Hey ๐, Hardik here. This is a summary of all the work I did for the Zulip chat application and my personal experiences as a part of the Google Summer of Code 2023.
What is Zulip?
Zulip is an open-source chat application that combines the immediacy of real-time chat with an email threading model. With Zulip, you can always focus more on the important conversations rather than finding an important message in a mountain of messages.
Why Zulip? - Efficient communication with organized team chat.
- Title : Improve the UI and Visual design of Zulip.
- Repository: zulip/zulip
- Mentors: Aman Agarwal and Ryan Rehman
- Project Size: Large
- Description: This project aims to improve design of certain areas of Zulip as a part of redesign to use modern UI for Zulip.
- All Pull Requests Created/Worked on During GSoC
- All Pull Requests to Zulip
- Apart from code contributions through pull requests, I have been part of several discussions along with other community members that involoved discussion related to proposed design changes for new UI redesign for Zulip app, especially in #design stream.
-
#25667 redesign: Add a new personal menu: [๐ Merged]
- As part of the redesign, This PR adds a new profile (personal) menu which helped reorganize settings menu by splitting to personal related (This PR) and organization related menus(#27197).
- The initial work on this is done in #24140 by Taiki Choda. Co-authored by Aman Agarwal and Tim Abbott.
-
#27197 Implement new design for gear menu: [๐ Merged]
- With this PR, Aman Agarwal takes forward the initial work on this done in #25732 by me during GSoC period.
- #26141 [WIP]Theme switcher (Issue #22803):
- This aims to add a slider having 3 options in personal menu added in #25667 which lets user set the app theme (Automatic/system, Dark or Light theme), adding this slider in personal menu make theme switching more accessible.
- #26056 [Draft]redesign: New UI for top bar and dropdown menus.:
- This aims to redesign/restructure the top bar UI by improving its CSS structure which currently uses fixed values to a better flexbox structure.
- #26238 WIP: Compose box clean up: [๐ Open]
- This PR aims to clean-up existing compose box structure and CSS to facilitate the redesign work for #24878.
- To make the work in this PR more reviewable and readable this PR is split into 4 PRs: One for structural cleanup (#26570), One for CSS cleanup (#26571), One for renaming HTML elements (yet to be opened), One for fixing and improving alignment, especially of compose buttons (yet to be opened).
- #25979 Redesign info overlay: [๐ Under review]
- Improves the UI of the info modals (Keyboard shortcuts, Message formatting and Search filters modal overlays)by redesigning them to a modern UI.
- #26170 [WIP] user_info_card: Redesign user card popover.: [๐ Open] (Issue #27338)
- This PRs redesigns the user card popover to match the new design of popover menus (personal menu and gear menu).
Contributions not related to any major redesign.
- #26867 user_preferences: Change option text for "Show unread counts for".
- #26793 unread: Fix logic for wildcard mentions in direct messages.
- #26007 bot_profile_card: Convert tooltips to Tippy.
- #25941 tooltips: Use tippy tooltips for drafts and schedule message overlays.
- #25570 unread: Fix double counting of mentions in direct messages.
- #24921 user_profile_modal: Abbreviate long URLs of custom fields.
- #25568 edit_bot: Include current bot owner to bot owner dropdown.
During my time working on the UI/UX redesign project for the Zulip application as part of the Google Summer of Code 2023, I gained valuable insights and skills that have significantly contributed to my professional growth. Some of the key learnings from this experience include:
-
Collaborative Development: Working with a team of experienced mentors and developers taught me the significance of effective communication and collaboration in achieving project goals efficiently. I would like to extend my gratitude to Karl Stolley, with whom I worked on several redesign projects, and from whom I learned the importance of writing cleaner CSS code and making design structures clearer.
-
Open-Source Contribution Best Practices: Contributing to an open-source project like Zulip introduced me to the best practices for code management, version control, and maintaining consistency within a large-scale software project. Thanks to Tim Abbott, Karl Stolley, and my mentors Aman Agarwal and Ryan Rehman for their valuable feedback on how to improve code readability and best practices for contributing to large-scale code in a collaborative environment. Their insights will undoubtedly help me grow as a professional developer.
My journey with the Zulip community during the Google Summer of Code 2023 has been an exceptional learning adventure. Collaborating with dedicated individuals and receiving invaluable guidance from mentors like Aman Agarwal and Ryan Rehman has significantly enhanced my skills. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the entire Zulip community, especially Lauryn Menard, Tim Abbott, and Karl Stolley, for their unwavering support and guidance, which has inspired me to continue contributing to the open-source community with passion and commitment.
Thanks to everyone at Zulip for the best open-source experience and making this journey memorableโค๏ธ.
is this organisation available for gsoc 2024