September 2014 Summaries

Firebase released version 1.0.0 of its open-source Firepad and Firechat modules, which were originally created to demonstrate Firebase’s realtime collaboration capabilities but have matured into stable, documented, production-ready tools. Firepad provides collaborative code and rich-text editing similar to Google Docs and is used by organizations including Atlassian, LiveMinutes, and CoderPad; its release adds a headless mode for programmatic document interaction in Node.js or browsers, API enhancements such as default initial text and a synchronization event, bug fixes, UI improvements, and availability through the Firebase CDN and Bower. Firechat offers realtime multi-user and multi-room messaging, authentication, moderation, user presence, private messages, and invitations, with Firebase supporting chat for CBS’s Big Brother series; version 1.0.0 moves its homepage to Firebase Hosting, improves documentation and developer warnings, fixes bugs, and increases styling compatibility with frameworks such as Twitter Bootstrap. Firebase invited users to provide feedback or contribute through email and GitHub pull requests.