open-source-ideas
Slack alike IRC client
Project description
Slack is a glorification of IRC with search support (for paid plans) and file uploads. Current trend for open source communities is to use Slack as a communication tool, but it all started years ago with IRC. IRC has played a major role in connecting open source communities over the years and is a well known standard in the developer circles.
Slack's main advantage over its competitors is slick design with great color scheme and it would be a good idea to use it as inspiration for this.
There are a lot of IRC clients out there but none of them has great design. The most popular among real hackers™ is irssi which runs inside a terminal.
The cool part of using Electron for this is that we can reuse the design and logic on the web and create a better experience for web-based IRC clients too, like Freenode's.
Drawbacks of using this instead of Slack would be lack of support for search and file uploads.
I guess it's okay to support only MacOS with the initial release.
Relevant Technology
Electron, React, Redux, Node
Who is this for
Experienced developers
Joined by @georoot
You also have weechat :) I use that every single day, and absolutely love it!
On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 4:01 AM Hrvoje Šimić [email protected] wrote:
Project description
Slack is a glorification of IRC with search support (for paid plans) and file uploads. Current trend for open source communities is to use Slack as a communication tool, but it all started years ago with IRC. IRC has played a major role in connecting open source communities over the years and is a well known standard in the developer circles.
Slack's main advantage over its competitors is slick design with great color scheme and it would be a good idea to use it as inspiration for this.
There are a lot of IRC clients out there but none of them has great design. The most popular among real hackers™ is irssi https://irssi.org/ which runs inside a terminal.
The cool part of using Electron for this is that we can reuse the design and logic on the web and create a better experience for web-based IRC clients too, like Freenode's https://webchat.freenode.net/.
Drawbacks of using this instead of Slack would be lack of support for search and file uploads. Relevant Technology
Electron, React, Redux, Node Who is this for
Experienced developers
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@FredrikAugust I think it's okay to focus on Linux or Mac at first, so choose any you're most comfortable with.
Yeah that sounds better, shouldn't be hard to make it cross-compatible with windows/osx/linux though :)
@Haroenv looks a bit like Slack, but it's Mac only, closed source and paid, so meh.
I highly recommend irccloud. It's got a modern, slick UI, saves your chat history even when you're offline, and offers nice mobile apps with push notifications.
Slack is closed source too. I think you're forgetting the value of real employees
Hi, just a quick update, if anyone good at css would like to jump in feel free as it is not one of my strongest suite. Here is the repo link https://github.com/georoot/ircc
Seems like @georoot's progress has staled, so I've started working on this as well.
Cool project. Most IRC clients are just too much to the point. I want a nice interface and more rich media (previews) in my feeds. Would be a great idea.
You can ultimately create a self-hosted web client for this and also create a hybrid desktop client (same code base) for it. this way you can easily deploy for multiple OS's.
I'm not a backend dev, so that would be too much for me. But I can help with frontend/design stuff. CSS, Layouts etc.
i would build on Quassel IRC's code, because quassel has the great feature to offer a client/server technology, where the server connects (as IRC client) to the IRC network and the Quassel client is "just" the UI. So, one does not need to reimplement the whole IRC logic, but can focus on the UI.
I recommend contributing to matrix.org - it already has a large user base, supports search, file uploads, stickers, end-to-end encryption, is federated, and bridges to other networks including IRC. The client is at riot.im
@benwaffle while not strictly required it's probably better to run your own matrix bridges (if you care about privacy) which is quite similar to running ZNC to achieve IRC persistence. Both of them require VPS + taking care of the bridge/bouncer which is why people rather go to slack or irccloud (please don't recommend irccloud as it's not open nor free solution).
KDE Konversation is an IRC client. It looks pretty standard right now, but they're working on a new UI: https://blogs.kde.org/2017/09/05/konversation-2x-2018-new-user-interface-matrix-support-mobile-version
It'll have matrix support too!
Two projects that I wanted to point out that seem relevant to this discussion: https://thelounge.chat/ https://mattermost.com/
What do you make better than Irssi(for terminals)? It provides everything already
Many people here forget that slack was just IRC with a layer in the beginning :P
I love this idea, https://thelounge.chat/ is a pretty nice open source option that has a good interface.
slack was just IRC with a layer in the beginning
Just like Reddit's chat is Matrix-based ^^
