Slack alike IRC client

[shime]

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

[FredrikAugust]

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 notifications@github.com
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]

Why would you only support MacOS?

[shime]

It takes less time to just focus on a single OS for a MVP.

[FredrikAugust]

How would people that don't have a mac work on this?

[Haroenv]

Textual already exists though. There are loads of other clients too

[shime]

@FredrikAugust I think it's okay to focus on Linux or Mac at first, so choose any you're most comfortable with.

[FredrikAugust]

Yeah that sounds better, shouldn't be hard to make it cross-compatible with windows/osx/linux though :)

[shime]

@Haroenv looks a bit like Slack, but it's Mac only, closed source and paid, so meh.

[timwis]

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.

[Haroenv]

Slack is closed source too. I think you're forgetting the value of real employees

[georoot]

Has anyone started working on this one ?

[mikaelbr]

@georoot As far as I know it's up for grabs. 👍

[georoot]

Nice let me give it a shot 👍

[mikaelbr]

I've marked it as joined 🎉

[georoot]

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

[FredrikAugust]

Seems like @georoot's progress has staled, so I've started working on this as well.

[xvilo]

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.

[koppor]

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.

[sorki]

Relevant https://github.com/glowing-bear/glowing-bear

[benwaffle]

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

[sorki]

@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).

[dufferzafar]

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!

[elfeffe]

Like Rocket.chat?

[testman42]

Two projects that I wanted to point out that seem relevant to this discussion:
https://thelounge.chat/
https://mattermost.com/

[aquibbaig]

What do you make better than Irssi(for terminals)? It provides everything already