Mssgs Blog

A new start for Mssgs

We are going to build the best, easy-to-use and user friendly communication platform. Apps for iOS and Android are in full development, with many more appliances and apps following.

Mssgs’ goal was to create quick and dirty disposable chats, prototypes built by the development team behind DualDev quickly followed online (and are still available at chat.dualdev.com). A group of young developers have decided to supersede DualDev’s position in Mssgs. Mssgs needed a fresh start, new team, new goal and new apps.

We will build a new Mssgs and we will amaze you.

New features

History API
Using Express, we could drop the hashbangs and fully use the history API. Express also covers our social connections.

Social auth
It is now possible to log in using Github, Twitter or Facebook. OP’s can force participants to login to one of these services. This allows for non-anonymous chats.

Avatars
Using the social connections, we load up avatars. Yup, that’s right, our chat now personalizes everybody about you. If you want, ofcourse.
If you are an OP in the room, your avatar receives a small orange border. 

Password protection
We have implemented a better way to protect your chats with a password. Simply open up the OP options menu to the right of your textarea, and select the lock icon. This will send a password message into the chat. Boom!

OP Social auth
When you start a new chat using a social network, we will remember you as the OP of that chat. So you no longer have to remember your OP password, if you are using the social auth, ofcourse.

Options
Is this a bit overwhelming? Don’t worry, you can view all of the available options to you by simply typing “/options” in the chat.

Enable/Disable notifications
By typing /disable-notifications or /enable-notifications you can choose whether to receive Chrome Desktop notifications. 

OP Chat
In large chat, there may be multiple OP’s. We have added the simple feature to OP chat, simply press the “tab” key on your keyboard while typing a message to the OP’s. You’ll see the textarea turn orangish - this indicates your message will only be sent and read by OP’s. 

We are aware many are very interested in the stack we have built mssgs upon. As we said before, we are still changing many items on the stack and developing new and interesting stages daily which will render a blog post on the current stack useless in about two weeks. Please, stay tuned on the dev channel, where you can also ask us any questions you may have about the stack.

Making progress

Hey there. Sorry you haven’t heard from us for a while. We’ve been busy developing and hacking on the mss.gs app. After receiving tons of feedback and having made a couple of friends down the road we now have a little time to spare to get you up-to-date about our progress and plans.

First of all, let’s see what we’ve fixed lately.

OP password
Instead of losing your OP rights after refreshing, you can now protect your username with a password. If you refresh, you’ll be presented with a way to regain your OP rights. If your username is taken, you can take it back with /takeover username password.

New Theme
We liked the old theme, but there’s always room for improvement when you’re surrounded by pixelfuckers awesome people. Not much to talk about here, it’s a beauty, let’s hear how you like it.

Key-up History
Send a message, press “arrow up” and you’ll be able to scroll through a history of the 50 last messages you’ve sent.

Pulse notification when someone is typing
Mssgs will now inform you when someone is typing by pulsing the grey bar on the userlist green.

There is still a lot to be done though.

Embed
We’re working on a way to combine having your own channel (more on that later)  and embedding it on your own website (including a theme and individual settings).

Channels
Currently still openly discussing the matter of Channels in this ticket. It will come down to registering an account, adding payment details and a fee. Which you’ll then be able to use to register your channels.

Social auth
Having to log in again, while we (should!) know who you are could become a nuisance if you’re using mssgs a lot. We’re working on adding ways to login with Facebook, Twitter and GitHub (possibly, if by popular demand, we’ll add more services).

Anonymous/Authenticated chats
The main idea behind mssgs is disposable chats, however, we’d like to provide those who want to have a serious discussion with real users a way to do so. We’ll add a switch to the chat, where you can decide whether you want anonymous or authenticated users (only) to connect.

We know some of you are eagerly waiting for a post about how we’ve built our project, and when we’ll finally opensource it. We have to call upon your patience right now while we still change key parts of the project and find our way. It’s useless to describe the stack right now, as it might just change tomorrow. That said, it would be useless to opensource the project, as we’re changing it by the minute.

Don’t be shy though, if you have any questions about how we’ve done something, or if you wish to contribute, you can find us on twitter and on the dev channel.

Welcome! Now let’s talk business.

Last weekend we launched the beta version of our little disposable web chat. About 5k unique visitors marked our successful sunday to a close, we’ve listened to everyone wishing new features and wondering what we were going to do with it. This resulted in about 55 new issues/feature requests and our dedication to opensource this project and making it possible to embed.

Features

Since we launched the beta, a couple of things have changed. We’ve kept a list.

• The password is shown to everyone in the chatroom
• Top-bar has been removed while in chat
• Username autocomplete
• Texts and smileys after @username didn’t show, it does now
• A greedy [name][/name]
• /changeusername and /nick have been optimized
• We now update the favicon ánd the title if a message was received
• GM renamed to OP

And some minor bugs. An API is in the works and almost ready for you. Look out for a notice in the coming days.

Follow up

Wish to stay up to date with the latest? We have opened up a chatroom where you can find us most of the days here. If you’re a tweeter, find us @mssgs. Not much a tweeter or chatter? Sign up for our mailing list.

Stay with us, we’re launching channels for your business - so you can embed your chatrooms on your own website or add a CNAME for your website (e.g. chat.nike.com).

And one more thing, everything will be opensource when we launch the real deal.