Help me test early alpha of chat for this site. by Haken

FIREFLYFANS.NET CENTRAL

Help me test early alpha of chat for this site.

POSTED BY: HAKEN
UPDATED: Sunday, June 9, 2002 14:45
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VIEWED: 4440
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Thursday, June 6, 2002 11:22 AM

Likes to mess with stuffs.

I started work on a chat for this site. Can some of you go and try it out and see if you run into problems or errors out on the JavaScript?

The thing is in the early alpha stages, meaning it has nothing except the chat window and a place for you to type your text and send it.

However, it does have support for all the emoticons currently available on this site.

This is it. This is the core. This will tell me whether the HTML based chat is feasible or not.

Oh, and if you're using IE, you can just type in the message box and hit enter without needing to hit send. Let me know if this is also true with Netscape and other browsers.

Let me know what you think, what sort of features I should add, and let me know if you have performance issues with this thing.

The URL to the chat is:

http://www.fireflyfans.net/fireflychat.asp

You might find me there.

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 12:47 PM

NOVAGRASS

Haken, it won't let me chat! I type and I type and it just won't show up!

--Dylan Palmer, aka NoVaGrAsS--

"Blood just kept pouring out of them, you'd slip in it half the time, find out bloodbath is not just a figure of speech."
-Zoe; Firefly, "Serenity" Shooting Script.

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 2:09 PM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Since I chatted with you, it must have worked eventually. I don't know why it didn't though, maybe it's that contention problem we were talking about.

Anyway, I wrote a fix. I hope it works. Chat apps are so difficult to write because of all the things that the chat apps have to keep track of.

Let me know if you have any other problems.

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 5:34 PM

JONWES

Hmmmm... not working for me. It doesn't come up. I just type and type like Nova was saying.

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 7:00 PM

MOJOECA

yeah, same here.

--- Joe

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 7:07 PM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Hmmm...okay. What browser are you using? I tested with IE 6. Also, you need JavaScript enabled.

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 7:09 PM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Okay, just checked. I guess I goofed up somewhere during one of the tweaked. The send button doesn't work. However, if you're using IE, you can hit ENTER after you typed your message and it'll get posted.

I'll fix the bug tomorrow.

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Thursday, June 6, 2002 7:22 PM

MOJOECA

The chat won't work on my AOL browser for some reason, but I tried accessing the page through a separate IE window and that works.

--- Joe

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Friday, June 7, 2002 2:54 AM

TIEKA

I was able to post just fine. I'm running IE 5 on a Mac. I posted using return and send so they both work for me. The smileys work too.

It takes some getting used to with the refresh, but thats what is needed for a html chat. My one problem is the ordering of messages. With the newest messages at the bottom, I can't scroll down fast enough to beat the refresh. Reverse posting may work better for this type of chat or change the refresh rate.

Also, I'm assuming that the right hand window was for people online? It had nothing in it when I was there.

Tieka,

for the chat.

Once you've been in Serenity, you never leave. You just learn to live there. --Firefly script

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Friday, June 7, 2002 3:57 AM

I'm using a Windows-based Java-enabled IE6 and enter posted my first message and neither one would post any other messages. Also, my right window was blank like Tieka's - maybe nobody was there. I like the reverse order idea, I think.

Hm. I just went back and "send" worked. I tried manually refreshing the page the first time and that didn't work. But maybe exiting and reentering did? I think somebody was there that time and I still had a blank right window. Maybe timestamps would also help let people know? Even if people showed up on the right, they might have just left a window open and forgotten, so I timestamp would show if it was really active. I dunno.

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Friday, June 7, 2002 9:56 AM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
Originally posted by Tieka:
It takes some getting used to with the refresh, but thats what is needed for a html chat. My one problem is the ordering of messages. With the newest messages at the bottom, I can't scroll down fast enough to beat the refresh. Reverse posting may work better for this type of chat or change the refresh rate.

Hmmm...the chat has autoscroll. I have a little JavaScript thing in the chat window that automatically scrolls to the bottom. That didn't happen for you? It sounded like it didn't.

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Friday, June 7, 2002 10:05 AM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Quote:
Originally posted by J:
Hm. I just went back and "send" worked. I tried manually refreshing the page the first time and that didn't work. But maybe exiting and reentering did? I think somebody was there that time and I still had a blank right window. Maybe timestamps would also help let people know? Even if people showed up on the right, they might have just left a window open and forgotten, so I timestamp would show if it was really active. I dunno.

There is nothing in the right window (I haven't written it yet).

FYI, the chat window is currently set to refresh every 10 seconds.

I'll add the timestamp. But because of the time difference between where the website is and the rest of the users on here, it's not going to be an accurate indicator, but I'll put it in anyway so you can mentally figure in the time different. This website is currently at -10 GMT.

A better solution is for me to hurry up and finish the user listing for that right window.

Let me know if you continue to have drop posts. I still haven't figured out what is causing that yet.

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Friday, June 7, 2002 4:26 PM

HAKEN

Likes to mess with stuffs.

Okay, I added something in the right window. It'll now show who is chatting.

I also made some changes to attempt to resolve the dropped post issue. Let me know if you continue to get dropped post.

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Saturday, June 8, 2002 1:39 PM

PANDORA

Haken:

Things seem to be going much more smoothly- less jerkiness and not much trouble with drop posts... now all we need is for more people to show up...

Pandora

"Logic is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't beat actual thought." -Terry Pratchett, the Last Continent

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Sunday, June 9, 2002 2:45 PM

ZICSOFT

I just now got round to checking out the chat feature. Seems pretty solid to me. One problem for me, which you probably can't do anything about: I have a little click sound assigned to the Explorer/Start Navigation event. So when I have the chat window open I get a click every 2 or 3 seconds. I'm guessing there's no way you can do HTML chat without that, right?

A time stamp feature (Zicosft 8:20pm:) would be nice.

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