Episode: 461
Title: HPR0461: Mibbit
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0461/hpr0461.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 21:05:16

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Hi, my name is Gordon Sinclair, I am known on IRC as Thistleweb. This HBR episode is about
Mibit, the web browser based IRC jerkline. Actually it's not about Mibit as such, it's about
why your project should have Mibit on their home site as a support channel or whatever. Mibit is one
of several IRC clients that can run through a browser. There's plenty more dedicated clients
across platform or Linux only or Mac only or whatever Windows only written in any kind of language you can
imagine. But where Mibit stands alone or not stands alone is not probably not the right description.
Where it's an advantage is if you have it as just a link on your homepage then visitors who have no
idea what IRC is can get instant help. They can click on that link on the website and it opens up in
their browser. They don't need to have any clue what IRC is, they don't need to have an IRC client
installed. All they do is click on the link, choose their name, their nick and come in and they can
talk. This breaks down a lot of barriers. It gets people who are potentially interested. They've
maybe installed your project and they're having some problems and they can't find any solutions on your
wiki or on your FAQs or whatever and they need some. Just that instant help to say that look at
guys it's installed this it's conflicting with such and such what can what can I do or the ability to
get instant connection with people or instant conversation with people can make an awful lot of
difference. It can give a positive impression that there's the projects actually alive that there
are people, other human beings around the world there and then who are also enthused enough about
that project to be able to help out and get involved. So it cuts down the barriers. You don't need to
know about IRC, you don't need to have an IRC client installed to join in. It can also you can
connect with any web browser as well which is a big thing from two different ends. You've got a lot
of people who either need your help and you're for your channel or the people who are actually
volunteers are there to help out. They are often in work or college or uni, school, whatever
and they are restricted by the computer that they're sitting at. When they're sitting maybe it
works maybe sitting on a windows machine and you know the user learnings at home that they're sitting
on a windows machine at work and in that windows machine they are restricted to what the admins of
their school or the uni or whatever it is have set up for those windows machines. So you can't
install anything so you have no chance of installing your own IRC client. You can't maybe SSH out
and the only option you've got of getting an IRC channel is a browser-based client who
essentially go to a website and click on a link and it's getting you in from there. You may not
even be allowed to install proper web browser, you might be stuck in it on the explorer
which I mean that cuts down the opportunity for something like Chatzilla. So at least anything
that's actually inside the web browser is an advantage here as well. It's basically a bigger
chance of letting people who want to come in or able to come in from whatever computer that
happened to be sitting at. So that's a big thing. The other side of that is it's also, Mibbit also
has a real-time language translation. I'll say that again just in case that the importance of
that skip past year. Mibbit has a real-time language translation. This is awesome. This if the
for another reason this is the reason why this is the new or new in fact there's a top five
reasons why you should have Mibbit installed on your website for your users to use.
Now real language is something that native English speakers often take for granted because
the entire internet unless you go specifically looking for a French version of a site or a German
version or a Ukrainian version of a Portuguese version, you know a Hebrew version or Arabic or
Cantonese or whatever. Then generally by default what you're going to find is English is the
default. And that's great. If you speak English that's great. You don't even notice that.
Occasionally you go to sites and it's in Dutch or German or whatever and that kind of throws you
for a bit. You've got to try and look for a translator but generally stuffs in English.
Now that is fine for English speakers but flip that on its head and imagine what that must be like
for non-English speakers or people who speak English as a second language or a third language
and they often speak it a lot better than native English speakers. I always have to tip my heart
to these people. I would love to have that ability. Well what you can have is that I mean there's
nothing more frustrating. If you're trying to sit on IRC channel and help people and I've been
doing that recently with the Linux Mint project. I've been in the IRC channel trying to help people
out wherever I can. And some projects are bigger than others. They have their own communities.
I believe Ubuntu has the Spanish community. Spanish speaking community like a German speaking
community and a Portuguese speaking community. And these are all sort of big enough that works.
But if you've got a small project and you're limited to initially to the people that are coming
in and most of them all speak the wrong language. Well what this does is breaks the language barrier
down. It just completely evaporates it. It's not a perfect translation but because it's a computer
transfer but it's a lot, it's very, very good. I have to say it's very good.
What you can do is go in through the Mibit client on the website and select your language so that
when you speak you type in whatever language is native to you. And then automatically translate
what you speak, what you type into the language that you select. And the other part of that
equation is always show other people in your native language and make it singlish.
So if I'm trying to help someone who only speaks say Spanish, I can use Mibit. And as long as
I know Spanish, if I can recognize that it's Spanish without understanding what it says,
that's fine, I'm working select on Spanish and I can start helping this person. Sometimes you have
to ask, is that Ukrainian or Russian or Ukrainian but that's fine, that's all I need to know. I'll
switch on Ukrainian and we can chat. So this is an amazing feature. It basically means that you can
help your volunteers, your community can welcome and help and encourage people from all over the
planet regardless of their native language, regardless of their ability to comprehend
in the language that your project is primarily based around. There are obviously longer
winded versions of doing this from copying a comment and pasting it in a translator and
picking your translation and copying the translation back across. And that's a bit of us about
all kind of long-winded. The real-time language translation in Mibit is awesome. It cannot
recommend it enough. So as I say, for that one reason alone is there's nothing else,
for that one feature alone you really should have a Mibit widget on your project's website.
If the real-time translation feature is not enough then what, but I love a god, what's wrong with
you? No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. If that's not enough, another handy feature that's right there
is paste bin. Mibit has a paste bin button on it, which is really handy. If you're trying to
diagnose, as again, I'm coming from the point of view of trying to help out on a channel, to try
to give some support to users on a channel. And obviously the flip side of that is someone coming in
looking for support. So if I'm asking someone, they're coming in saying, such and such,
isn't working. How can I get my concie, for example, to do such and such? Well, a lot of these
things you can actually ask the person to type in a command, to get some result, and then paste
the results of that command into paste bin, and then give it a link to the paste bin output so
that we can all hang over there and look at that log file, that configuration file, whatever
happens to be, and try to diagnose the problem. So that paste bin is there, right on the bottom,
basically, which is significantly easier than having them open up a new tab and their browser and
go to paste bin and copy it. And it's just, I mean, it's easy enough, it just takes that hassle
out of it. So paste bin is already there. And then I mentioned it does real-time language translation.
I'm really trying not to go on too much about that. I just think that that's an astoundingly good
feature, that it's worth mentioning again, again, again, until it sinks in. So with all of these,
the Mubit client is essentially, it's just a one-time setup, and go to Mubit.com,
and you can, they've got instructions there on how to set up, to get set up and get the code,
to embed a Mubit widget on your project's homepage. Now, the thing, one of the
things with Mubit, that I've seen Ben mentioned, is apparently three nodes are now blocking Mubit,
they have been for a little while now. I have no idea why. This sounds like an Apple type move,
because three nodes have their own web-based client, which by all accounts is not very good.
But I've seen people who are at work in the command, and they'll be mourning the three node of
blocked Mubit, and the three node client is pretty terrible on Mubit. But that's, if you use three
node as your support IRCE server, that's where your channels are. Mubit may not work, or it may need
some additional work to get work in, I don't know, that's something you would have to look into.
But even if you can't put Mubit on as an option, it's worth having some way on the website,
some embedded client, even if it is three node. But as I say, the language, real-time language translation
of Mubit is, for me, it's reasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. That's why you should use it. You should have it
on your site, it gives people. But it closes the barrier. I should say it breaks down the
down-language barrier, which in the age of the internet is all good. So before I start rambling
more than I think I have, I'm going to end it there, and just one final time, just so that it
sinks in, real-time language translation. So go get a Mubit client, set it up, it's a one-shot
deal. You only do once you put it on the website, you forget about it, and it just owns so many
doors for people to your project to help spread the word. So I'm Gordon Sinclair, I am on the
IRC as ThistleWeb. My blog, if you're interested, is ThistleWeb.co.uk. If you want to contact me,
it's ThistleWebcast at googlemail.com. Until next time.