ZNC isn't any harder to set up than installing these web clients. In fact ZNC has it's own web interface for configuring it (and does so with a self contained webserver so you don't need node.js / mojo / etc frameworks).
I'm not trying to take anything away from these excellent projects though. Just saying IRC bouncers aren't any harder to install than these projects
There's some advantages to using a web-irc client. You get a clean way of scrolling back through your history. Unread message count is stored server-side. In general the state is synchronised where a bouncer can leave multiple clients out of sync with each other.
I've never had that issue with bouncers to be honest. In fact the whole point of bouncers is to:
1: hide your IP (moot point if you're hosting your own bounce though. And a lot of IRC networks hide your IP for you anyway)
2: offer a way of keeping your history
3: store your unread messages server side.
4: keep all your clients and states synchronised
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a web client (in fact I'm tempted to try the one submitted here). But I think there's a lot of misconceptions about bounces too.
In an ideal world I'd use both; have a web client connect to ZNC. So I can log onto the IRC client when a guest on someone's PC (eg cybercafe) but also have the ability to use native clients from the same nick for when I'm sat on my own laptop or on my phone (there's some half decent native Android IRC clients)
But WeeChat in a terminal multiplexer + Glowing Bear offers you exactly that. When you read something in Glowing Bear, it is marked as read in WeeChat. You can access it securely from anywhere with any modern browser or smart phone / tablet. When you feel like using the native command-line client, just ssh/mosh into your server and attach to your tmux/screen session. There are other relay clients as well if you want to use those.
(Sync from WeeChat to Glowing Bear and between multiple instances is something we're working towards with the developer of WeeChat)
Why do you guys hate IRC bounces so much? You're investing a lot of time trying to convict me that I should ditch my ZNC and replace it with something that replicates its functionality in a longer winded fashion.
I don't want to run my bounce in a detached screen session, I want a proper daemon. It's easier to install and manage if it's a proper daemon. And if I'm going to be using a terminal based IRC client (which I often do) then I'd be running Irssi.
I don't want your stupid halfway solution when I already have a proper IRC bounce set up that does all that and more.
