Topic: News - Coming Attraction - FlashChat

[Dianna]

Jim has been working on something special for the forum. He has noticed how much we have used the Spirit Lounge to chat back and forth and how we all miss each other at times. He thought that with a chat room, we would be able to chat in real time and maybe be able to respond to each other faster...

The chat room will not be activated until Sunday evening so that we will be around for the maiden voyage. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to air them in this topic over the weekend...

The link to a sample flashchat module is here! This is what the chat room will look like...

[Jim]

What I'm working with is FlashChat.  This will be integrated into the forum.  There will be a "Chat" tab on the menu bar as well as an entry near the "Who's Online" info that tells you how many users and who is in chat.  We'll post information here as we get closer to the opening.

[barleychown]

I'm excited! I think chat will be a great addition.

Thank you for taking on this project!

[MassMama]

  This is going to be WAY cool!! I can't wait to see how its going to work!! 

[Patty S]

I think this is a TERRIFIC idea! It'll be cool for the Spirit Loungers to be able to chat "IM style".
(Can we assume there won't be a 10 word limit?!)

It's been a long time since I've been involved in a real time chat, but If I remember right, the screen scrolls up as the conversation progresses & earlier posts just fall off the top, so there's no "catching up" on what's been said... right?   If that's the case, I do hope that some of the daily chit-chat that's covered in the Spirit Lounges (such as health issues) will find its way into a thread on the forum as a point of "FYI", or in the prayer thread.(Please!) 

*Will the chat room replace the Spirit Lounge, or will it remain?

**Will we have a Smiley selection in the chat, or will we be able to use our own UBB Coded graphics?

***Will there be some kinda "auto-mods" installed, to watch for stuff that might need to be ?

  YAY FLASHCHAT!  
How does this effect SSH's bandwith, Jim? (Just curious.)

[MassMama]

  those are all good questions Patty! I hope we will not miss that passerbyer that only has a second to pop in and say hi. ( I do that offen)

[Jim]

(Can we assume there won't be a 10 word limit?!)

It's been a long time since I've been involved in a real time chat, but If I remember right, the screen scrolls up as the conversation progresses & earlier posts just fall off the top, so there's no "catching up" on what's been said... right?   If that's the case, I do hope that some of the daily chit-chat that's covered in the Spirit Lounges (such as health issues) will find its way into a thread on the forum as a point of "FYI", or in the prayer thread.(Please!) 

*Will the chat room replace the Spirit Lounge, or will it remain?

**Will we have a Smiley selection in the chat, or will we be able to use our own UBB Coded graphics?

***Will there be some kinda "auto-mods" installed, to watch for stuff that might need to be ?

  YAY FLASHCHAT!  
How does this effect SSH's bandwith, Jim? (Just curious.)

Nope, no 10 word limit.  Yes, the screen scrolls us as the conversation progresses, so there is no catching up.

No plans to deactivate the Spirit Lounge.  It may not get as much use.  We will wait and see.

Yep there will be some smilies, not sure about using your own graphics in the chat room.  You may be limited to the ones provided by FlashChat.

Bandwith is not a problem. Remember at Christmas time our limit was permanently doubled and we haven't even used 25% of that.

All good questions though.

[Dianna]

Jim couldn't wait cause he had itchy fingers. Ghost Gossip is open for business!

[Jim]

Yeah, once I start something, I just keep at it till it's done.  I like tweaking these things.  This one took a bit of work but wanted to get it installed to see how things work this weekend.

I still want to change the name that is displayed in Chat to the Display name instead of the User Name.  I'll have to work on that on Sunday.

Meanwhile reply to this topic if you find any problems or issues.

[MassMama]

Only problem I am having is running into someone to chat with 
Ohhh and where is casper are you leaving him off?

[Wrennie]

And dial up users will have a hard time keeping up when their service gets moody, like mine just did.

[Dianna]

I think that Jim or I will have to add Casper when we are in the chat room, Rita. Guess we will be booting him out the door when he upsets us. He about ran me nuts last night. I know. I didn't have far to go...

Wrennie, dial-up users are the reason we left the Spirit Lounge open. Just in case the D-U users can't keep up, there will always be the SL to fall back on...

Also, if you have more windows open besides chat, you may have some problems, too. It depends on your speed...

Rita, remember that glitch that you and I ran into last night with the screen not moving for us when we got to the bottom of the page? If you make changes, log out, and then back in, and it should work for you. Sarah figured it out for us after you left last night....

[MassMama]

I tried to log out and log back in and it was not working for me today .. I couldn't even get back onto this site.. But will try again tonight!! 
A few glitches here and there are not so  bad.. We will get em all fixed up!! 

[Wrennie]

It was working fine for me this morning when i was talking to myself and then Massmom. Then it suddenly took forever for a post to post. Its fine here on hih speed. (till this signal disappears! )

[Jim]

The FlashChat module has no effect on bandwidth.  It does not slow the forum down because the way it's integrated, it is what is running when you click the chat button. 

What does happen from time to time is a slight pause when you are doing something.  It doesn't happen continously so there's not much we can do about it.  Additionally, when you have multiple windows open on your computer this is more apt to happen.

One thing we have found is that if you change your Options in FlashChat, you need to Save them, click on the Home button in the menu bar, which will log you out of chat and the click Chat to log back in.  Sarah and Dianna figured this out last night.

Keep playing with it and let us know what you think.

[Triss]

Hmmm, all I am seeing is a blue screen.  No box to type in, do I have to click something to make it work?  A very cool addition by the way!

[Patty S]

Triss, scroll down & you'll see the big SEND button... the writing field is to the left of it.  Once you start chatting with someone, the chat window seems to catch up, so you won't hafta scroll down anymore.

When I was in there (I don't last for very long, using this old puter, though) the backgrounds were aggravating, cuz they're all just too busy & make my eyes tired... so, I found a black background at the bottom, under the "options" button, & set the text on white. LOTS easier on the eyeballs!

Hope you have fun in there!  

[Triss]

I am not getting that.  I can see others chatting but I have not way to type in there.
Who is Mass Mama?

[Triss]

DO I need to have a specific flash player installed?  Does it work on Firefox?  With Vista?  Remember I am on a new computer and may not have the right things on here.

[barleychown]

Triss, on the bottom of the screen, do you not have a skinny box, with a bar along the top?  Directly under the window where you can read people's words?

Jim has requested you take a screen shot of what you are seeing, and post it here. He will help you when they get home.

[Triss]

Ok I got it fixed... it was all on my end.  With this new computer, I did not have the latest flash player and had to install it.  All is working now.

[Dianna]

I am happy to read that you got it all squared away, Triss. Thank you to everyone that tried to help her figure out the problem....

[Triss]

I agree Dianna, thanks everyone.  I even got a phone call from Patty trying to help me out just as I got it all figured out and working.

[Jim]

Glad you got it all figured out, Triss.  I was thinking it might be something like that or something to do with Vista.

I modified the files today in the hopes that it will now show the Display Name instead of the UserID in the chat room.  Rita, be sure and let me know if I don't see you in there.  After I modified them I went in and my UserID is "jim" with my Display Name being "Jim".  If came up as "Jim" so hopefully that is fixed.

Once we get all the bugs worked out, we will have to have to schedule a "Chat Night" and see how many folks we can get in there.

[patches]

I tried to log out and log back in and it was not working for me today .. I couldn't even get back onto this site.

Well, I was on there last night for a short time time and it was great, then this is exactly what happened to me too!    I'm sure it's just my computer or maybe it's my dial-up and not the chat room.