> it uses ~100x less RAM than Element

Wow – congrats!!

What have been the most important architectural decisions to achieve this?

Rather than storing state from the server in the JS heap, new state gets stored immediately in indexeddb transactionally and is pulled out strictly on demand. So, my account (which is admittedly large, with around 3000 rooms and 350K users visible) uses 1.4GB of JS heap on Element/Web, and 14MB on Hydrogen. It's also lightning fast, as you might expect given it's not having to wade around shuffling gigabytes of javascript heap around the place.

I've wanted to try something like this (on a smaller scale), but haven't had time. It's good to hear of an implementation that reflects my expectations. How long did it take you to migrate over?

it’s a entirely new codebase; probably best way to visualise progress is to look at the contributor graphs at https://github.com/vector-im/hydrogen-web

Cool, thanks for sharing!

It has, and I’ve been using it since its early days. I still use it. It’s still terrible, just slightly less terrible. And, no, messages don’t consistently send in 100ms on the default home server; there are regularly disruptions that cause significant delays, sometimes as much as 10-20sec. That’s a big problem for a federated chat platform.

Edit 1: I want to love it; the design is everything I could ever hope for in a chat platform. I even tried to contribute to Vector, but it was such a mess that I eventually gave up.

Edit 2:

> That said, Element could certainly use less RAM, irrespective of Electron - and http://hydrogen.element.io is our project to experiment with minimum-footprint Matrix clients (it uses ~100x less RAM than Element).

I'm not sure why this is a priority. Techies complain about RAM usage a lot, but if we have to choose between performance+power and a small memory footprint, we're going to choose the former almost every time. Take Telegram, for example: they have a bunch of native clients that perform amazingly well, although they do gobble RAM. Most of my technical friends use it as their primary social platform. It's not without issues, but it's really hard to go from something like Telegram Desktop or the Swift-based macOS Telegram client to Vector. And those clients aren't made by large teams--most (all?) first-party Telegram clients are each maintained by a single developer, if I'm not mistaken.

It's weird that you're calling it Vector when it's now called Element and it was called Riot for years before that.

The constant rebranding and confusion over Matrix/Vector/Riot/Element is another point of pain for me. It’s incredibly difficult to communicate unambiguously about Matrix with people who haven’t been following it for years.

Does Element refer to the ecosystem as a whole, including EMS? The primary client? The core federation? It’s not obvious from a casual visit to element.io. I suppose if I said “Element web app,” that would be fairly clear, but I’m still in the habit of saying “Vector” from the days of Riot.

Everything related to the company formerly known as New Vector is now called Element. The company is Element, the official clients are called Element (with suffixes Web, Desktop, Android, iOS) and yes, EMS is Element Matrix Services. This rebranding was done specifically due to the confusion brought on by the many previous names. More info here: https://element.io/previously-riot

The protocol is still called Matrix.

Yes, I actually like the change—I think they finally got it right this time. (The Riot rebranding was a mess.) However, it’s still frustrating when trying to communicate with people who aren’t following Matrix-related news. In my circle of friends, “Vector” remains more widely understood than “Element Web,” so that’s what I’ve been using.

Anyway, my point stands: Element Web/Desktop feels fairly unresponsive compared to something like Telegram Desktop. It looks so much nicer now, the UI layout is great, and it’s far more powerful than Telegram—yet, I can’t help but feel like I’m swimming through molasses even when dealing with moderately-sized groups. Try clicking around on different groups rapidly; you’ll likely find that you have to wait several seconds for the UI to update.