google hangouts

google hangouts

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Silentwings
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Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

google hangouts

Post by Silentwings »

Google Hangouts sucks.

(1) Persistent chat history is not searchable, and only even readable to a small degree. Native search is non-existent, and browser search is no good since visible history is small. And it reverts to most recent position every time anyone speaks anyway.
(2) On my (high end) machine, the chat window in FF hangs/lags while World Machine is running texture generation, so struggle to read or type for hours at a time. This is ridiculous since at the same time I can play an 8v8DSD game, or indeed browse any other webpage, at full speed.
(3) It wastes a tonne of space trying to look nice and as a result you only see half as much chat as the screen has room for.
(4) You cannot change the font size without scaling the entire browser/app window, and it is a bit small for my shortsighted/tired eyes to stare at for a whole weekend.
(5) I could go on.

It's a cheap and dirty WhatsApp clone that sat on top of a Skype clone, which is great if you want to meet up with friends for dinner, but it's not what we need. Plain old perma-connected IRC would be more functional.
malric
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Joined: 30 Dec 2005, 22:22

Re: google hangouts

Post by malric »

(1) You could try to access it through the gmail interface (on the left you have "Chats") and then you can do decent search. (think it also works to directly use "in:chats" in the search box on top of gmail). I did not even know there is a web app specifically for hangouts, but indeed looks quite heavy
(2) You can still use other clients for hangouts (which you can't do for Skype/Whatsapp!). I use Pidgin and it works great.
(3)-(4) see 2

I generally agree that all this "lets make a beautiful app for the web" goes a bit too far and makes it harder to use some services/be efficient.
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Forboding Angel
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Joined: 17 Nov 2005, 02:43

Re: google hangouts

Post by Forboding Angel »

1) It was never designed for this purpose.

2) That's your problem, works fine everywhere else. That is a firefox thing, hangouts is just a webpage, so therefore it is linked to the FF process.

3) That's because you're using the "Web" Version. Typically it looks like this via the app: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9405/I ... 78x452.PNG

4) Isn't this true for most of the internet at this point? However, TBF, Most native desktop chat clients have this.

5) Please don't.

Fuck IRC.

----

Hangouts is a great CHAT/SMS/VOIP/VIDEO client, but it is only designed to be that.

Instead of putting proper issues and shit in github, you instead wanted to try to do it via chat, which is stupid. We have github, use github for what it is good at. Github has issues, comments threads AND wiki. Use it!

Due to the incessant bitching about hangouts (funny, it worked fine for us before), I recommend that we not use it anymore for LD. I take issue with people who bitch about a product for not doing what it was never designed to do and I get really tired of hearing it. We aren't using any of the cool hangouts features anyway, so it's not like it matters.

Skype would be fine. I dislike skype for a lot of good reasons, but it is a capable chat client.

To reiterate, fuck IRC.
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Silentwings
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Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

Re: google hangouts

Post by Silentwings »

I take issue with people who bitch about a product for not doing what it was never designed to do
And I take issue with failing to use a product to do what it is not capable of doing.

So - what to use instead?
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smoth
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Joined: 13 Jan 2005, 00:46

Re: google hangouts

Post by smoth »

I REALLY want to argue about hangouts failing because fanboys refuse to tell google their product sucks in several key ways. Not that it matters, google ignores shit anyway.

I am fond of skype for chat, message boards and github issue tracking. the GOOD thing about hangouts is I can read it from my phone easily. Never really had skype give me any notifications.
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Forboding Angel
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Re: google hangouts

Post by Forboding Angel »

We have already established that you don't like it.

Frankly I don't give a fuck, but the chat app used should only be used for chat and VoIP. Issues trackers line comments and shit like that needs to ALL be in github.

Skype is generally well established which is why I was saying originally that it would work well enough.

Skype's webrtc-ish side still kinda sucks but I use it at work and it's ok. You can't VoIP or file share with it yet though.

I forgot that hangouts can still be used with desktop chat clients (a la Google voice). For what it is designed to do hangouts works flawlessly. The only big drawback is that you can't file share natively.

Chat search shouldn't be necessary tbh, anything that important likely belongs as an issue in github or a piece of the wiki info or in a readme.MD or in the gdoc.

So I vote for skype as chat client next LD. Then you guys can listen to me bitch incessantly about shit that doesn't matter as well.

For the record, I don't give a shit which client is used. I wanted hangouts when I came in because the previous client was first the lobby, then mumble which is fucking awful for chat, so going to hangouts was a big step up. If ppl are fine with skype then that suits me just fine. The skype app generally sucks, but I'm used to it's suckyness so it's not that big of a deal.
gajop
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Re: google hangouts

Post by gajop »

I'm not terribly attached to hangouts, but if we try a new system, I'd like it to be done over a prep weekend, so we see how it really plays when put to use.

Let's see what the alternatives are:
- Skype: doesn't have mobile notifications unless you turn the app on manually, which I think makes it worth trying. Do note I think files shouldn't be shared on it, as they may not persist through history.
- IRC/Spring Lobby: not really usable as it offers no history and doesn't work on mobile
- Using a different client (if possible) for the people that dislike hangouts...? Have you tried Pidgin/web page/gmail page/desktop app? All are probably slightly different.
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Silentwings
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Re: google hangouts

Post by Silentwings »

gajop wrote:Have you tried...
I tried the gmail hangouts thing, and its pretty poor too. Not willing to install chrome just for this. Pidgin would work nicely, for me at least, although I don't have it installed right now I'd be happy to use it again.

I think Skype would have many of the same issues as hangouts - being another chatty messaging app that wastes a lot of screen-space to look cute. Afaik its chat history isn't searchable either.

IRC does work on what I think of as "mobile" (I've used it on an android tablet before), but no chat history ofc, unless we run our own bouncer. I think not a big loss since we effectively didn't have it either time I participated so far.

I had a sniff around to see what else I could find, https://gitter.im/ looks pretty fantastic.
Forboding Angel wrote:Issues trackers line comments and shit like that needs to ALL be in github
Not really the question here, but I fully agree, idk why it was underused this time (I/gajop/Anarchid did use it heavily in LD32, no clue about LD33).
gajop
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Re: google hangouts

Post by gajop »

Silentwings wrote:I think Skype would have many of the same issues as hangouts - being another chatty messaging app that wastes a lot of screen-space to look cute. Afaik its chat history isn't searchable either.
Skype looks a lot like IRC to me. It doesn't really waste screen space (and I think you can disable smileys and similar things if it annoys you). You can search its history with relative ease.
Silentwings wrote: IRC does work on what I think of as "mobile" (I've used it on an android tablet before), but no chat history ofc, unless we run our own bouncer. I think not a big loss since we effectively didn't have it either time I participated so far.
I'm pretty sure setting IRC to work reasonably on mobile as well as desktop can be annoying (may need multiple accounts or worry if i'm logged in from one of the places). I wouldn't disregard chat history seeing as we have team members in three pretty distinct time zones. It's really common for me to first read the history when I wake up.
Silentwings wrote: I had a sniff around to see what else I could find, https://gitter.im/ looks pretty fantastic.
Looks interesting but we need 100% guaranteed multi OS support. Their download gives me a .deb file which is slightly discouraging. That said there's a web-page and a package for my distro so that looks good. I also really like that it's tied to Github (where all our development takes place), so people don't need to register "new" accounts and share it with me.
I'd like to give it a go, so I've created a room for SpringCabal and I've sent you an invite.
PS: I already like the high level of integration it seems to have Image. Being able to glance at all the open/closed issues seems great (it probably also offers some info on commints and other stuff).

Silentwings wrote:
Forboding Angel wrote:Issues trackers line comments and shit like that needs to ALL be in github
Not really the question here, but I fully agree, idk why it was underused this time (I/gajop/Anarchid did use it heavily in LD32, no clue about LD33).
Github is great for issues/bugs, and it was used for that purpose here. For design documentation GoogleDoc is the way to go.
The question is what to do with TODO lists. I think I had a better overview who was doing what using GoogleDocs in LD34 than in LD32/LD33s Github issues - mostly because people weren't religiously assigning things to themselves.
PS: Even as a leader I feel I shouldn't be telling people what to do, just which tasks exist and what their perceived priorities are. And this I hope to do with your help. Issue assignment, ala "I want to do X" should still belong to each member as that's where the fun is.
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Silentwings
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Joined: 25 Oct 2008, 00:23

Re: google hangouts

Post by Silentwings »

Played with gitter a bit more and it still looks awesome, I'm in favor of switching to that for chat and using its github integration ftw. Support for all OS is there.

But agreed, we can't do without a google doc for the design phase (which I am asleep during anyways...)
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