Re:IRC – Why It Failed (2018) [pdf]
by johnisgood on Sunday March 08, 2020 @06:16PM
(#22520999)
> I'm sure if a designer was hired they could figure out a way to make it prettier and harder to use.
I hate the UI/UX today. It is unbelievable how much information fits into my 80x24 terminal running irssi, whereas for example Discord takes up an entire workspace and you cannot customize it to your liking, there is just too much unnecessary spacing, and you cannot make the list of friends disappear and so forth without using an extension. Discord started adding unnecessary crap which made me resort to using uBlock to hide them. I cannot do this with Electron apps, so I am using whatever I can (and have to) from the browser, but I wish I did not have to use them in the first place.
In any case: IRC will never die for me. Xterm + irssi will never die for me. :) I will continue growing old with my buddies on Freenode! :D
* Clients like hexchat are plain but functional. I'm sure if a designer was hired they could figure out a way to make it prettier and harder to use.
* I don't generally worry about mobile support because I prefer in depth discussion with a real keyboard on a real computer.
* It "failed" because most of the dumb people who don't have anything useful or informative to say prefer to say their nothings via the mobiles and you can't sell people IRC hosting at 10 usd per user per month.
* The only thing it really needs is trivial persistence via a cheap bouncer integrated into clients with fewer steps. As in add credit card number click go.