

Atlas by Layer – Open Source Messaging UI Components for Layer - tomazstolfa
https://atlas.layer.com

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heynk
Nice looking components and library. I wanted to applaud your use of
Typer.js[0] in combination with the iPhone 'mockup' in the top section.
Usually Typer is just used for fancy replacement of words in a headline, but
in this case the transitions perfectly match the UI. I'm not sure if others
have used this to demonstrate 'live coding', but well done!

[0] - [http://cosmos.layervault.com/typer-
js.html](http://cosmos.layervault.com/typer-js.html)

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RobertLong
Web developer from Layer here, glad you enjoyed it! It was the perfect fit and
typer made it simple to implement. Thank you to the LayerVault team!

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saarons
This would be great in the Android world. There are dozens of SMS/XMPP chat
apps that all take a slightly different approach to chat interfaces. Some have
implemented material design makeovers, but there still seems to be slight
differences amongst the ones that have. Something like this for Android would
go a long way to help the apps that still haven't made the transition.

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blakewatters
Hey saarons -- Blake from Layer here. This is a big challenge that we are
actively discussing internally. With Atlas on iOS, we had the luxury of a gold
standard reference UI thanks the ubiquity of iMessage. On Android, as you so
aptly point out, there isn't such an (even de-facto) standard user interface
to reference. We're experimenting with a number of approaches and user
interface idioms and would love to discuss it with you in depth. If you're
open to collaborating, hit us up on hello@layer.com and we can grab a call.

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jlukanta
Great job in building this library! Can you share why should one choose Atlas
over JSQMessagesViewController <
[https://github.com/jessesquires/JSQMessagesViewController](https://github.com/jessesquires/JSQMessagesViewController)
>?

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blakewatters
Hey - Blake from Layer here. We're big fans of JSQMessagesViewController and a
number of our early access developers built their UIs on top of it. The
biggest difference between Atlas and JSQMessagesViewController at the moment
is that Atlas is deeply integrated with the messaging services of Layer and
the programming model exposed by LayerKit, while JSQMessagesViewController is
backend agnostic. This translates directly into the amount of code that you
need to write in order to get your UI and messaging fully wired. It's a trade-
off -- with Atlas you write less code and have less things to coordinate
within your UI, but you pick up a direct dependency on Layer. At this point
there's a fair bit of overlap in functionality between Atlas and
JSQMessagesViewController, but keep in mind that this is our 1.0 release.
Looking a few months down the line, we'll be bringing a number of additional
components and services online that will make the distinctions more apparent.
We're also in the process of developing Atlas for Android and Web, which will
share a similar API aesthetic. Hope this is helpful and you can find the time
to give Atlas a whirl!

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grinich
Congrats to the Layer team! This is a really great toolkit, and definitely
something developers have had to re-build many times.

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yusiang
The PR is misleading, it is only available for iOS.

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ckluis
What does layer cost?

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KillCreek
Hey ckluis -- Stevie from Layer here. We will be publishing our public pricing
page in the next few days to answer just this question in detail! We offer a
free Sandbox plan to use for development and beta testing that supports up to
1,000 monthly active users.

As for production plans, we offer unlimited messaging and charge by Monthly
Active Users (but only users who send or receive messages). Our production
plans start at $99/month, though we will be rolling out some offerings for
pre-funding startups in th near future. With Layer, you can get unlimited
messaging for a MAU for the month for less than the cost of sending a single
SMS.

We aim to offer a comprehensive platform and service at roughly the cost of
operating your own infrastructure while saving you the cost of development.

All the pricing detail can be found inside our dashboard today for those with
accounts, and on our public page soon.

You can reach us at growth at layer for more info.

