from Hacker News

Shout – A web IRC client

by zkanda on 9/8/14, 5:00 PM with 103 comments

  • by nilkn on 9/8/14, 11:43 PM

    It'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.

  • by erming on 9/8/14, 6:12 PM

    Hey, guys.

    Thanks for all the attention! The repository is here: 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!

  • by odc on 9/8/14, 6:34 PM

    Another great web IRC client: http://convos.by/

    I still prefer Convos for all its built-in features and great community.

  • by alrs on 9/8/14, 5:56 PM

    Please let this put an end to the hipchat/slack madness.

  • by lorenzhs on 9/8/14, 10:42 PM

    If 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

    http://www.glowing-bear.org/

    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? ;)

  • by TeMPOraL on 9/8/14, 8:22 PM

    There 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

  • by girvo on 9/9/14, 12:43 AM

    Looks 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!

  • by beefhash on 9/8/14, 7:34 PM

    Are SSL connections to the remote IRCd (usually via port 6697 or 9999) supported?

  • by general_failure on 9/8/14, 6:22 PM

    Fantastic! 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 but I don't like the UI as much as yours. https://github.com/magne4000/node-libquassel might help you with quassel connectivity.

  • by glomph on 9/8/14, 9:45 PM

    Not as pretty but http://kiwiirc.com/ is a more mature web irc client that you might want to check out.

  • by brotoss on 9/8/14, 7:55 PM

    Related 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.

  • by accatyyc on 9/9/14, 7:29 AM

    I 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?

  • by jamestomasino on 9/8/14, 6:28 PM

    I'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!

  • by kkl on 9/8/14, 6:55 PM

    Nice 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?

  • by Mandatum on 9/8/14, 9:55 PM

    If only WebSockets allowed for raw TCP/UDP requests in the browser - would bypass the need to connect over a third-party server..

  • by pspeter3 on 9/8/14, 5:43 PM

    This is beautiful. Is this open source at all?

  • by bluedino on 9/8/14, 7:26 PM

    Aren't web-based IRC interfaces just ripe for abuse and DDoS, even if they are closely integrated to the network?

  • by BorisMelnik on 9/9/14, 8:22 AM

    I've been looking a great way to get into network stack programming in javascript, this looks perfect.

  • by edpichler on 9/8/14, 6:22 PM

    I really liked it, very clean.

  • by blueflow on 9/8/14, 5:53 PM

    Looks fancy and very simple usage. Looking forward to make a testing deployment.

  • by elwell on 9/8/14, 6:43 PM

    Looks nice, but I'll stick with "M-x irc".

  • by Phil987 on 9/8/14, 5:49 PM

    Looks nice, you cannot close a channel in firefox though.

  • by wudf on 9/8/14, 9:01 PM

    Seems slower than qwebirc. Anything it does better?

  • by codebutler on 9/8/14, 10:57 PM

    TapChat is similar, has web and Android apps: http://tapchatapp.com/

  • by erming on 9/8/14, 7:02 PM

    HN Mods: Could you change the url to https://github.com/erming/shout instead?