Kontalk web client

Discussion
#1

Are there any plans for a Kontalk web client? If not, is it possible to use one of the many for XMPP, because Kontalk is based on XMPP?

#2

I am planning to write one one day. My idea is not to use a XMPP client, because of the way Kontalk’s crypto works. My idea was to make something more like WhatsApp’s web client, which you connect to your phone, where everything goes through your phone to ensure it’s properly encrypted.

Some relevant links:


https://github.com/kontalk/specs/wiki/[WIP]-API-for-app-to-app-communication

There’s definitely a lot that still needs to be done. Writing this whole API will be a lot of work, and I have no clue if I have time to work on a proper web client any time soon (JavaScript isn’t so much my thing anyway). So discussions, suggestions, etc. are very helpful.

2 Likes
#3

That sounds great, that you plan to write one. But doing it the WhatsApp way seems completely wrong to me, because I want to use it also without my phone.

#4

The problem of using it without your phone is the encryption part. Doing it without your phone requires copying the encryption key to the browser, I actually tried this before but it is so absurdly user unfriendly I can’t even explain. You could use the Java desktop client to get a bit of an idea (and use Kontalk without your phone), in Firefox you would have to actually unzip the key zip and add different files in different screens, some hidden deeply in advanced settings.

#5

I think the approach of Riot / Matrix goes in the right direction.

http://matrix.org
http://riot.im

#6

Matrix works great, but I haven’t dared to switch on encryption…

You can join the Fairphone community and try it out:

#7

Any new developments on this? At the moment I’m only using WhatsApp and I do use the WhatsApp Web interface a lot. It’s easy to simply share a link when you are on your desktop, and you can drag&drop files.

#8

I’m sorry, there was no more development about this but the API specs draft here. @SylvieLorxu if you are still interested in this, I might find the time to build a (very limited, but enough for testing) JSON-RPC server library for those API (including a standalone server of course, avoiding the need to build the Android app everytime).

#9

I don’t see myself spend time on this any time soon. Don’t really actively use Kontalk anymore and am rather busy with life, sorry.

#10

I’m sorry to hear that, I hope everything is going well for you.
Anyway, thanks for your contributions so far, we’ll put the API specs to use :slight_smile: