Only a few months after the previous version here comes Movim 0.30, codename Encke ☄️

This release is actually way bigger than you might think! Indeed, during half a year a lot of work was poured into the part II of the Movim Live project that has been the biggest evolution in Movim for many years. This side project was finally merged and stabilized in the main branch and we are proud to unveil it to you 🤩.

Movim Live, Part II

Funded by NLNet, the Movim Live project's aim is to bring a modern and complete stack of video-call features to Movim and to create a strong alternative to the other proprietary and centralized platforms.

The Part I goal was to modernize the existing one-to-call call stack. Part II was to bring multi-participant calls, and we did it!

How was it done?

Movim is now implementing XEP-0272: Multiparty Jingle (Muji) combined with XEP-0482: Call Invites. The first XMPP extension, called Muji, allows a user to join a temporary chatroom and initiate an audio or video call with any of the participants inside it. The second one allows this user to be invited or invite contacts to join this "Muji Chatroom".

Another client is already implementing those two XEPs, Dino, and it's actually the first time that we have two clients on totally different stacks (one is a desktop client, the other one a web application) that can do multi-participant calls on a standard protocol.

How can I create a group call in Movim?

The flow is quite close to a one-to-one call, except that you start the call in one of your group chats.

The group call will then appear in your chatroom list, similar to what you can find on Discord. The other participants will then get an invitation and will be able to join the group call once their camera and microphone are set up correctly.

What can I do in a group call?

Once you're in, Movim offers a couple of nice features to enjoy the call.

You can toggle between the grid view and the "active-speaker" view (where the actively speaking person is put in front). When using the grid view, the speaking person's microphone is slightly bigger and blinking in green.

The existing screen-sharing feature has also been ported to group calls, allowing you to share your screen with the others. More work will be done on the part to allow you to stream your screen and webcam simultaneously and use Movim as a nice stream-gaming platform or live-conference tool in the future ✨.

A lot of work was also spent on ensuring a proper integration of the call in the user interface and the user flows. When you're in the chatroom, the group call is integrated into the chat view, and when you leave the discussion, it moves automatically in the corner. You can also put the group call in full screen at any time.

And as always, you can toggle your webcam and microphone off any time.

Movim Live, Part III

So what's next? In the upcoming and last part Movim is actively working with the ProcessOne team on a new set of XMPP extensions to bring massively scalable group calls in XMPP.

The current Muji flow is to initiate a one-to-one call with each of the Muji call participants, as you can see it doesn't scale that much. An SFU, or Selective Forwarding Unit allows you to call a specialized server, send your video and audio streams and receive the other participants streams in return.

This should require standardizing two new XEPs:

• One to allow declaring an SFU server in a Muji Call
• One to allow chatrooms to have permanent call rooms to join

The current flow is an "invite-based" one; this means that once everyone leaves the group call, it is automatically destroyed. We would like to allow chatroom admins to create one or several "call rooms," name them, and allow their users to join and leave the calls at their convenience. This will bring a more modern experience and bring many new ways of interacting with audio and video calls in XMPP.

Hopefully this Part III should be delivered in the upcoming months; stay tuned!

What else?

The 0.30 is also bringing some other exciting features 🤩.

The reactions are now displayed in the detailed message view.

Some parts of the UI were modernized and simplified, such as the emoji picker view or the navigation bars.

Movim is now supporting Unicode 15.1 with plenty of new emojis to use 🥳.

When one of your contacts is publishing a new Story his avatar will change, allowing you to easily open it.

The Movim UI, and especially color management, was also deeply refactorized and simplified. The Light and Dark modes are better looking and an exciting Accent Color feature is now allowing you to customize your Movim even more 🎨.

See you soon!

So that's all folks ✨.

We hope that you'll really enjoy all those new features. If you're a server admin we invite you to add your server to join.movim.eu and join the federation.

We would also be really pleased if you share Movim around, invite your friends to join, and talk about it. Movim can be a really nice open-source, federated and standard alternative now. Let's grow the community ☺️!

Thanks again to all the contributors, translators, and other bug finders that allowed this exciting version to be launched 💕.

See you next time 😘.

#movim #release #xmpp #nlnet #videoconference #groupcall

In this #release you'll find some important fixes and improvements; let's have a look. 😉

Set minimum PHP version to PHP 8.2

This change was initially planned for the next major version but some dependency issues forced me to raise the minimum PHP version required by #Movim to 8.2. PHP 8.1 was already in EOL anyway.

Fixes and improvements in file upload

The file upload code was slightly refactored. It fixes a crash when the filename was too long (the filename is then shortened and a hash is added at the end).

When uploading a file from Movim their name is also prefixed with post_, chat_ and story_ regarding from which part of the UI they are sent. This feature was requested many times by the admins to allow them to organize and expire them properly (for example after 24h for Stories files, unlimited for Post files).

Fixes Pubsub ordering

ejabberd and Prosody don't return the requested #Pubsub items the same way, most recent first for ejabberd and earliest first for Prosody. The XMPP protocol doesn't specify any default order so Movim is now automatically checking the order based on the articles publication time.

Reconcile the nullable state in some tables

It seems that a small change in the internal Movim database library (Eloquent) changed the behavior of some migrations along the way, this version reconcile those differences (some SQL columns were not nullable as they should).

Update fabiang/sasl to fix Update of the SASL SCRAM Downgrade protection XEP #17

Movim is now integrating the upgrade of the XEP-0474: SASL SCRAM Downgrade Protection XEP and the proper integration of the RFC 5802. This solved the connection issue on some #XMPP servers and fixed a risk of attack in the #SASL stack.

What's next?

Hopefully the next version will be a 0.30 and will integrate some pretty big changes, especially on the video-conferencing part. Stay tuned!

That's all folks ✨

Here comes the first bugfix release of the year 🎉

The 0.29.1 comes with a more polished and improved Stories feature, database fixes as well as some preparatory work for the PHP 8.4 version.

This release will be the last one to support PHP 8.1. PHP 8.2 and above will then be required for Movim 0.30.

Polishing the Stories feature

In the 0.29 Movim introduced the Stories feature, it is even now showcased on the main website.

This release fixes a few quirks introduced in the last version:

• When viewing Stories between different browsers on the same connected account the "viewed" synchronization is now working properly.
• It is now possible to publish Stories without having a camera enabled (or no camera at all), you'll then be able to just pick an image file from your device gallery.
• The play/pause buggy feature was fixed with a new timer (which was also used in the Chat dictaphone fixing some recording timer problems).
• Close the Stories viewer using the previous button or Esc key.

Preliminary work on PHP 8.4

The brand new PHP 8.4 release introduces a lot of interesting new features... but also deprecates some old syntaxes and enforces strong typing for some extensions.

Most of the errors were fixed in the Movim code but the dependencies need to be updated to ensure proper compatibility with this version, this update will drop the PHP 8.1 version (that is now in end of life). So we are suggesting to start to update to at least PHP 8.2 to prepare for the upcoming release.

Database fixes

The most important fixes of this release are related to the database. A serious issue with chatroom presences that was preventing Movim to handle some of them was fixed (issue #1386). This fix leads to discover a more serious issue that was there for more than two years (!) and that causes some presences to be deleted from the cache unexpectedly (issue #1357).

Those changes come with some database migrations, don't forget to migrate when updating Movim!

The translations were also updated, a big thanks to all the translators 🫶

That's all folks! ✨

#movim #release #xmpp #stories #database #sql

New year, new #release ! This time with plenty of new exciting features, let's have a look at them. 😊

Stories

The past few years several chat platforms tried to blur the line between their chat and social features.

Stories are a very nice way to share content with your contacts and allow them to react easily by chat.

Movim 0.29 is the first XMPP client that implements Stories. A specific XMPP extension, XEP-0501: Pubsub Stories, was created to standardize and allow perfect compatibility with other clients on the network. XMPP is once more showing its capability to be a perfect protocol to build this kind of feature and deploy it easily across a large network of compatible clients.

While writing this article some other XMPP clients are already planning to implement the feature.

You'll be able to create a new Story by taking a picture directly with your camera or select one from your gallery, edit it, add a small text and publish it to your contacts. Your story will then be available for 24 hours, and your contacts will be able to comment on it by sending you a chat message.

In the upcoming versions more features will be progressively added to complete those ones. If you are looking for a feature in particular feel free to drop a comment or a message in the support room. 😌

Briefs

This version is also introducing Briefs, a simpler way to publish content on your profile or in your Communities.

Until now you were invited to write posts having a title and a content. Briefs allows you to directly publish a short text to your contacts like on Mastodon, Twitter or Bluesky. If you feel the need to express yourself in a more "bloggy" way you can always switch back to the complete experience.

Some refactoring was done in the database and user interface to better integrate Briefs in the feeds.

But also...

An important refactoring was done regarding how the internal dates and times were handled. Now each connected user is sending its own timezone on login and all the times are generated dynamically using those timezones; this solves some weird calculated hours during the switch between daylight saving times.

Lots of fixes were done in how the chat discussions are handled and cached. This is fixing a few erratic behaviors in how chat discussions were ordered and their related notifications displayed.

And as always some database, user interface and JavaScript fixes.

Some news from the Movim Live project

The Phase 2 of the Movim Live project is finally getting in shape. Movim is now able to start and join a multiparticipant call and get their cameras and microphones. This required some important refactorings in how the calls and media streams were handled internaly, you can follow the dedicated branch there Pull Request: Multiparty Jingle.

This second important phase should be finished in a few months and a dedicated version (maybe a 0.30 ?) will be published then.

In the meantime lets enjoy all the new exciting features.

Happy New Year to all the #Movim and #XMPP users 🎉

That's all folks!

#stories #briefs #story #brief

We're getting close to one #release per month! Indeed, a lot of things are going on in the project at the moment. Let's have a look at all the important new features and fixes before giving some details about the #Movim Live project.

Freshly redesigned Search panel

To bring some coherence and uniformity to the UI the Universal #Search tool has been reorganized and redesigned; it now gives you more interesting results in a more compact way.

Using one keyword you will be able to search into your contacts, communities, article tags as well as recent articles and public contacts. Some optimizations were also made to speed-up the results.

Improved account gateways and administration features

Movim has been handling XMPP gateways for many years already; they allow you to connect and chat with people on many different platforms directly from your main XMPP account. Lots of work and tests were also done to improve those gateways integration, especially with Slidge which has become a reference in the #XMPP ecosystem the past few years.

In the configuration panel you will now be able to easily subscribe, manage and unsubscribe with those gateways thanks to a redesigned and improved Gateways section.

As a Movim administrator the dedicated Admin panel was also redesigned and reorganized to be easier to handle.

Databases fixes

Two important database issues were fixed. One was preventing some migrations to run properly on MySQL (PostgreSQL is still the recommended database for a Movim setup), another one was limiting the length of the URLs that were shared in the messages.

Movim Live, end of Part I

Thanks to a wonderful funding from NLNet a lot of work regarding videoconferencing is on the way in the project.

This release is finally pushing the last pieces of Part I that was focused on refreshing and modernizing the existing stack. In the upcoming week we will start to work on multi-participants calls with the focus to integrate with Dino and bring fully standard and decentralized video-calls on the XMPP network, and across several clients and servers ✨

But first lets have a look at all the cool stuff introduced with this release ☺️

Introducing the new call flow and conference lobby

Until now you were only allowed to configure your microphone and #camera once the call started. This version is introducing a brand new Lobby widget that takes care of preparing all you need to start or reply to a call serenely.

It fully replaces the old Reply and Call Configuration widgets by merging their features into one unique place. A lot of related code was cleaned up, modernized and refactored during the process.

This new panel also prepares the upcoming multi-participants flow allowing you to be fully setup and ready before joining a conference.

Other improvements and fixes

Movim is now able to detect network connection issues and send an end call message to your contact if it cannot recover the call.

The screen sharing and camera switch buttons were also fixed to work properly on all devices, including Android ones.

If you find issues or have nice ideas to improve all those new features do not hesitate to drop a message on our support channel or open a ticket on the bugtracker.

What's next?

Movim Live Part II, multi-participants video-conferencing! Even if a lot is already planned it is a totally new paradigm for Movim, so a lot of explorations, trials and errors will be made. Hopefully all those new exciting features will land in an upcoming release 😌

In the meantime enjoy the 0.28 release, upgrade your server and share the good news! And thanks to all the people in the community for their support, you rock!

That's all folks!

Another month, another release! We are happy to introduce Movim 0.26, codename Borrelly.

What's new?

Custom Emojis (yay 🎉)!

Movim implemented the Stickers feature a while ago already but always lacked the ability for users to send some custom #emojis to their friends.

This is now implemented thanks to the complete integration of the #XMPP extension XEP-0231: Bits of Binary which was already used partially by the Stickers.

The available emojis packs are imported by the administrator using a new console command that is compatible with the Mastodon or Plemora emojis pack

For example you can import the neofox pack by Volpeon using the following command:

web-user$ php daemon.php importEmojisPack https://volpeon.ink/emojis/neofox/manifest.json

You'll need to run this command using your webserver user, the script will take care of downloading the ZIP file, copy the pictures and seed the database to make them available to all the #Movim instance users.

Each user will then be able to pick their favorites in the Configuration panel and insert them while chating.

When adding a new favorite emoji the user will be able to add a custom :trigger-word: to insert the emoji in its message.

This feature is compatible with a few other XMPP clients sur as Pidgin (!) and Cheogram.

Codeblock support in messages

By using the codeblock syntax it is now possible to insert sourcecode extracts in your messages.

Better handling of spam messages

Some users were experiencing unsolicited and #spam messages issues. This new release doesn't send desktop and push notifications if the messages is not from a contact.

The 1-to-1 discussions can also be filtered to only display the ones you had with your contacts.

Updated message moderation and retraction

Movim now supports the latest version of Message Retraction and Message Moderation and therefore better integrate with the newest clients and servers implementations.

... but also some fixes

As always some issues were also fixed in this release.

The internal code was refactored to comply with the PSR-4 PHP standard. This should remove a lot of warnings when installing and upgrading.

Some shared image URLs were not handled properly in the chat and the preview was broken, this was fixed in the ticket #1314. The sharing of URLs and some embedding features were also greatly improved when writing a new article.

What's next?

We are happy to announce that Movim was selected by NLNet to fund a large set of exciting features around video-conferencing on the platform 🥳, including one-to-many audio and video calls. This will be the biggest project done until now and should keep us busy until next year.

Some more specifics and technical blogs posts will be published soon to explain more in details what all those changes will be about and which exciting features you will see in the upcoming releases.

Thanks a lot to them and don't forget to follow us to get all the latest details about this.

That's all folks!

#nlnet #funding #videoconferencing

A few days after Movim 0.25 Nagata here is a small bugfix release.

In this release you'll find a fix that prevented Firefox to Firefox audio-video calls to happen, a fix for a route parsing issue that was preventing articles to be attached properly in a new publication and a related one that was preventing articles to be shared to chat users.

One small improvement, the one-to-one chat list now includes preview of sent and received images and links.

That's all folks!

#movim #xmpp #bugfix #release

Only a few months after #Movim 0.24 here comes Movim 0.25 Nagata!

Let's have a look at all the new features and fixes that you can find in this exciting #release.

What's new?

Message files refactoring

The attached #message files metadata are now moved to the Movim SQL database, this allows way more flexibility to handle then including the upcoming work on the multi-files per message feature.

Along this change comes the support of thumbhash. The general idea is to build a small blurred version of the image that can be transferred and store inside the message metadata and then render it as a placeholder for the image before it gets downloaded.

Internal file upload proxy, bye bye CORS!

When you upload a file on Movim, it is not store in Movim itself but directly on your #XMPP server File Upload Service.

This feature, defined in XEP-0363: HTTP File Upload is pretty useful and widely implemented in the XMPP ecosystem. However XMPP web clients, such as Movim, have to deal with browser related limitations called #CORS (Cross-origin resource sharing) that needs some more configuration on the XMPP servers to allow upload files from domains that are not the same as the XMPP file #upload service one.

This new version comes with an internal file upload proxy, basically your file is first uploaded to a temporary script in Movim that then take care to upload it to your XMPP File Upload Service. This change makes all those configuration obsolete and greatly simplify the Movim deployment and configuration.

One small detail, please ensure that your PHP upload_max_filesize internal setting is large enough to handle the files that will be uploaded to the XMPP servers, somes are allowing up to a few hundreds megabytes for the maximum file sizes.

Automatic Nightmode 🌙

Movim is having a Nightmode toggle for a while already. A few internal changes is now allowing Movim to just follow your browser or operating system directives.

XEP-0410: MUC Self-Ping (Schrödinger's Chat)

As defined in the introduction of the XEP:

The Multi-User Chat (XEP-0045) [1] protocol was not designed to handle s2s interruptions or message loss well. Rather often, the restart of a server or a component causes a client to believe that it is still joined to a given chatroom, while the chatroom service does not know of this occupant.

Movim is now implementing the basic features of this XMPP extension and therefore automatically disconnect your from a chatroom if no activity was detected for a few minutes and if the ping doesn't come back positively. It was reported in the issue 1164.

Various other fixes

This version also fixes a few issues like a bug that prevented sometimes Movim to resynchronize the conversations history for one-to-one discussions, a SRV record certificate validation misconfiguration or a wrong priority of the XEP-0319: Last User Interaction over the XEP-0203: Delayed Delivery presences that were giving wrong information regarding your contact "last activity".

What's next?

This release should be the last one before some exciting huge set of features, with the support of the NLNet Fundation that will be integrated in Movim in the upcoming months. It seems that it should improve a few things regarding audio and video calls, stay tuned! 👀

Hope that you'll enjoy all those changes 😊

That's all folks!