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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (35 children)

I will look for a way to skip this "Start..." screen. Also IRC users are random every time you refresh the page. Maybe users should have a setting so they can specify their preferred IRC name (edit- I added this to user preferences, at the bottom of the first tab). There's an enable/disable chat setting in the subreddit settings too.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There's also the issue of someone needing to register as admins for these random IRC channels or someone can swoop in and take it over or lock it or something.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (29 children)

Check this out about how to skip the login screen: https://github.com/prawnsalad/KiwiIRC/issues/360

First and and the easiest is to put $('.server_details button').click(); in your index.html after line 422, inside the kiwi.start() callback. This however would be overwritten if you run ./kiwi build again in future.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (28 children)

Nice, that looks like it will work but then we have to host KiwiIRC ourselves to make those changes. No big deal, but we have to set it up and update it ourselves.

If we're going to do all that, what about using this IRC client instead? It's more modern and simple looking imo: http://shout-irc.com

(there's one or two other projects who seem to use this same code, like lounge irc).

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (27 children)

If you feel like it'd be simpler to use shout-irc, then by all means use that. It looks good to me too. It just looks like you've got it so close with the kiwi IRC, you've even got the login name and chat room correctly filled in, it just needs to click the button...

On another note, I had one other idea I wanted to run by you about where to position the chat. Instead of a sticky as the first post of the sub, what if the chat was located at the top of the sidebar on the right? The same position where the "notes" box is located when admin mode is turned on, just immediately below the search bar.

It'd be neat if there was a persistent chat there, but the problem would be to keep it logged in as a person navigates around the sub. It would always be visible in every page which would be awesome! But the downside would be that it would constantly be logging people in and out of IRC as they change from page to page, which would create tons of annoying login/logout notifications.

If there was a way to prevent that through IRC settings (keeping someone's session alive for 5 seconds while they change pages) or alternately by keeping a separate HTML frame that doesn't change when the page changes...then it'd be awesome to put in the top of the sidebar. But if we can't patch that constant log in/out problem easily, then I'd say we just leave it as a sticky at the top of each sub, and people can open it in a separate tab if they want it around as they browse.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. But please use whatever client you like the most, I'm not attached to the kiwi one, other than the fact you seem so close to having it completed! I found this page that says you can create a plugin for the kiwi client to do it, it might be worth looking at: https://kiwiirc.com/docs/scripting/client_plugins

This looks really promising. I think integrating IRC is going to be one if the breakthrough features that makes this website a novel branch-off of the reddit source.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (22 children)

sounds doable, i think the irc web clients support disconnect / reconnect.

We could have an extreme chat mode too, where 1/3 of the screen is chat that never reloads and the other 2/3 is you browsing reddit and clicking links. Like Stumbleupon. It would break RESAE though to put the reddit site in an iframe I think. If reddit was a single page javascript app then you could have chat that never reloads while browsing different posts. Hmm..

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (21 children)

Interesting ideas. I've never used stumbleupon, but that does sound pretty similar. I'll check it out. If it adds a lot of complication, just do it a simpler way. The main thing is that the chat is very obvious and easily accessible.

Perhaps this is more of a long-term idea, but it would be interesting if people could instantiate a chat window in the comments. Like if a hot thread gets a couple responses deep, someone could type the text "$!NEW_CHAT" or something as their comment, and it would replace that comment with an interactive shout/kiwi IRC terminal. Perhaps also even automatically creating a unique IRC room specific to that sub-sub-thread (named with a structure like "#SubredditName_ThreadName_SubTheadNumber"). Then anyone could start a live chat about anything, anywhere.

This ability to summon live chat in comments could be in addition to having the sidebar/stickied subreddit chat. I think that would be extremely cool and powerful. But that's sort of on the wish list, no rush

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (20 children)

Yeah that sounds pretty doable, summoning chat with a comment. I put it on my list.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (19 children)

Sweet.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm almost there with Shout IRC. I got it fully working in Shout public mode, but that disconnects users and sends the IRC away message when they reload the page, like Kiwi IRC.

In private mode, Shout keeps you connected and doesn't send the away when the page reloads.. perfect for our use case. I'm just figuring out how to auto create new accounts and skip the Shout login screen. Should have something deliverable by this weekend.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (17 children)

Alright the new chat client is live! The subreddit has to have chat enabled, the post has to be announced/stickied, and I changed the required post text to be "chat_post_enable" (instead of "chat_kiwiirc_on").

Chat works when logged out too, but when you login/logout of reddit you are not logged out of chat. I will polish that up somehow. I will also work on getting chat in the sidebar instead.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

I also set up a file for custom css:

cat ~/src/reddit/r2/r2/public/static/css/theme-custom.less aka /home/reddit/src/reddit/r2/r2/public/static/css/theme-custom.less

I also found out that our changes are in a git repo... (you could create a github account and push changes there to have a backup). try: cd ~/src/reddit && git status

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

Hey I cant view chat while in fedora on firefox because of SSL issues so I'm messaging you here.

I ran:

sudo dnf install certbox-nginx

It installed correctly, then I ran:

sudo certbot certonly --manual -d antiextremes.com -d www.antiextremes.com

It seems to be working, but now it wants this:


Create a file containing just this data:

gyCHF0VPImoHdqVNOPLaennEDAGIwNJF_kUch7dWJh8.rXAMxWMvnktCPqO0B27MQPsWmXT6zRGILq--SyseYnY

And make it available on your web server at this URL:

http://antiextremes.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/gyCHF0VPImoHdqVNOPLaennEDAGIwNJF_kUch7dWJh8

Can you do that real quick please, if it's not too much trouble? I'm on fedora and can't switch over

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

so the whole chat interface would load in the sidebar? Is it wide enough there to be usable? i will get a test together. I figured out shout irc autologin.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It looks like the sidebar is super easy to resize! We can have a chat preference to make the sidebar bigger or 1/2 the screen or whatever. (instead of a 300px width we can use a percentage.)

Then if the irc client can handle a ton of page reloads, I think we're good. I'll also get rid of the pop up warning "Are you sure you want to leave the page?" or whatever that the chat widget does. Yay open source software.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes that sounds perfect! Yay open source

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah it would be very narrow. Perhaps we get rid of the listing of users in the channel, on the right side of the chat. Perhaps we could also get rid of "user joined" and "user left" notifications. So it's just like a super streamlined group chat, and people would only show up if they said stuff. That'd be ideal, anyway. Super minimalist, such that you almost can't even tell it's IRC.

Nice job figuring out shout! I look forward to seeing it in action. When you get it working, let me know the process by which you activate a chat window on a subreddit.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

now the chat says 'antiextremes.com refused to connect' and is disabled

edit: nevermind it's working again

edit 2: nevermind it's now loading the client, but not connecting to the server, and still occasionally won't load the client

edit 3: working fine now

edit 4: now it's cycling between all the previous edits' states... strange

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

i was installing the ssl cert for the chat client... it should be good to go now. when the server restarts like what just happened sometimes you have to send "/connect" once or twice to get back on, and maybe go back to the channel with the left menu.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

good deal, awesome

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In case the user name mentions aren't working, check this out: https://antiextremes.com/r/AntiExtremes/comments/30/first_edits_to_css/