What's next after v3?
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Thanks for everybody's comments regarding federation and ActivityPub. I've been steeping myself
in the Fediverse for the past week and have been inspired 
There is definite potential here.
- I have started a Mastodon account for NodeBB
- I started my own Mastodon server, because I obviously have nothing better to do with my free time
- Have been thinking about how the forum architecture fits in with ActivityPub. Will need to read and research more on the protocol before I look into working on a proof-of-concept
- Perhaps we can introduce a "statuses" feature for NodeBB, which would more closely align with how Mastodon works as a micro-blogging service
- kbin is more reddit-like but also features compatibility with ActivityPub, it might be closer to what a forum is like (discrete topics vs. submissions).
There is lots of excitement about federated apps within the fediverse, but outside of it, you don't hear much about it at all.
It's very much an echo chamber of sorts, but I feel like the values and ethos behind federation in general aligns with NodeBB's.
This whole exercise is less about federating with Mastodon, et al., but to allow for NodeBBs to communicate with each other. The million dollar question here is "how can we make starting a forum/building a community suck less"?
... although when I post about it again here, I'll likely use nicer words
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@julian in addition to the ActivityPub feeds ( found an rss to ActivityPub convertor that could be turned into a nodeBB plugin https://github.com/dariusk/rss-to-activitypub), another nice feature would be cross-server DM's/chats https://bifurcation.github.io/mimi-aim/draft-barnes-mimi-aim.html
So much potential...
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B baris referenced this topic on
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hi @julian , I believe passkeys will be the new standard for secure website/app access soon. Google has already started to implement this option several days ago. Will there be any addition to NodeBB?
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@julian you would know that better, but I always thought that this will be the main way to enter a website, rather than a 2FA.
At least, this is what Apple, Google and Microsoft are trying to achieve: https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/3/23709318/google-accounts-passkey-support-password-2fa-fido-security-phishing
Here is a demo website, and I see "Sign in with a passkey" button. I believe this is what a lot of websites will use it for: https://www.passkeys.io/
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Yes, you're right. Having the passkey used as the first and only factor would be what passkey is hoping to implement. It would necessitate some changes to the 2factor plugin, including the fact that it's no longer a second factor
It might also mean we split username and password fields ... @baris won't like that, he already doesn't like registration interstitials
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@julian said in What's next after v3?:
Changes to topic thumbnails
Hell Yes! I'm excited about this - we love thumbnails but the functionality has always been a little limited!
Thanks for all the hard work team - I'm going to be putting 3.10 on my dev install this weekend.
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@eeeee Hate to break it to you, but yes, jQuery is used in NodeBB. When we started NodeBB, the hard work to standardise and improve the JS ecosystem was only just beginning (or it had been in full swing for awhile, but hadn't shown any major results yet).
Remember, back in 2013, Internet Explorer was still a thing. We needed to ensure compatibility with it back then
Removing it is a little harder than expected though, it's quite ingrained in the client-side code, heh.
Its just not necessary
That may be the case for new projects, but for us it's a little different
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We would essentially have to rewrite the frontend. It's not impossible but it is a larger undertaking, in addition to breaking any plugin that has a frontend using jQuery.
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@julian said in What's next after v3?:
Thanks for everybody's comments regarding federation and ActivityPub. I've been steeping myself
in the Fediverse for the past week and have been inspired There is definite potential here.
- I have started a Mastodon account for NodeBB
- I started my own Mastodon server, because I obviously have nothing better to do with my free time
I think a forum variant of Mastodon would be wonderful. The one thing that seems to be missing from these "federated" options is something akin to Twitter's verification system. It seems to me that the larger the scope, the greater the need for verification.
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@julian said in What's next after v3?:
NodeBB being a piece of software that is installable and configurable by individual admins means we've already achieved half of the formula for federation. It's theoretically possible to hook NodeBBs together and share content.
I've often said that Twitter is like shouting into the wind. Starting a forum is often like talking to an empty room. It's very possible we can take steps to change that
Flarum is also currently looking into Federation, personally I'm both for and against it, at the end of the day it should come down to whatever forum admins want to do with their forum. But if this is something that does get developed it would be nice if Flarum and NodeBB could in some way work together a bit to make sure that their implementations are compatible (at least the core of it) so that it's something other forum software could also participate in (instead of only NodeBB or only Flarum).
@julian said in What's next after v3?:
Drop jQuery
Ha ha, just kidding. Or am I?Please do, native JS has come a long way and jquery isn't really needed much anymore and it pretty much just adds to JS bloat unless your doing very specific things with it. Even if you can't completely get rid of it, maybe use one of the much lighter alternative versions of it?
@julian said in What's next after v3?:
Yes, you're right. Having the passkey used as the first and only factor would be what passkey is hoping to implement. It would necessitate some changes to the 2factor plugin, including the fact that it's no longer a second factor
I would very much like to see PassKeys come to NodeBB, I was actually just looking into how feasible it would be myself a couple weeks ago. I don't think I have the knowledge required to do anything with it at the moment, but it'd be nice to have, even better if it's something that can be used in v3.
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@tankerkiller125 said in What's next after v3?:
Please do, native JS has come a long way and jquery isn't really needed much anymore and it pretty much just adds to JS bloat unless your doing very specific things with it. Even if you can't completely get rid of it, maybe use one of the much lighter alternative versions of it?
Whilst I agree with this in principle, it should be a phased approach, and not just a "bomb" on the next release. I, for example, do a lot in jQuery, and could easily convert all of my functions, but that's me, and others might not be ready for that just yet.
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@phenomlab I'm also of the opinion that even if we were to remove jQuery from core, we'd see a third-party plugin within the week to add it back
I'm not lying when I say that probably 95% of the DOM manipulation code in NodeBB uses a jQuery function. We cut our teeth on it and while we're more than adept with vanilla js now, it's going to be a rather tough transition.
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@tankerkiller125 to my knowledge, Daniël Klabbers (luceos?) is the main point of contact on the ActivityPub front for Flarum.
His interaction on Mastodon is limited, and the only commitment I've seen from him is that it is on their milestone list but that work (or even initial R&D) has not been started.
There are three forum providers pursuing ActivityPub integration. We're one, Flarum is another, and Discourse is the third.
I've said it there and I'll say it here. NodeBB will follow the ActivityPub spec and, if possible, will be tested against both Flarum and Discourse integrations because doing so makes federated forums a force to be reckoned with. Broken integrations erode trust in federation.
Now whether their implementations can be compatible, I couldn't say.
Daniël Klabbers (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @nodebb @[email protected] @[email protected] We pushed fediverse integration into our 2.0 roadmap which has received an NLnet grant as well, see https://discuss.flarum.org/d/32812-the-future-of-flarum-in-2023-balancing-open-source-and-success
Fosstodon (fosstodon.org)
Daniël Klabbers (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @nodebb @[email protected] @[email protected] I think it would make sense to follow the FEPs standards as much as possible. But as we haven't even entered an implementation phase, it's hard to pin us on a decision.
Fosstodon (fosstodon.org)
I'm more hesitant about the FEP stuff. Holding back my opinions on that for now.
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@julian Ah I was not aware of his (or your) comments on Federation in Mastodon. Pretty much everything I know about it is from the roadmap. I haven't even seen much on it on the Flarum discord or information behind the scenes (I should have disclosed that I'm a former Flarum core dev, and still sometimes maintain their VMs)
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@julian said in What's next after v3?:
I'm not lying when I say that probably 95% of the DOM manipulation code in NodeBB uses a jQuery function. We cut our teeth on it and while we're more than adept with vanilla js now, it's going to be a rather tough transition.
Maybe as part of a phased approach it would be worth looking into
GitHub - fabiospampinato/cash: An absurdly small jQuery alternative for modern browsers.
An absurdly small jQuery alternative for modern browsers. - fabiospampinato/cash
GitHub (github.com)
It would drop legacy browser support immediately (although I'm not sure that's really a problem) but also have the benefits of being a drop in replacement for jQuery so for the most part people probably wouldn't need to update their extensions much if at all. While still being much smaller than jQuery.
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As someone who has experience with a ton of forums(Discourse, Xenforo, vBulletin, Flarum) and other community apps like Discord, Slack etc, I believe the future of forums look something like https://circle.so.
I believe NodeBB would benefit a lot from learning from them! The idea is to not limit your user to one type of interaction but a modular system that allows one to communicate how they like and to adapt to all sorts of use cases where the sky is the limit(made easier with UI-based configuration and the option for custom HTML/JS/CSS when needed). For example, one wanting to make a cooking community would have a gallery view page for recipes that open lightboxes into the recipes, if they have a job board, one could use the gallery view or a minimal list view(no post counts etc), if they want real-time chat to talk about anything related to food, there's that option too. Feed view being another. Members-only pages where you have to login and many more.
Facebook does this quite well. By this, I mean the option to turn your Page into a multi-functional space where people could do more than just chat.
I'm aware that many of these features exist in the form of plugins, sometimes poorly coded or barely maintained. I'm thinking of a more built-in approach that is designed with so much modularity that it would not require plugins for the simplest things yet still being easy for the dev team to handle. NodeBB 3 and Harmony is awesome, and is probably my favourite of all forum software even compared to Discourse and Flarum but if you could push it in this direction I'm suggesting, I think it can be the leading software.
One good example of circle.so being well used is https://www.framer.community
If forums don't want to be made obsolete by software like Discord, I think it's the way to go.
Cheers!
needs testing
