Comment by rkagerer
11 hours ago
I'll be tarred and feathered for saying this, but every time I see a modern chat app I pine for the days of ICQ (as it looked in the 90's).
It had a UI I prefer over anything since - compact, comparatively unobtrusive, information-dense, and fast. I could port my full chat history around with me between machines, and also search it reliably (no vanishing scrolling or lazy-loading handicaps). And it was handy you could advertise different presence states to different people/groups.
ICQ plus Winamp was peak PC
Add mIRC 4.51 to that list. Fit a 1.44M diskette. Launched fully before you let go of the mouse button, on an old POS 486.
For sure, mIRC was the good old days. Windows 98 and houndstooth wallpaper :P.
I still use IRC to this day, just the client and the OS are different.
6 replies →
mIRC scripting was one of the first languages I learn't.
1 reply →
Ventrilo for voice chats. Finding others on Quakenet and playing 3vs3, sometimes making friends, sometimes making enemies, always having fun.
I still can't believe there isn't an open source Winamp 2.91/2.95 clone.
Everything wants to make a "universal media library manager". Jesus, doesn't anybody just want to name their MP3 correctly and then use file management, and then have an audio player that just plays audio?
Audacious doesn't count?
ICQ and MSN Messenger, yup. :P
It really did whip the llama’s ass.
I wonder if the 'unobstrusive, information-dense' will not die with our generation. The new guys grew up with flat and material design, plus UX design classes all about spaced typography and screens.. they will never miss what we do.
You might like the IRCv3 client I build at https://github.com/matt0x6f/irc-client. It's highly capable and modern but limited in its resource footprint and quite zippy. PRs welcome as well.
> The interface is built with React and Tailwind CSS
ಠ_ಠ
heh, I'm not sure of your particular beef with these two but I'll use this as an opportunity to explain my rationale.
I obviously write a lot of code in Go but as a language it's also a really nice pairing with the IRC protocol. The way you write abstractions and tests just lends itself so well to writing desktop applications. On the other hand, writing UIs in Go (which I've tried in a multitude of ways) is just a really poor fit because asking Go to emulate Elm architecture is very clunky.
From my perspective, UIs are side effect driven code and demand a language that can fit that paradigm not just well, but great. Anything else I would or could have chosen would've required way more CGO dependencies than I have (of which I only have 1 atm) and would have read worse when I tried to hook it into Go.
Conversely, Wails' bridge to Typescript and React is very simple to use, reliable, and keeps up with the performance and consistency demands on an IRC client. Tailwind is also just very good at making compatible CSS; I was inspired by the use of QT in modern car infotainment systems in my selection of a component-based CSS approach.
Lastly, the whole thing is compiled into the binary that you download and makes no external calls on its own. It's all built on top of the OS WebView rather than a third-party browser the way, say, Electron is.
4 replies →
You forgot to say “Written in Go” /s
I’ve been checking your client for a while and it looks awesome, thanks for the reminder, finally after 30+ years I think I really got tired and left IRC for good but I’ll download and give it a go later today.
Thank you! Would love your input
And apart from the advantages you mention, it was really configurable in terms of the level of involvement and openness you wanted. You could use it exclusively to chat with friends and otherwise be unreachable (as in MSN and their ilk later), or you could be open to chat with strangers. And you could find people by interests, I remember looking for coin collectors from countries whose coins I didn't have :)
Then MSN Messenger displaced it (at least in Spain) and it didn't have even 10% of ICQ's functionality.
Amen.
I long to bring this back in a Miranda-IM way (super customizable), but other projects get in the way.
I don't care if only a handful of us (few milly) find it useful.
I held off back in the day, for awhile but I remember my number 1202948; ICQ rocked! My sister had a much lower number and used to tease me about it, since I was the "nerd".
Proof jic https://lists.apache.org/thread/09kv8twflgo3xoh16fxl6gfkgmjk...
pff more than 6 digits!
“Uh-oh!”
And the fog horn launch sound that reminded you if your speakers were on or turned up... good times.
I was a 6 digit’er 421330, and was even able to correspond with the creators via ICQ
Mine was 29x,xxx something. I too miss ICQ.
One of the grocery stores near me actually uses that in their POS system, so you can hear it as you check out.
>information-dense
In other words, designed by IT guys. And a reason (among many others) normies would never get on board. Not saying I disagree personally.
Everybody had ICQ. You probably are too young to remember, but ICQ was as commonly used as Instagram today.
When ICQ was at its peak, users of any chat software were a rather thin layer of population. So "everybody" is more than exaggeration.
5 replies →
I never had ICQ because I was opposed to replacing open internet protocols with proprietary walled gardens governed by unaccountable private corporations imposing clickwrap contracts of adhesion on helpless users.
No it wasn't and it's not even close.
Definitely a regional thing. Where I grew up it was MSN Messenger all the way.
1 reply →
AOL instant messenger was bigger in USA, it was so big that AOL remained a major chat service even into the broadband years (though AIM clearly was under decline by that point)
My 90s and early 00s social circle was AIM, Yahoo Games, and Neopets.
10 replies →
Oh. Misunderstanding. I thought I was replying to a comment about IRC.
ICQ was incredibly popular amongst “normies”, at least in Brazil. Much more so than amongst nerds who were mostly still on IRC.
In Denmark it was MSN Messenger, the nerds were on IRC and also had ICQ.
1 reply →
[dead]
Discord is incredibly noisy and information-dense and while maybe not for "normies", it’s definitely not just IT guys using it. Though I wonder how many people actually like to use it.
Discord is by far my favorite communication platform across anything I used in my entire life, nothing else comes even close in terms of feature set. It also helps that almost everyone I like is there. I'm forced to have whatsapp and telegram to communicate with the general population and I wouldn't use them if I didn't have to.
5 replies →
In Discord’s…defense? Description? At least for understanding—it’s gamer chat. And it’s been that from the beginning. That’s the design and the intent, and while it seems Discord-the-company is trying to adapt Discord-the-product for the increase in popularity for other uses, its roots are showing. Navigating it feels similar to navigating the menu system of a AAA game.
5 replies →
It's certainly dense with something. If it's information, it's not information I want though. I have no desire to know anything about their various Nitro sales or have a live feed to what my friends are playing or listening to. People I want to talk to are there, so I go there to talk to them. Anything outside of that just makes it noisy, like you said.
I can’t get into Discord. It’s just so messy and disorganized and too much information flying at my face.
3 replies →
Discord is incredibly popular among younger people in general now. It escaped tech people containment years ago.
every single 'normie' i've seen use Discord can barely figure it out, they chase red badges across the UI all day and really have no clue about the paradigm at all.
They're there of course because some 'normie' thing of theres inevitably requires the sign-up of a discord for bonus game skins or some other such stupid shit, but the fact remains that they're clueless.
much like the average Outlook user, they're there because they were dragged into it by another element in their life (their job) and they really have no background or clue on how to use the piece of software, they just know they need to pretend and cite experience on the CV for a job.
Is there any proof that normies would not be on board with it? Discord is information dense and huge among normies.
For the love of... can we stop saying 'normie', it's just so stupid. And intellectually lazy. And also dumb.
I’m surprised how popular Discord is for as “IT guy” and information dense the UI is tbh.