[HN Gopher] Spaces launch in Element
___________________________________________________________________
Spaces launch in Element
Author : liotier
Score : 342 points
Date : 2021-09-28 08:09 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (element.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (element.io)
| Arathorn wrote:
| For what it's worth, the thing I find _really_ exciting about
| Spaces is that they provide a way to create a decentralised
| global hierarchical directory structure for realtime data. It's
| like a free-for-all global USENET hierarchy that anyone can
| curate or contribute to, complete with decentralised ACLs. Or
| like DMOZ but for chatrooms. We haven't published a "root" space
| as Matrix.org yet (as the "subspace" hierarchy feature is still
| in beta), but I cannot wait to kill off the public room directory
| for Matrix.org (which is a total tirefire atm) and replace it
| with decentralised hierarchies of rooms that the community can
| moderate and curate like any other content.
|
| Add in voice/video rooms, async comms (messageboards, forums,
| mailing lists, newsgroups), decentralised metaverse worlds like
| thirdroom (https://youtu.be/e26UJRCGfGk?t=2263) and then you end
| up with a skeleton for a whole open universe of interoperable
| communication.
|
| Next up: decentralised search for discovery as well as
| decentralised hierarchies...
| nynx wrote:
| That sounds amazing. Something I've been wondering is if matrix
| supports specifying custom UIs for rooms somehow. For example,
| could a room have the ui of an issue tracker without it being
| through an additional program or website?
| Arathorn wrote:
| Yup. We call this "widgets", and it lets you embed arbitrary
| web UI into a Matrix client. MSC1236 is the base proposal
| (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1236) which
| Element implements, and there are a stack of other proposals
| on top of it which need to be merged into the main spec.
|
| This is how Element embeds Jitsi today, and was extensively
| used for FOSDEM 2021 (https://matrix.org/blog/2021/02/15/how-
| we-hosted-fosdem-2021...). We're currently adding "full-
| screen" widgets too, though, as well as "inline widgets" (for
| polls etc).
| kovek wrote:
| Wow! I always think these can be somehow generalized: Uber,
| Craigslist, Facebook Market, ebay. Connecting buyer/seller.
| Maybe it will be possible to index/search through Matrix and
| connect people together better?
| MayeulC wrote:
| That's quite interesting, thanks for the insight!
|
| I hadn't thought about the possibility for spaces to replace
| the room directory, although it will always be needed to some
| extent.
|
| Spaces could also be useful for moderation/reputation, child
| rooms (and users) could inherit some score from a space. It
| should be possible to compute the shortest distance between two
| spaces from a user's perspective. Even stuff like ignored users
| could be part of a per-user space used for computing
| "reputation" points. Kind of a space-based social graph.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Space hierarchies already have a binary social graph
| effectively in the form of their decentralised ACLs (i.e. PLs
| etc). You could group MSC2313 (https://github.com/matrix-
| org/matrix-doc/pull/2313) reputation lists into a space
| hierarchy though to curate them though... and assign
| reputation to spaces similarly to rooms via MSC2313 too.
| pixxel wrote:
| Exciting for sure!
| olah_1 wrote:
| > I cannot wait to kill off the public room directory for
| Matrix.org
|
| I didn't realize that Spaces would finally allow for this! The
| public room directory is a horrible user experience today and
| really turns people off. I'm so glad that your team recognizes
| that too!
|
| So is the idea that each Matrix server can have their own root
| Space that they direct people to? Kinda like an "instance
| timeline" in Mastodon?
| Akronymus wrote:
| Spaces also allow for pretty nice access controls.
|
| So that you can prevent most cases of bots just collecting
| all history. And because you can nest spaces, it also allows
| basically ad hoc organizing.
|
| For example, on a open source project you could have a top
| space for it itself, then subspaces for contributors, users,
| code reviewers and such. In the code reviewers space you
| could then have one where confidental issues can be
| discussed.
| vaylian wrote:
| > [Spaces] come in three main flavours:
|
| This is what I still find confusing about spaces. How do I create
| each of these 3 different flavours? Is there a default flavour?
| Do I have to upgrade a personal space into a private/public
| space?
| callahad wrote:
| Which you click the "Create a Space" button in the sidebar, you
| get a clear prompt to choose between "Public" and "Private"
| (and a note that you can change this later in the Space's
| settings).
|
| Personal Spaces are just a special case of a Private Space
| where you haven't invited anyone else. It's worth calling out
| this use case separately, as we've otherwise seen users assume
| that Spaces were _only_ for shared hierarchies, when in fact
| anyone can create a Space and put whatever rooms they want in
| it to create a personal system of organization, even if those
| rooms are already in other Spaces.
|
| If you want to turn your Personal Space into a shared Private
| space, you can invite people via the button on the Space's
| summary page. If you want to open it up to the Public, that's
| in the settings menu accessed from the same page.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like rooms.
| You can just create one (that's a personal space), invite some
| people in (private space), and make it public with a public
| link (public space).
|
| The distinction is artificial. I mostly want public or private
| spaces to regroup existing rooms, so the "private" space that
| wants to _force_ me to create new rooms (in element) is a bad
| fit.
|
| I also think it's a bit early to come out of beta without
| peeking: you have to be joined to subspaces as well so that
| sub-rooms are sorted.
| vaylian wrote:
| > I dislike that distinction a bit. Spaces are just like
| rooms
|
| Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual level
| than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the rest of
| us still needs more explanations/analogies.
|
| The thing that is still missing for me: How can spaces/rooms
| contain other rooms? For example, could someone create a sub-
| room of #matrix:matrix.org?
| MayeulC wrote:
| Ah, sorry. I guess it took some time for me to grasp that,
| and I am now subject to the curse of knowledge.
|
| I maintain that for technical-minded people like me,
| knowing a bit of behind-the-scenes can help a lot with
| understanding (it did with git).
|
| > How can spaces/rooms contain other rooms?
|
| They don't per se. It's a list of rooms that's part of the
| room state. The room doesn't contain anything else than
| pointers to other rooms, like a linked list. And then other
| room-related stuff, like an avatar,name,memberlist,ban
| list, etc.
|
| -------
|
| For the technical explanation: what's a room in Matrix? The
| basic functionality is to store some data. There's three
| different kind of data: ephemeral (online/offline
| "presence" state, typing notifications...), persistent
| (part of the history: join, leave, message, attachment,
| etc), and state (room name, avatar, member list, etc). You
| can define your own custom data.
|
| The added value is replicating that data across servers
| (that includes re-syncing after history diverges, like a
| CRDT), and checking it against some rules (somebody cannot
| join if they've not been invited and the room is private,
| or read history).
|
| So spaces are just rooms, which indicate a special type
| ("m.space") in their state/creation event. Also in that
| state, they contain addresses of other rooms. Some of these
| rooms can be spaces as well.
|
| --------
|
| I'm not sure about a layman's perspective, but for me it
| always clicked that:
|
| - rooms are just places where you can chat with other
| people
|
| - you can be alone in the room, in which case stuff you
| write there is for yourself only
|
| - you can later share that room with someone else
|
| - or make it publicly accessible, maybe also discoverable
| by publishing it in the room directory
|
| That permission model is quite intuitive IMO. If you create
| a google doc, it's the same. I often create rooms, set the
| avatar and permissions before inviting people over or
| making it public.
| nadc wrote:
| (Blog post author here).
|
| > Because you understand rooms at a different conceptual
| level than me. And that by itself is a good thing. But the
| rest of us still needs more explanations/analogies.
|
| Yep, you hit the nail on the head.
|
| On the Matrix/spec side, we ensured Spaces are generically
| useful and flexible enough to organise rooms. However, in
| testing and research we found users have specific goals in
| mind when organising conversations, which the Element UX
| speaks to.
|
| It's not dissimilar to where Direct Messages are today.
| Early thinking behind DMs in Matrix was that they're just
| rooms with few participants. In practise, there's a bunch
| of other semantics (e.g. room name/avatar exclusively
| informed by the other users profile, continual re-discovery
| of existing conversations when creating new ones, etc)
| which need to be met for them to be intuitively usable by
| more people.
| Gargyle wrote:
| As admin and programmer: I didnt understand what spaces are
| trying to do when it was presented to me.
| callahad wrote:
| For an example of Spaces in action, the NixOS Community has a
| well-organized Matrix Space at #community:nixos.org
|
| https://matrix.to/#/#community:nixos.org
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| GNOME says hi with #community:gnome.org :)
| rakwoelq wrote:
| The Fedora community also created one recently.
|
| https://matrix.to/#/#fedora-space:fedoraproject.org
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| With Spaces shipped I want to recommend Element for my
| engineering conference. Unfortunately, Element on mobile is still
| more complicated than FluffyChat -- compare our install guides
| [0]. I feel the cost of Element when people e-mail me for tech
| support.
|
| The fact Fluffy instantly lets you sign-in makes Element lag
| behind in UX, which matters _a whole lot_ for transient
| conference goers.
|
| [0] https://www.handmade-seattle.com/chat
| laulis wrote:
| Fluffychat has Spaces support (click on the icon next to
| Fluffychat text)
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| Should've checked properly; thank you! I edited out the last
| sentence.
| sanqui wrote:
| Super exciting. Time to start bridging Discord servers to Matrix
| Spaces and encouraging people to switch, one community at a time.
| crowbahr wrote:
| I wish there was a good Discord:Matrix bridge but I've never
| been able to get anything useful working nor does it seem like
| Discord will ever allow something like that on their platform.
| kovek wrote:
| Setting up a matrix server on an ec2 took a few evenings (lots
| of reading docs). Then, setting up discord was supposed to be
| more configuration...
|
| Element has hosted instances for 10$/month and discord bridges
| for 20$/month?
|
| Does anyone else run hosted matrix instances with bridges? I
| might pay 10$/month for that.
|
| Or, are there AMI instances for that? I couldn't find any.
| podiki wrote:
| Discord/Matrix bridging works well for me! I wrote up a guide
| here: https://boilingsteam.com/how-to-bridge-discord-in-matrix/
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Except many servers are unreliable and overloaded. Plus,
| Discord audio just works and you don't have to worry about your
| chats randomly disappearing.
| starik36 wrote:
| For a second I thought there was a new rocket launch company and
| got excited.
|
| I guess this is good too.
| espacess wrote:
| I've been using the spaces to keep all my messenger bridged rooms
| from cluttering the home space, its been working quite
| delightfully.
| KitDuncan wrote:
| Would be cool if you could tell the bridge to automatically
| move all telegram chats to your designated telegram space...
| iruoy wrote:
| A graphic that shows the hierarchy/differences of all the
| possible spaces/groups/rooms would be nice. Because as I
| understand it these are 3 different things and there are
| different variants of each.
| callahad wrote:
| Groups ("Communities") are a legacy, underspecified extension
| to the Matrix protocol; it's best to ignore them as they will
| go away soon. Spaces are the properly specced replacement for
| Groups.
|
| From a user perspective, Spaces are containers which can hold
| an arbitrary number of Rooms or other Spaces. Like Rooms,
| Spaces can be public, private (invite only), or "restricted"
| (only joinable by members of another specified Room or Space).
|
| At a technical level, Spaces are _actually implemented as
| Rooms._
|
| In Matrix, Rooms maintain state. Spaces are just rooms whose
| state indicates that they should be treated as a space ("type":
| "m.space" on the m.room.create event), and which have pointers
| to other rooms/spaces which it considers as children
| (m.space.child events). This means that a single Room can exist
| in many Spaces, as membership points from the space to its
| children, rather than in the opposite direction.
| progval wrote:
| Where can I find the Space specifications? I don't see it in
| the main documentation (https://matrix.org/docs/spec/), and
| "matrix spaces specification" in a search engine does not
| return anything relevant.
| callahad wrote:
| In this case, the parent spec change for Spaces was
| MSC1772: Matrix spaces (https://github.com/matrix-
| org/matrix-doc/pull/1772).
|
| You may also want to look into MSC2946: Spaces Summary
| (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/2946) and
| MSC3083: Restricting room membership based on membership in
| other rooms (https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| doc/pull/3083).
|
| These will manifest in a published version of the spec when
| we next cut one of those (soon!). We're also working on a
| new design / platform for the spec docs at
| https://spec.matrix.org/ which is where it should appear.
| Kliment wrote:
| I'm really frustrated that:
|
| a) Stuff like this gets released in the wild without
| being part of the spec making it effectively impossible
| for any non-element client to support at release time
|
| b) Any room that gets added to a server that supports
| spaces is no longer accessible to anyone whose homeserver
| isn't running the non-spec-compliant protocol from an
| unreleased version of synapse, because the default room
| version is 9 and synapse's latest release doesn't know
| wtf that means
|
| It's really annoying that something that is supposed to
| be the pinnacle of interoperability and federation breaks
| compatibility like this.
| mr_johnson22 wrote:
| a) Agreed; the fact that spaces aren't in the spec is
| annoying when trying to stay spec-compliant and not
| realizing you also have to search through various GitHub
| issues to be fully informed. Granted, spaces have been
| one of the most hotly-discussed topic in Matrix
| development for months, so anyone interested in making
| anything Matrix related likely would have come across it.
|
| b) Not true; spaces don't require room version 9. IIRC
| the only space-related feature that needs a room upgrade
| is "restricted rooms", ie. the ability to make a room
| accessible only to members of another room/space.
| callahad wrote:
| > _effectively impossible for any non-element client to
| support at release time_
|
| While I understand where you're coming from, it's just
| not the case in this instance:
|
| Cinny, a one-man project, landed support for Spaces
| several weeks ago. FluffyChat, which wrote its own
| complete Matrix SDK in-house, supports Spaces. Nheko,
| which also rolled its own stack of client libraries,
| supports Spaces.
|
| If your client of choice does not support Spaces, it very
| likely will soon.
|
| > _Any room that gets added to a server that supports
| spaces is no longer accessible to anyone whose homeserver
| isn 't running the non-spec-compliant protocol from an
| unreleased version of synapse, because the default room
| version is 9 and synapse's latest release doesn't know
| wtf that means_
|
| I believe you're unfortunately mistaken on a few points
| here. We really did put a lot of care and consideration
| into how we rolled this out, and I'm sorry that we've
| somehow failed you. In particular:
|
| 1. "the non-spec-compliant protocol": Spaces followed the
| normal, public process for spec change proposals
| documented at
| https://spec.matrix.org/unstable/proposals/. The related
| MSCs have merged, and thus Spaces have been accepted as
| part of the Matrix Spec. They've not yet been
| incorporated into a _versioned release_ of the Spec, but
| the MSCs are there, enumerated, and ready for
| implementation.
|
| 2. "an unreleased version of synapse": Actually, the past
| eight releases of Synapse have supported Spaces by
| default.
|
| 3. "the default room version is 9": The default room
| version is still 6, which is universally supported across
| the publicly visible federation as seen from matrix.org.
| Room version 9 is only used when a client _explicitly_
| requests the creation of a "restricted" room (a room
| which is private, but joinable by members of a given
| space).
|
| 4. "synapse's latest release doesn't know wtf that
| means": The past two releases of Synapse understand
| version 9 rooms, and only the latest release instructs
| clients that they should use version 9 when creating
| restricted rooms. We monitored the upgrade rates of
| servers publicly visible to matrix.org to ensure that the
| majority the population was on a version of Synapse which
| supported Room Version 9 before we cut a Synapse release
| which informed clients that they were allowed to create
| v9 rooms.
|
| But v9 rooms are a red herring: Spaces can contain rooms
| of any version, and clients still default to creating v6
| rooms _except_ when explicitly asked to create a
| "restricted" room. It's simply not the case that a room
| getting "added to a server that supports spaces" means
| it's "no longer accessible" to anyone. Adding a room to a
| Space does not change the room's version, or any state
| within it. Rooms are only upgraded to v9 through direct,
| intentional action on the part of the room's owner to
| switch the room to a "restricted" access model. At which
| point, yes, your homeserver needs to understand that,
| which current Synapse releases do.
| liotier wrote:
| Can an existing room be moved to a space ?
| ninchuka wrote:
| yes, you can add any room your in to a space you've made
| callahad wrote:
| Yep! Fastest way is to right click the Space in the sidebar
| and choose "Add Existing Room"
| Macha wrote:
| Note that rooms don't "belong to" a space, like discord
| channels belong to a server. You can create a space to
| group related rooms together for yourself or your friend
| group, for example.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Neither Slack nor any of the Slack clones can figure the most
| simple of things: tabs.
|
| Instead they all insist on having just one window with a
| 10-kilometer long list of rooms/chats/channels on the left that
| you have to switch between in a single window.
|
| This becomes especially frustrating when you have several active
| chats going on at the same time, or when you want to retain some
| info on the screen while answering in a separate chat/channel.
| ivank wrote:
| https://cancel.fm/ripcord/ is a client with tabs for Slack and
| Discord. Unfortunately it does not provide all the
| functionality of the web interfaces, though.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Also technically you can get banned from Discord for using
| third-party clients. Some people have used it and gotten
| away, some people weren't so lucky.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| In Element (on desktop at least) spaces act like tabs to order
| the massive vertical list of chats. On mobile these spaces are
| hidden in the slide-in menu.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| By "tabs", the person to which you replied meant the ability
| to view multiple chats at the same time, I think.
| bhl wrote:
| So sort of a user interface like TweetDeck where you can
| horizontally scroll between multiple feeds?
| dmitriid wrote:
| You still need to go through the whole process of creating a
| Space even if it's just some place in a chat that you want
| open while you're having a conversation in another chat.
|
| You still have to use the same window to switch between them.
|
| These are not tabs.
| mxuribe wrote:
| If i read things properly, the spaces concept is not
| specific to the Element client (available per the
| underlying matrix protocol)...so technically, any other
| client could in fact apply a different UI/UX approach to
| displaying the spaces, such as tabs...again, if i'm
| understanding things accurately. So, maybe other clients
| could implement something more to your liking (such as
| tabs)??
| dmitriid wrote:
| This will still create a separate space that will appear
| in our clients, that needs the privacy settings etc.
| justshowpost wrote:
| Someone please make a Matrix client that looks like VSCode.
|
| The editor of the current file is the current opened room, and
| tabs to switch between rooms. The explorer shows rooms as files
| and spaces as folders that can be expanded/collapsed. Also
| support for keyboard shortcuts like CMD+P to quickly open a
| room.
| filleokus wrote:
| I think MS Teams is worst about this, because they have so much
| functionality crammed in the app.
|
| I constantly find myself switching between the Calendar view /
| channel view when planning a meeting, or between channels when
| referencing a PDF shared in the "Files" section of a different
| channel. Super annoying.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yes - it's the worst here, because they're trying to surface
| so many products in Teams for some reason.
| callahad wrote:
| This may be heretical but... I just use Element in my browser.
| If I need another tab, I open another tab. Did the same thing
| when I worked at a company that used Slack.
| nerdponx wrote:
| It's not just tabs. I am in so many damn Discord servers and
| Matrix rooms that I want to be able to view, filter, sort, and
| modify them in a table. I want to be able to do bulk
| operations. I want to be able to tag them and group them into
| hierarchies, with a UI that promotes doing such things, rather
| than obstructs.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| This seems to built for people with a lot of rooms/people. I
| think it's a classic mistake to enable it for all users, and I
| see it in all kinds of products. Everyone starts out by building
| something simple, but eventually it's bloated with features that
| I don't need (I'm sure someone does).
|
| Personally, I use matrix every day. However, it's only for a
| single room. With this new feature, I lost 70 "pixels" (or 140
| actual pixels) of horizontal space.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes MS Teams is a great example.
|
| It started as a Slack knock-off. Not a great one, the UI is too
| low density and the multi tenant support sucks unlike Slack's.
| But it was relatively snappy. And free for O365 users. But
| lately they've been adding many apps, Wikis, all these fancy
| meeting modes that make it seem like everyone is in a theatre
| and many more fluffy things.
|
| Now the app is so slow it takes more than a minute to start up.
| It often crashes with stupid error messages "Oops! Something
| went wrong!" that give zero indication of what actually
| happened.
|
| At the same time MS is heavily pushing companies to adopt it
| but they're devaluing the product as they go by making it some
| kind of Swiss army knife with all the trimmings.
|
| They're now realising the performance issue and moving away
| from Electron towards Edge webview but I think what it really
| needs is a proper architectural review. They've been too
| focused on beating the market adding new features and its core
| functions have suffered.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I like when they embed views (e.g. PowerBI) in it, but as
| soon as you click off it to see a message and click back, it
| has to reload it all. It's like IE6 - a pre-tabs browsing
| experience.
| kroltan wrote:
| Embedded browser views are my pet peeve.
|
| On some mobile apps (Gmail, Discord, Telegram, etc. On
| Android, never used a modern iOS device to know the
| situation over there) there are embedded browsers enabled
| by default, but they are not very persistent and have no
| actual browsing UI.
|
| My mom was buying something from a link she got from a
| friend, and was unable to complete the transaction because
| she had to open another Telegram conversation to get the
| payment details (hey don't judge non-techy people's
| organization skills!), but of course going back means
| leaving the browser-view, so once she had the details at
| hand she couldn't go back to the store to finish the
| purchase.
|
| That would be "fine" if there were a consistent UX to "no,
| i really mean to open this on my browser app, not on an
| embedded view" or if embedded views were opt-in, but as it
| stands, it is one of the classic attempts at "simplifying"
| things that actually makes the whole ecosystem more complex
| and obscure.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| This isn't helpful for less technical users but most
| embedded browsers have an option to open what you're
| looking at in the real version preserving state. I find
| this handy to quickly peek at something while
| conceptually still in the app that opened it, and then go
| to a real browser if necessary.
| athenot wrote:
| > It started as a Slack knock-off.
|
| More like a Webex Teams knock-off, as MS went after the
| Unified Communications space (group chat + video meetings,
| though they still lack contact center and hybrid meeting
| hardware).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Oh I thought it would only do group text chat when it first
| went live (still in beta).
|
| But it could be that voice/video calls were blocked by our
| IT because at that time WebEx was our approved tool (not
| WebEx Teams, just the regular scheduled meeting tool).
| nerdponx wrote:
| I don't recall Teams ever being "snappy". It has always felt
| like a half-broken beta product.
|
| The one thing I liked about it was the balance of "threaded
| conversation" and "chat" that it promoted with its UI, which
| was good for the data science team I was on at the time. Of
| course nowadays I would suggest using Zulip for the same
| purpose.
| rablackburn wrote:
| I think this feature enables a much more discord-like
| environment, in which case it totally makes sense why they
| enabled to for everyone.
|
| Like it or not, discord has taken the market for a lot of
| younger software projects and geeky communities. If we could
| get them to use foss matrix instead that'd be a huge win.
| AgentME wrote:
| I'm a big fan of Matrix becoming more Discord-like. I've been
| in many small to medium group chats and internet communities
| over the last decade. About everyone I know from those jumped
| over to Discord shortly after it came out, and its structure
| ("servers" that are easy to create by anyone being the main
| unit which contains not only channels but a member list,
| roles, and moderators instead of having those each per-
| channel) is such an upgrade over everything we used before,
| to the point I was baffled that the design wasn't more copied
| by others. (Yeah I know that IRC is somewhat similar, but the
| differences make all the difference. Anyone being able to
| make a "server", it having a graphical identity, being able
| to join it through a link, that you don't register in an
| arcane way on each one all over again with an unconnected
| identity, that you get channel history, that it's integrated
| with voice/video chat channels, and that you're a member of
| all channels in it are all huge factors in how they shape
| their social spaces and get used.)
| nerdponx wrote:
| I fully agree. The Slack model of having a different login
| per "server" is good for workplaces, but Discord is
| incredibly good for "communities", hobby groups, and other
| casual groups.
|
| As suggested by another commenter here, a hybrid model
| would probably be ideal for Matrix, where you could log
| into different spaces with different accounts if you want,
| but aren't forced to.
|
| I would go one step further and propose that you should be
| able to have multiple Element windows open, so you can have
| your "work" space or spaces in one window, and your other
| spaces in another window.
| lucasverra wrote:
| Use Firefox multi containers for that.
|
| [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/multi-
| account-co...
| nerdponx wrote:
| I should clarify that I prefer using desktop applications
| and would rather not have to chat in a browser window
| (even if the desktop application is technically a web
| browser internally).
| ShinyRice wrote:
| I'm fairly sure you can collapse most UI elements though.
| Arathorn wrote:
| You're right that spaces aren't useful if you're only in one
| room(!). Just like a mail client doesn't need to support mail
| folders if you only ever have one conversation going on. As
| others have said, we'll add the option to hide the spacepanel
| if you want. Also, you may want to just use a much simpler
| Matrix client (eg https://hydrogen.element.io - the lightest
| element!) if you're only in one room.
|
| In general, Spaces _reduce bloat_ though - they speed up the
| app by reducing the amount of data the app has to juggle as you
| filter based on a given space, and they stop your UI and brain
| being clogged up with irrelevant rooms.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| Thanks! I will try hydrogen!
| spinax wrote:
| Hello! Hydrogen sorely needs 2 basic things to make it usable
| as a daily driver - separate DM one-on-one conversations away
| from Rooms and add a Dark mode toggle. These two things push
| me back to app.element.io, must-have not nice-to-have things
| for me. Thanks for listening.
| bwindels wrote:
| Thanks for your suggestions. We've just had another look at
| the upcoming priorities for Hydrogen and I can confirm that
| both of those things are planned for the not-too-far
| future! Hard to commit to exact time frames, but you've
| been heard :)
| callahad wrote:
| We hear the desire to fully hide the Spaces sidebar loud and
| clear. It wasn't a blocker for leaving Beta, but we are
| tracking that request in https://github.com/vector-im/element-
| web/issues/18898
| emaro wrote:
| Or you could use a client which doesn't support spaces.
| hda111 wrote:
| Thinks looks interesting. For replacing Discord. Is there also an
| audio chat function?
| jarbus wrote:
| No, you can't just hop into a room and be connected via audio
| sadly. One of the biggest things preventing me from using
| matrix as a replacement for discord
| thibaultamartin wrote:
| Voice Messages are thing, but are not exactly like Discord
| voice rooms: https://element.io/blog/introducing-voice-
| messages-and-so-mu...
|
| But Matrix is an open protocol that everyone can improve. The
| Specifications Change Proposals are open to everyone willing to
| formalise the change they want, get it reviewed, and implement
| it so it works in practice.
|
| And there is a Matrix Spec Change going in the direction of
| Discord-like voice chat rooms! (https://github.com/matrix-
| org/matrix-doc/blob/matthew/group-..., and in particular
| https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-
| doc/blob/matthew/group-...)
| MayeulC wrote:
| I have suggested integrating with Mumble before, it would be
| a great way to interact.
|
| Add a "info.mumble.servers" or "info.mumble.channels" state
| event, some magic on murmur's side to authenticate using
| Matrix, and roll with it in your own Matrix client. Pinned
| messages with mumble:// URIs could be used as a fallback.
|
| One of the issues is that upstream mumble lacks support for
| websockets, so web clients are impossible. Otherwise, it
| sounds quite promising.
|
| I even suggested something along these lines, but haven't had
| time to cook up a prototype: https://github.com/mumble-
| voip/mumble/issues/1813#issuecomme... (there seems to have
| been some back-and-forth on that idea since then).
| ajvs wrote:
| Yes.
| dnh44 wrote:
| Does anyone know if the iOS application is native or does use it
| use some type of web-tech or cross-platform sdk?
| cvwright wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but I originally had the same question.
|
| It's actually a native app. It's mostly Objective C, but
| increasingly written in Swift. https://github.com/vector-
| im/element-ios
|
| There is clearly room for improvement, but apparently they just
| hired a handful of new iOS developers to work on it. Good
| things should be coming soon.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Yep. iOS has been woefully neglected in the past, but it does
| seem like they are directing more attention to it lately.
| throwawayIxZCg wrote:
| Are there any plans to add granting permissions to roles based on
| space membership (perhaps spaces which are not room's ancestors
| in any hierarchy but instead a cousin) instead of gradual power
| levels? And also sharing those permissions across all rooms in a
| space?
| brainsmith wrote:
| That's awesome for teams to focus on just work conversations but
| unfortunately not enough.
|
| We've completely switched our work communication to a self-hosted
| matrix+element with SSO, so we can be sure our matrix auth is
| secured the same way our other internal services are.
|
| However, some of us also have personal matrix accounts which are
| offline during work hours and corporate accounts are offline
| outside of work hours which forbids using matrix as an emergency
| contact method. It would be great to either ability to sign into
| multiple accounts or an ability to sign into a single space using
| account other than the default one.
| usbfingers wrote:
| Syphon (https://syphon.org) landed Multiaccount support several
| months back, though it still lacks many other features.
| nix23 wrote:
| I one corporation they used pagers exactly for that emergency
| situation, some techies just wanted a smartphone timeout at
| weekends etc (aka don't have to check your phone every
| 30minutes). But if the pager rings you know it's something
| serious.
|
| I think that is a great idea.
| Arathorn wrote:
| Yup. Multiaccount is desperately needed in Element. Other
| Matrix clients (FluffyChat, Quaternion, possibly Nheko?) have
| it already though)... plus you can always cheat and just open
| Element in multiple browser tabs :)
| diftraku wrote:
| I got around the single-account limitation on Element by
| installing a work profile on my Android phone using
| Shelter[1]. I initially spotted this from HN while we were
| looking at migrating from Slack to Matrix and I wanted to
| keep my personal account separate.
|
| Works surprisingly well for my use-case (keep work stuff
| separate on Element) and even allows me to disconnect
| completely from work by simply turning off the profile.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/PeterCxy/Shelter
|
| Edit: added note about using Android
| Groxx wrote:
| yeah, I've done this too - it's pretty simple and effective
| for getting 2 accounts for anything. though it's a shame
| that it's only limited to 2, since it's not like all people
| have only 1 job...
|
| ... but it's quite far from _actual_ multi-account support,
| so I do think that 's still necessary :)
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Not really a proper solution for 98% of the public
| diftraku wrote:
| Definitely not, I'd still preferr to have proper multi-
| account support over having to use a work profile on
| Android (or multiple profiles if using a browser).
| [deleted]
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| A week ago, I noticed that Element Desktop was starting to hide
| "rooms in spaces" from my home screen, which now only contains
| rooms not in a space.
|
| I really don't like how Element Android has you separately pick
| which space to view (in the sidebar), and whether to look at DMs
| or rooms (in the bottom bar). Now I often end up picking the KDE
| space, but only showing DMs, which results in an empty view
| (because I've only joined KDE-related chats, not KDE-related
| DMs).
|
| I think I'd prefer a list of spaces where I can set rules for
| what goes where. For example, I want to create a space called
| "Contacts", where I first manually pin my "self-room" for note-
| taking and test messages to the top, then ask Element to add all
| DMs I'm in, ordered by "most recent" or manual order. Then I want
| a space called KDE where I place specific KDE-related rooms
| inside. Then have a space called "Rooms" with the leftover non-
| KDE rooms.
|
| In the process, I'd remove the Android client's bottom DM/room
| selector (unsure what to do with the notification tab), replace
| it with 2 "default spaces" in the left sidebar (one for DMs and
| the other for rooms, but with user-customizable rules), and let
| user-created spaces coexist alongside the two default spaces.
|
| The end result would work something like a hybrid of Telegram's
| automatic rules, Discord's single DM namespace followed by a
| server list, and Matrix's current spaces system. Unfortunately,
| it seems Element has officially released the Spaces feature,
| ignoring (or not even seeing) my feedback a week ago in the
| Matrix HQ room. I don't know if they're still accepting changes
| to how spaces operate.
| novocaine wrote:
| Great suggestions - thanks.
|
| The information architecture of Spaces as presented in Element
| isn't perfect, and is at the top of the list of improvements
| we'd like to make as we iterate on the feature.
|
| Releasing out of beta doesn't mean we intend to stop iterating
| on Spaces - it simply means we think the feature brings enough
| value to share it with everyone and open it up to the whole
| user base for feedback.
| throwawayIxZCg wrote:
| > I really don't like how Element Android has you separately
| pick which space to view (in the sidebar), and whether to look
| at DMs or rooms (in the bottom bar). Now I often end up picking
| the KDE space, but only showing DMs, which results in an empty
| view (because I've only joined KDE-related chats, not KDE-
| related DMs).
|
| Yes, switching between a DM in one space and a room in another
| takes at least one tap too many. Hopefully this paragraph in
| the article expresses the intention to work on this:
|
| > Clearer interfaces: To make Spaces, Rooms, People, Direct
| Messages, Favourites and your conversation history easy to find
| over time, every time.
| callahad wrote:
| > _Element Desktop was starting to hide "rooms in spaces" from
| my home screen, which now only contains rooms not in a space._
|
| To change this behavior, enable "Show all rooms in Home" under
| Settings > Appearance
| naomeux wrote:
| I love how clean and minimal-looking the UI is. Internet
| community should become aware of Spaces in the element app.
| normaler wrote:
| I use spaces to organize different bridged services, Whatsapp,
| Instagram, Telegram, Signal and Matrix itself.
|
| As a subset of rooms to organize a team, I think it would make
| more sense to host a separate matrix instance.
|
| But it can be nice to give access to a set of rooms in a public
| community akin to:
|
| - General - Dev Product A - Dev Product B - Watercooler - Sysad
| nerdponx wrote:
| I do this with spaces too. But it occurred to me that I'm
| essentially abusing spaces to act like client-side
| folders/groupings of rooms.
|
| Can you create a space that's only for "personal" use, if you
| are not an admin of your home server?
|
| Spaces are a great feature, but I think clients will start
| needing to add grouping/tagging somehow, in addition.
| the_duke wrote:
| > I'm essentially abusing spaces to act like client-side
| folders/groupings of rooms.
|
| That's exactly one of the intended purposes!
| smichel17 wrote:
| > Can you create a space that's only for "personal" use, if
| you are not an admin of your home server?
|
| Yes
| red_trumpet wrote:
| To elaborate, Element even explicitly asks if you want to
| do that (even if I understand it correctly, it's the same
| as a private space without other members)
| kevincox wrote:
| Spaces are a superset of tagging. Just create a space (tag)
| and the rooms that you want to tag to it. If you want it to
| be just for you keep the space invite-only, if you want to
| share your "tag" you can.
| aasasd wrote:
| Cool, cool. I wonder if non-botching of newlines, paragraphs and
| quotes is anywhere on the roadmap. Apparently that's the hard
| problem for Element, especially the Android version.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Can I finally install matrix on a cheap server for semi private -
| semi public server ? Or do I have to wait for the new server ?
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