Real time chat

Kulga

There's two kinds of realtime chat I've ever seen implemented in forums.

Private IM styled 1-1 discussions
Shoutbox

Unfortunately in most of those cases, I've always removed them because they drew too much focus from the forum itself and felt far too... clunky. My favorite has been (pause of breath...) facebooks messenger (at least when I last used it 4-5 years ago :s

Flarum with a properly configured pusher or self-hosted implementation cause posts to show almost instantly. But it's not instant. That could very much make a huge difference when quickly IM'ing someone or in a group chat where a 5 second delay could make conversations disjointed.. You might also might not want a automatic log of that kept .

At some point Private Discussions will be created and permit 1-n discussion.

Can real-time chat be implemented in a manner that doesn't ruin the whole feel of flarum? Where would it even go? Is there a reason why simply hosting a kiwi instance on another page couldn't suffice or do a better job of it?

sizonov_stas

Kulga

My favorite has been (pause of breath...) facebooks messenger (at least when I last used it 4-5 years ago :s

maybe this ==> https://www.chatwee.com/

Kulga

Here's my initial design idea for such a chat area.. Unfortunately no matter where I placed it it felt far too busy and looks like it's just jammed in there..

ameo

Kulga what do you think about bottom left - below all the tags?

KnownSyntax

I believe this would look better as if it was on the bottom, similar to how Facebook does it when you have a wide screen. As the resolution got smaller, it would either disappear or move to the side (with maybe a small arrow to allow it to take up more room or something of such nature).

Kyrne

YusufYldrm

KnownSyntax Adding on here and answering your question, no limit has been placed programmatically, you can add as many tags to discussions as you configure to allow (and have the time to click).

Dominion

I would suggest putting it in the slide-in panel. You could add a second button (next to the pin for the slide-in panel) to toggle between chat and the discussion list.

Kulga

Dominion You know, if I'm reading your post right (what's a slide-in panel?), I had a similar idea after creating that image..

Flarum seems to have this layout of button on the side, interact in the middle. Click on FAQ, it'll bring up posts tagged with FAQ. Following, show posts with following..

What about clicking on a chat, and having it replace the threads with chat messages? This actually feels a lot more fluid to me..

Dominion

Kulga what's a slide-in panel?

That panel with the discussion list that slides in when you move the pointer to the left edge of the browser window. (There's probably a more official name for it.) I think it's kind of cool how you can pin it there so you can switch topics without going back to the index page or clicking on a tag, but I've never gotten in the habit of using it.

Your idea does sound more fluid, and it would be easy to format it to blend in with the Flarum UX; but it would mean you'd be either chatting or reading posts. Putting chat in the slide-in panel (whatever it's called) would allow you to do both at once. And it's designed so you can pin the chat there when you want it, and hide it when you don't need it. I thought of putting the chat there because it accomplishes the same thing as your first mockup without adding a third column to the layout.

Both ways offer advantages. I do like your idea of putting the chat where the posts are. You'd merely have to add some sort of indicator to the Chat link in the sidebar to indicate when there are new chat messages and mentions. Gitter's sidebar could serve as an inspiration for that.

antonjw

Kulga I like it.

And because it is real-time, I'd like to see displayed next to the word 'chat' some information as to how popular the chat is currently; either number of users currently in there, and / or the number of unread posts.

For a 'live event' type of chat, the number of current users or users in the last say, 10 minutes, might be of value.

For just a regular 'shoutbox' type chat, just the number of unread items might suffice.

Also what would be cool is the ability to have a chat automatically commence (and appear in the nav) at a specified time, and end at a specified time. And optionally convert it into a forum thread for archiving when it is done (it might have been an epic chat session or just have contained something useful; or it might have been entirely transient, in which case it would just be trashed).

User24

Kulga I love this idea! Any heads up regarding this?

Kulga

Dominion Putting chat in the slide-in panel (whatever it's called) would allow you to do both at once.

That's a good idea. What if there was a tab style that let you choose between chat and discussion list? Maybe to the right of the sticky pin button, a Discussion | Chat you can click on between the two and would hold that style until changed. Having a tab system would be integrated into it without needing multiple slide-in panels (which could grow out of hand really fast)

Also, just as the slide-in panel serves as a "extra" to the main discussion, having it have it's own place wouldn't be a bad thing. Permitting you to chat without being forced into a discussion (to have access to the slide-in panel you need to be in a thread)

Dominion

Kulga Right, that's what I had in mind. I was thinking of a toggle button, but a tab might be clearer.

Kulga

Dominion Tabs would permit additional ones such as private discussions as well to possibly be added in the future - leading to a very convenient pming system.

failedfetus

I think tabbed chat would be smoother than a totally separate page. (I use Chatango mostly.) But it maybe a fade-in chat tab? Sense the whole sidebar thing happens. I kinda just throwing ideas out there. XD

DSitC

Given the architecture and structure of Flarum, why not integrate the chat directly into it?

What I mean is this: Build an extension that allows you to create Chatrooms directly besides Discussion. As another Discussion-type if you want. Once inside the Chatroom view you could utilize a more responsive Front- and Backend architecture to get the realtime feeling of a chat.

Dakoom

DSitC I like this idea!

jakweb

I think a forum should stay a forum, all the other stuff just makes it harder to maintain a product. Keep going with the main forum, it is great, fresh and fast.

SolidOrphan

jakweb again, it's not about the core of Flarum but an extension and stop making assumptions. It's not because you have not use for it or don't like it that other people shouldn't use it.

Kulga

jakweb It would be better to think of flarum as a newbie forum wordpress rather then a "product". Wordpress plugin == flarum extension. Much of flarum (such as likes, mentions, markdown) is already a extension.
Thanks to extensions, a forum can very much be just a forum - but it doesn't have to just be a forum for other users.
MISC Would it be possible to use the pusher protocol to implement real-time chat? Probably. Should a chat within flarum be entirely contained? As opposed to a say, irc based one that could be connected from other clients (or gitter, or slack, etc)?
I'd rather not be forced to just use pusher.com though. I already have a pusher service waiting for the current one to be made compatible with other services then just pusher.com 😛
But! If a discussion could be made as fast as real time chat, is there a real need for a special one at one? Past a certain tag like Chat?

antonjw

jakweb If forums just stay 'forums' though, what then is the point of Flarum? To be a javascripty version of phpBB? i.e., here today, gone (or much less popular) tomorrow?

I would love for the creators of forum software to stop thinking about forum software quite so much, but instead to think about the goal. Which surely is to facilitate discussion. Which then begs the question, what types of discussion are there? (i.e. what are the discussion Use Cases).

Well, there are threads (topics). But that's just one. There are blog posts and comments. There are micro-blogs. There are individual messages. There are group messages. There are live chats. etc. We're not in a world now where we only communicate online via forums or e-mail.

As a website owner, you might want to host live interactive events. You might want to cover an event happening elsewhere, with others chatting in real time. e.g. a football match... you might want your site staff and your users posting media and commenting on the game as it happens (we run phpBB with a chat room add-on for this purpose).

So as an interested observer of the progress of Flarum, I'm really hoping it will become a really good 'discussion engine', and not just a traditional forum software updated with modern tech gizmos.

MISC

Would it make sense to use pusher.com as the "engine" for a real-time chat (because we will need such an account anyway)?

tarun

I don't see the need for a public realtime chat. Useful content that would otherwise have been created as organized threads could get lost in the entropy pool of the shoutbox. But there is definitely a case to be made for private one-on-one chats to share contact details etc - a feature that is missing in Flarum currently.

Has anyone checked out http://rocket.chat? It's an open source Slack, built on meteor. Comes with an open source ionic app for mobile. I think it has an API.. I'm not sure how much of this is a good idea or even possible, but could we integrate it into Flarum with an extension? It would be cool to have a slack like mobile app that integrates with the user list of Flarum, notifies us of private chats initiated on Flarum, and perhaps even takes care of invite only group chats.

Webinsane

I think that Facebook, Hangouts style chat is the only chat cool enough these days. I tried Socket.io and it worked nicely. Connection with Laravel and Redis:

https://laracasts.com/series/real-time-laravel-with-socket-io/episodes/1

Socket.io chat demo:
http://socket.io/demos/chat/

Installing all addition stuff. Bugger 🙁
Maybe if Flarum hosts the chat and offers extension. Hosting for more than 5 users starts the monthly pricing. Just an idea for possible Flarum income.