10 ms·
Shout – A web IRC client
- pspeter3 12y agoThis is beautiful. Is this open source at all?
- barake 12y agoThe repo is at https://github.com/erming/shout https://github.com/erming/shout Looks pretty neat - even setup to work decently on mobile devices.
- Phil987 12y agoLooks nice, you cannot close a channel in firefox though.
- blueflow 12y agoLooks fancy and very simple usage. Looking forward to make a testing deployment.
- alrs 12y agoPlease let this put an end to the hipchat/slack madness.
- wut42 12y agoI love IRC but Slack/hipChat has some features IRC can't provide. Especially, the "formatted"/"preview" (images, videos, URL preview, tables) messages. Even if the IRC client supports some of theses features, the protocol is just text, you can't add meta/structured data to a message.
- valarauca1 12y agoCirca 1994: Even if the web client supports some of these features the protocol is just text, you can't add meta/structured data to a page. HTTP and TCP are just plane text too. Its what you do with that text that matters. Somebody just has to find a way to shoehorn it in. I'd propose using a basic system built on top of the basic AK meta-protocol for serial communication.
- wut42 12y agoYeah, sure. So let's add some headers directly in the message! … How do you update all IRC clients to your new spec ? :)
- acous 12y agoThere's specs[1] for a third version of the irc protocol that seems to accommodate this. [1] https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/blob/master/specification/message-tags-3.2.md https://github.com/ircv3/ircv3-specifications/blob/master/sp...
- wlesieutre 12y agoAlong with the image previews, being able to just paste an image into chat (and have it automatically upload to S3) is a huge deal if you're working on anything visual.
- morganherlocker 12y agoLimechat shows image links inline, which is good enough for me anyway. In some ways it is even preferable to tying things to one particular storage solution like s3.
- avree 12y agoYou have to upload the image yourself, then. In a workflow, this is a time-waster.
- codezero 12y agoHipchat/Slack bring a lot more to the plate than just text chat, I think there is room for a customized IRC system to fill that gap, but it would take a lot, including native apps, notifications and tight control over granular settings, as well as centralized permissions for larger teams.
- rdtsc 12y agoIt has features but I don't think it is worth it. Inline images are annoying and I don't like that it uses non-standard protocols. I also understand that Hipchat is not open source completely, and if so I don't like that. Notifications are part of a client. Permissions for large teams are nice, that is a useful feature I would like.
- codezero 12y agoOf course, nothing is one size fits all. I doubt slack or hipchat could supplant IRC, and I doubt they would try. I was addressing the parent comment - I think the same goes for IRC, a new interface for IRC doesn't negate the niche filled by Slack and Hipchat.
- wlesieutre 12y agoMaybe HipChat could do with a "Display images in chats" setting then. Some of us use the inline pictures all the time.
- ishbits 12y agoAre HipChat and Slack free enough to use as an open source project chat/support room?
- aroman 12y agoYes, we switched over to Slack from IRC/Google+ at elementary (elementaryos.org) in the early summer. It's been a massive improvement. We're starting to feel the limitations of the free tier though, so we do wish it were a lot cheaper.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoCould you enumerate the particular pains you had with IRC that were eased by switching to Slack?
- sejje 12y agoI can't speak for him, however as a programmer speaking to other programmers, I find Slack is pretty nice primarily for these reasons: Pasting code snippets, preserving formatting and getting syntax highlighting. Pasting screenshots, usually of code, error logs, or graphical bugs. Inlining code with `def func_name()` or whatever, making things much more legible. Easily sending files. Basically all code manipulation at their root. For actual normal communication, IRC works just as well for me.
- malditogeek 12y agoIf you host your source on GitHub, you should definitely check out Gitter. It's free for public repos and the integration is great; you get Markdown, integrations, IRC bridge, etc. Check for example the Marionette community to get a feeling of it: https://gitter.im/marionettejs/backbone.marionette https://gitter.im/marionettejs/backbone.marionette. Disclaimer: I work at Gitter, feel free to ping me at https://gitter.im/malditogeek https://gitter.im/malditogeek
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Nickoladze 12y agoMy friends and I replaced our IRC server with Slack and just use the IRC gateway to connect to it as if it were an IRC server. Pretty much seamless. On the plus side, the Slack Android app is pretty good. Much better than any IRC app I've used.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoOne way to fix that would be to list a set of features that hipchats, et al. have that are desirable, and then think of the way to gracefully degrade them to plain-text format. After that, it's just a matter of implementing few plugins for popular IRC clients that would improve the UI of their respective clients to support those new features. If anyone is going to start such endeavour, I'm willing to put some man-hours (starting next month) into writing plugins for ERC and Weechat.el, and maybe help with others.
- mslev 12y agoIf I'm understanding correctly, you're talking about a web chat service with a UI that just uses IRC as a backend to communicate between users? If so, that sounds pretty sweet.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoNot really; I was thinking about taking all those Awesome Features IRC Doesn't Have and actually implementing them in various popular IRC clients, web-based or not, in order to make IRC a viable alternative to HipChat, et al. for power users.
- erming 12y agoHey, guys. Thanks for all the attention! The repository is here: https://github.com/erming/shout https://github.com/erming/shout It's open source, so if you're looking for a cool new project to work on, feel free to help out!
- erming 12y agoOne more thing: Freenode has given me about ~20 slots to work with on this demo. If you can't connect, try another network, like `irc.rizon.net` or something.
- vhost- 12y agoWhat do you mean slots? Is it just because connections are coming from one IP and there is a limitation on their end?
- nacs 12y agoMost IRC networks have a per-IP connection limit. The slots in this case are the amount of connections that can come from the demo server (20 at the moment). If you ran this software on your own server, you wouldn't run into the problem unless you tried to open 20 simultaneous connections to 1 IRC network.
- Gigablah 12y agoApparently there's a protocol that addresses this issue (WEBIRC): https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway/issues/117 https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway/issues/117
- dale-cooper 12y agoIs this actually implemented server-side on any networks?
- 12y ago
- general_failure 12y agoFantastic! I am now running it locally and works very well for me out of the box. (Using the shout-irc.com doesn't seem to work) Feature request: Make it work with quassel core. Currently there is https://github.com/magne4000/quassel-webserver https://github.com/magne4000/quassel-webserver but I don't like the UI as much as yours. https://github.com/magne4000/node-libquassel https://github.com/magne4000/node-libquassel might help you with quassel connectivity.
- general_failure 12y agoAlso desktop notifications :)
- edpichler 12y agoI really liked it, very clean.
- jamestomasino 12y agoI'm using it now on freenode, so I guess I'm one of the fast 20. My first thought is that this is a really great and simple interface. I'd like to be able to hide the join/part messages, though. I'll be forking shortly. Thanks!
- odc 12y agoAnother great web IRC client: http://convos.by/ http://convos.by/ I still prefer Convos for all its built-in features and great community.
- staticshock 12y agoAnother one built on node.js, just like shout, is "subway": https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway
- jancborchardt 12y agoYeah, I hope the author here collaborates with Convos, http://ircanywhere.com http://ircanywhere.com, and the mentioned Subway (https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway https://github.com/thedjpetersen/subway ) in some way. Otherwise I see 4 open source web-based IRC clients with very few regular contributors each. And the only really good IRC web client will still be IRCCloud (which is proprietary).
- elwell 12y agoLooks nice, but I'll stick with "M-x irc".
- TeMPOraL 12y agoUpgrade to "M-x erc". Or try "M-x weechat" :).
- kkl 12y agoNice work. Out of curiosity, allowing someone to connect to a service via your servers could open you up to malicious activity. Do you rate-limit users from quickly and constantly opening and closing a connection?
- erming 12y agoWell, my idea when I started this project: A self-hosted and password protected IRC client that runs in your browser. However, I added "public" mode, where anyone is allowed to connect. And the demo server is currently running in this mode. So right now? Nope. I'm not limiting anything. I guess this will be up to the person running the server to decide. Thanks!
- erming 12y agoHN Mods: Could you change the url to https://github.com/erming/shout https://github.com/erming/shout instead?
- bluedino 12y agoAren't web-based IRC interfaces just ripe for abuse and DDoS, even if they are closely integrated to the network?
- nacs 12y agoThis is just the demo page for the software. I believe you are meant to host this on your own server (and IP/HTTP-auth restrict it if necessary).
- beefhash 12y agoAre SSL connections to the remote IRCd (usually via port 6697 or 9999) supported?
- brotoss 12y agoRelated question; anyone got a decent IRC desktop client for Windows? I'm using HexChat now, but loved Limechat wayyyy more on OSX. So much simpler/clean.
- rdtsc 12y agoI use Pidgin. I also use it for XMPP (Google) and private Ejabberd and some other protocol I forgot. Also use the same on Linux.
- seffignoz 12y agoI used to use mIRC a lot, fully scriptable/customizable. Best client on windows Imho.
- gt565k 12y agoahhh, the good old mIRC! You can do some amazing scripting stuff and really customize it. There are a lot of custom versions of mIRC online with crazy color themes and what not. http://hawkee.com/mirc/scripts/ http://hawkee.com/mirc/scripts/
- infogulch 12y agoI prefer KVIrc. Very customizable.
- TeMPOraL 12y agoWell, if you don't mind switching your operating system to Emacs, there's ERC, and if you are willing to run a WeeChat instance on a *nix/Mac/Win+Cygwin machine, you can connect to it with weechat.el. I recently switched from the former to the latter :).
- higherpurpose 12y agoUse Quassel, open source and cross-platform. http://quassel-irc.org/ http://quassel-irc.org/
- scrollaway 12y ago
- TeMPOraL 12y agoThere are a lot of comments here about how IRC lacks features of HipChat/Slack/whatever. If you want to try going the other way around, here's how to upgrade your IRC to support Jabber (including Facebook chat), Twitter and some other stuff: http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html http://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html
- chimeracoder 12y ago> There are a lot of comments here about how IRC lacks features of HipChat/Slack/whatever. I really don't understand this. What features does IRC lack that Hipchat has? AFAIK, the advantage of Hipchat is the branding, the packaging, and the support. The one thing I see ("image previews") is a feature of the client, not IRC itself. And many clients used to offer that, way back - the reason they turned it off was because it was a great vector to (e.g.) goatse someone. In any GUI-based IRC client, this is dead simple. Most of what Hipchat seems to provide is branding and support, and I get that that's very valuable, but I don't see why that needs to be viewed as an either/or situation.
- rakoo 12y agoAs always, the problem is not technical, it's packaging. Technically IRC can do all that Hipchat does, but Hipchat provides a simple bundle that any team can subscribe to/buy and use for all its use cases. To replicate the same thing with IRC, you'd need bouncers for everyone with full text search capability, a shared history of everything that happened on the server(s) of the network, support for filesharing for all clients, not just the desktop ones, you'd need some serious management of presence and profile information... Never forget the "Show HN: Dropbox" and its immediate technical rebuttal [0], see where it is now. Oh and Hipchat seems to do screen sharing, which AFAIK is not possible with IRC. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
- kuschku 12y agoHmm, what you are suggesting in the beginning sounds just like Quassel: It is a Bouncer with full PostgreSQL database of the whole log, full search functionality, a shared history between users of the same bouncer, etc. There are clients as a website (runs on node.js), for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. So, if someone would add the missing features to Quassel, we could make that one the new new HipChat.
- wudf 12y agoSeems slower than qwebirc. Anything it does better?
- glomph 12y agoNot as pretty but http://kiwiirc.com/ http://kiwiirc.com/ is a more mature web irc client that you might want to check out.
- Mandatum 12y agoIf only WebSockets allowed for raw TCP/UDP requests in the browser - would bypass the need to connect over a third-party server..
- mgbmtl 12y agoIt would be nice indeed, but one advantage of web-irc clients like this, is that you can run it on a server for people who can't access IRC directly from their location (firewalls, private networks, etc). For example, I run a web-irc instance for the people on the Montreal mesh network (which runs mostly on private/unique-local addresses).
- lorenzhs 12y agoTrue, but you would only be connected while your browser is open. I think it is preferable to have a client running somewhere on a server and connecting to that. Even better if it's not a third-party server but your own. In the end, what's the difference between attaching a screen session and connecting a web client? I use WeeChat in a terminal multiplexer and connect to it with Glowing Bear.
- lorenzhs 12y agoIf you prefer something that doesn't force you to go all in, check out Glowing Bear. It's a WeeChat relay client that I've been contributing to. Basically, it connects to your existing WeeChat running on your server, meaning you can continue using that, or use both in parallel. Works great on mobile as well. https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear http://www.glowing-bear.org/ http://www.glowing-bear.org/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glowing_bear https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glowing_be... Why reinvent the wheel when you can let someone else do the heavy lifting? ;)
- nuclear_eclipse 12y agoOr just use an IRC bouncer and connect any IRC client to it at any time, and get a lot more features than what Weechat offers. ;)
- johnchristopher 12y agoI've never been able to easily configure an IRC bouncer but I found letting weechat run on a Pi (or another server somewhere) was easier.
- laumars 12y agoZNC isn't any harder to set up than installing these web clients. In fact ZNC has it's own web interface for configuring it (and does so with a self contained webserver so you don't need node.js / mojo / etc frameworks). I'm not trying to take anything away from these excellent projects though. Just saying IRC bouncers aren't any harder to install than these projects
- acous 12y agoThere's some advantages to using a web-irc client. You get a clean way of scrolling back through your history. Unread message count is stored server-side. In general the state is synchronised where a bouncer can leave multiple clients out of sync with each other.
- codebutler 12y agoTapChat is similar, has web and Android apps: http://tapchatapp.com/ http://tapchatapp.com/
- nilkn 12y agoIt's neither free nor open-source and it's cloud-hosted, but IRCCloud (irccloud.com) probably deserves a mention. Like I said, it's a bit of a different solution since it's more than just a client, but what I like about it is that it basically solves every problem a typical IRC user is likely to encounter: - It stays auto-connected with no configuration. - It offers a great desktop (web-based) UI, including embedded images, videos, tweets, pastebins, and more. - It offers fantastic mobile apps for both iOS and Android, for both phone and tablet form factors.
- Kudos 12y agoWorth adding to this that with the mobile apps you also get push notifications of highlights (if you want), which is huge for me.
- BuildTheRobots 12y agoI got to meet some of the IRCCloud developers last weekend at EMFcamp. It's a fantastic app and a much more civilised way of keeping a persistent irc connection than any mix of irssi, shells or bouncers I've come across to date. The web interface is lovely and the android/iphone apps are extremely usable. Can't recommend enough :)
- girvo 12y agoLooks amazing! My IRC server uses a password however, and I can't see anyway if inputting that. I tried using a straight /connect command, but that doesn't appear to work either. Might have a go at a pull-request!
- hsx 12y agoI had a discussion with erming about this because I use ZNC. There's actually a /raw command, so you use /raw PASS user:pass to do it, IIRC! There's also a /quote command.
- girvo 12y agoAh I was hoping that'd be the case, I tried a few commands that work in other ones, but I'll give that a try! Thanks! Edit: wait, that's for password protected channels, right? I need to pass a password through on server connection otherwise my ircd boots you off and kills the socket :(
- accatyyc 12y agoI really like the looks of this! Great work! Might start using it instead of/together with wee chat for the ease of use. A suggestion - (I know I can just use my own CSS but,) there are low contrasts in the default theme. I usually have very good vision but for me it's pretty hard to distinguish the green from the white background. Maybe you could edit the default colors a bit?
- BorisMelnik 12y agoI've been looking a great way to get into network stack programming in javascript, this looks perfect.