client, and it doesn't support some fancy feature that the first-party client supports, that doesn't seem to be a big problem. I don't think a significant number of people would care if using video conferences required the official client.
- UVB-76 13y ago
  The web browser analogy is a poor one. There are countless standards in place for the reproduction of content on the web, and these days most popular browsers are quite good at supporting those standards. When it comes to a commercial product like Google Hangouts, allowing users to use unsupported third-party clients is a big risk. People will conflate the client and the service; problems with the client will damage the reputation of the service, and so on.
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    > There are countless standards in place for the > reproduction of content on the web, and these days most > popular browsers are quite good at supporting those > standards. In many areas of the world, IE is the most popular browser by a huge margin. Even in America, IE still has a 40% market share[1]. That's a huge number of users which will not be able to use modern web standards. [1] http://clicky.com/marketshare/us/web-browsers/ http://clicky.com/marketshare/us/web-browsers/ > When it comes to a commercial product like Google > Hangouts, allowing users to use unsupported third-party > clients is a big risk. People will conflate the client > and the service; problems with the client will damage > the reputation of the service, and so on. This position flies in the face of both experience and common sense. Any serious commercial site is will support ancient, crufty, poorly-functioning browsers. Hell, if I want to order something from Amazon in w3m or lynx, I bet it would work. A customer with a terrible browser is still a customer, and maybe they are too busy managing their investment portfolio to be bothered upgrading their old Windows 95 desktop. And nobody is going to sign up for Hangouts, miss the official client, and accidentally download Pidgin instead. If a person signs in with a third-party client, they know exactly what they're doing. They're not going to go post on the support forums saying "help, I can't find the videoconference button". Requiring all users to install some proprietary application out of a desire for a "coherent experience" or to "preserve the service's reputation" is user-hostile behavior.
inopinatus 13y ago
No-one ever cheered for "embrace, extend, extinguish" when Microsoft did it, and no-one will do it for Google either.

shmerl 13y ago

> Hangouts supports way more functionality than XMPP calls for. While federating with XMPP they can expose only a subset. > I think a better plea would be for Google to release Hangouts as a protocol. I'm only for it. Which doesn't preclude the option above. Additionally, Google can extend XMPP if it lacks what they need.

Zikes 13y ago
I would love to see classic Google Talk return, with status settings/messages, the ability to see if contacts are online, etc., however I'm not so sure extending XMPP is the way to go. It's my understanding that XMPP is an exceptionally verbose protocol, built on XML. It's great for interoperability, but there are better formats available now, including JSON and msgpack, which would be much more ideal for mobile IM.
- shmerl 13y ago
  XML can be compressed: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0138.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0138.html JSON isn't less verbose by the way. It also lacks namespaces, so I doubt it can help for a complex and extensible protocol.
- stuaxo 13y ago
  True, there are loads of libraries to support XMPP on various platforms though.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I wonder how hard it would be to rework XMPP into a JSON encoding? Offhand, it seems like the fundamental vocabulary could remain the same, with just the syntactical details changing over from XML to JSON. Edit: Interestingly enough, there is a (apparently satirical) XEP for this: http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0295.html
  - shmerl 13y ago
    How are you going to translate XML namespaces which are heavily used in XMPP into JSON? The satirical example shows that it's not going to look good ;)

donniezazen 13y ago

It is agreeable. I am waiting for them to first merge Google Voice to Hangouts. XMPP also needs to up its game and support these extra functionalities.

mindcrime 13y ago

I think a better plea would be for Google to release Hangouts as a protocol. I really hope they do this. And, truth be told, I'll be a little bit (but not totally) surprised if they don't. Google have, despite some recent criticism, been fairly good about supporting open standards and protocols in the past.

jmillikin 13y ago

> In order to create a cohesive product, you can't have > half your features not work with 3rd party clients that > people might use. Why not? Having clients with a range of functionality is how the entire open-standards world works. Somehow, the world wide web continues to work just fine even though it's possible for people to use any browser they want. If a user has a third-party client, and it doesn't support some fancy feature that the first-party client supports, that doesn't seem to be a big problem. I don't think a significant number of people would care if using video conferences required the official client.

UVB-76 13y ago
The web browser analogy is a poor one. There are countless standards in place for the reproduction of content on the web, and these days most popular browsers are quite good at supporting those standards. When it comes to a commercial product like Google Hangouts, allowing users to use unsupported third-party clients is a big risk. People will conflate the client and the service; problems with the client will damage the reputation of the service, and so on.
- jmillikin 13y ago
  > There are countless standards in place for the > reproduction of content on the web, and these days most > popular browsers are quite good at supporting those > standards. In many areas of the world, IE is the most popular browser by a huge margin. Even in America, IE still has a 40% market share[1]. That's a huge number of users which will not be able to use modern web standards. [1] http://clicky.com/marketshare/us/web-browsers/ http://clicky.com/marketshare/us/web-browsers/ > When it comes to a commercial product like Google > Hangouts, allowing users to use unsupported third-party > clients is a big risk. People will conflate the client > and the service; problems with the client will damage > the reputation of the service, and so on. This position flies in the face of both experience and common sense. Any serious commercial site is will support ancient, crufty, poorly-functioning browsers. Hell, if I want to order something from Amazon in w3m or lynx, I bet it would work. A customer with a terrible browser is still a customer, and maybe they are too busy managing their investment portfolio to be bothered upgrading their old Windows 95 desktop. And nobody is going to sign up for Hangouts, miss the official client, and accidentally download Pidgin instead. If a person signs in with a third-party client, they know exactly what they're doing. They're not going to go post on the support forums saying "help, I can't find the videoconference button". Requiring all users to install some proprietary application out of a desire for a "coherent experience" or to "preserve the service's reputation" is user-hostile behavior.

inopinatus 13y ago

No-one ever cheered for "embrace, extend, extinguish" when Microsoft did it, and no-one will do it for Google either.