Some of the cloud-based IRC clients do a lot of this (I'm a big fan of IRCCloud). But it would be nice these kinds of features were baked into the protocol. When something like a majority of users want a feature, it should probably be part of the protocol.
This is a bit off topic, and I love IRC, but I'd love a modern IRC client.
Features I'd like:
- Inline images and media
- html preview
- people list, friends, but also an automatic highlight system, when I chat with someone I don't know for some time, I'd like to have that person on some list.
- Conversation history (a way to jump to my conversations within the channel history).
- More advanced profiles (image, bio...) Option to publish my public channel list.
- End to end encryption if in private channels
- Notifications
- Status (busy, helping...)
- Activity summary (mostly for private channels but being able to know who was active, and what was discussed).
- Reactions (on busy channels it is quite fun and a fun way to say thanks without pollution).
Thanks!! I'd love to add some file uploading and/or hosting capability. I think it would be easy enough on the website side of things but I'm not sure yet what it would mean for existing IRC clients.
I fail to see how those things should be part of the protocol. That's like complaining HTTP doesn't support tags for your bookmarks. It's so out of scope.
Unless, of course, you are talking about a user-friendly service offering IRC access to those who do not want to set up their own clients.
So, something like IRCCloud, which does exist, fyi.
They have an IRC bridge you can connect your IRC client to. It probably can't do all the things (because IRC has no way of expressing them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't spend too much effort on it), but it works.
That's being worked on and there are already irc daemons that support it (but it's all a bit bolted on until the standard for that is ratified).
However it is also a feature that has to be enabled by the server operator and here you may run into different opinions if this should be a thing or not.
I've often thought there was space for a nice IRC wrapper in the form of an app. I don't need to type out /msg nickserv on my phone, but a series of buttons to help with things like that would be awesome.
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