The Matrix.org network has great potential, but after years of dealing with glitches, slow performance, poor UX, and one too many failures, I’m done with it.
i feel like it shouldnt be this hard, but I’m not the one developing matrix, nor XMPP, nor the 3rd smaller option you the reader is wanting me to list that I am unaware of
Suppose for text messages, sharing files, contacts and such we have solutions, and with a set of libraries solving the hard parts, that can be done relatively easily. Encryption is hard, but suppose we are not even doing E2EE yet, that we are fine with TLS till the server, mutual TLS between servers, and additional something like OTR or PGP for 1-on-1 conversations.
Voice/video calls, and especially group voice/video calls, are a different matter entirely. You have to think, solve latency problems, congestion problems, so that those were usable at all.
I agree that the UI for discord sucks shit, however my thinking is aligned with what another commenter said, its what people already know and are used to. Trying to make anything new will turn users off. I’m very open to being proven wrong about that assumption though. I’d love for a foss project to have better UI/UX than discord.
The UI is not that important. Something a bit similar to Discord in appearance and experience is doable in plenty of available UI toolkits and libraries and frameworks and whatever.
The system itself is important, so that it would be functional with federation, yet not as prone to fragmentation as XMPP, yet efficient.
Discord is where people are at. You start with something else you’re asking for another Matrix or XMPP because people will not understand a new interface
I am glad someone can admit it failed and we have to learn from this. I am just wondering what it takes to succeed.
start with a discord clone
make it e2ee
make it federated
i feel like it shouldnt be this hard, but I’m not the one developing matrix, nor XMPP, nor the 3rd smaller option you the reader is wanting me to list that I am unaware of
Suppose for text messages, sharing files, contacts and such we have solutions, and with a set of libraries solving the hard parts, that can be done relatively easily. Encryption is hard, but suppose we are not even doing E2EE yet, that we are fine with TLS till the server, mutual TLS between servers, and additional something like OTR or PGP for 1-on-1 conversations.
Voice/video calls, and especially group voice/video calls, are a different matter entirely. You have to think, solve latency problems, congestion problems, so that those were usable at all.
Discord UI is not very nice.
I agree that the UI for discord sucks shit, however my thinking is aligned with what another commenter said, its what people already know and are used to. Trying to make anything new will turn users off. I’m very open to being proven wrong about that assumption though. I’d love for a foss project to have better UI/UX than discord.
The UI is not that important. Something a bit similar to Discord in appearance and experience is doable in plenty of available UI toolkits and libraries and frameworks and whatever.
The system itself is important, so that it would be functional with federation, yet not as prone to fragmentation as XMPP, yet efficient.
Don’t fucking clone the godaweful mess that is Discord. Please, for the love of God start with something else.
Discord is what people like and are used to though. If you want the average user to switch it needs to be somewhat familiar.
Discord is where people are at. You start with something else you’re asking for another Matrix or XMPP because people will not understand a new interface