crossposted from here: https://lemmy.eus/post/10482
I believe that XMPP is one of the best protocols for chat communications there is, and I stand up for it. However, the clients that there are, are not comfortable for most people out there used to apps like Telegram, Whatsapp or whatever.
One can defend current XMPP clients saying that quoting with "> " is the traditional way, or that swiping to quote a message is not worth developing; I have plenty more examples like this.
Well, if you think so, OK, use those clients for yourself, but become aware that many people won’t use XMPP for just this reason.
After saying all this, I want to tell that I am willing to develop a new, modern looking and comfortable client for XMPP. I think of a client for Android in first instance, but I would have no problem on going further.
However, I don’t know programming, so I’m searching programmers who would like to get involved in this.
Although I’m not programmer, I have experience developing software projects, from internationalization to documentation, including ideas about features, testing and all other work there can be.
Will you help me spreading the word? :)
Wow, this looks great! Thank you!! I didn’t know Conversations was getting an UI overhaul, lets see it
The client-sync issue, also with encryption, wouldn’t get solved with these news, right??
I don’t have any such sync issues. Maybe a problem with your XMPP server?
Oh, many people around me have them! I didn’t consider the server could be the problem. Using Dino on the computer and Conversations on the phone, the are usually problems either with sync or more frequently with de-encrypting
e2e encryption could be more user-friendly indeed, but it is nearly always an user-error and not anything wrong with the clients or the servers. It also largely boils down to expectation management. The way e2ee is implemented in XMPP is trying to maximize security and not usability. So some things people get annoyed about like not being able to decrypt old message history on new devices is a security feature.
IMHO people need to also realize that e2ee is largely snake-oil by the large centralized providers like Signal and WhatsApp to pull the blanket over the the eyes of users that it does not really prevent the meta-data collection on centralized systems. If you communicate via a trusted server then TLS encryption is usually fully sufficient and much less prone to user errors or other issues.
You’re totally right, the problem is with e2ee, and it is so by design. Great answer, thanks a lot