New version chatbox

[WetWired]

http://zelaron.com/forum/mychat.php
I'm in the process of completely rewriting the shoutbox. The first stage is complete, which you can check out at the link above.

New features so far:
Cleaner element positioning Net code doesn't stall (a feature because in the old version it did very easily) Last update time displayed so you can see if you're having connectivity issues Color Minimal updates reduce bandwidth usage Configurable font size Text doesn't scroll to the bottom unless you resize or someone sends a message Old messages remain on the box until you close it

Coming soon:
Recent threads populated New archive page Rewrite of corner chatbox

Please check it out on all browsers available to you and post issues in this thread.

[!King_Amazon!]

Bravo, good sir.

[KagomJack]

Bravo, good sir.
I second that.

[WetWired]

By popular demand, the chatbox is now adjusted to not scroll to the bottom if you're not near the bottom already. We'll see if this causes other problems.

[Goodlookinguy]

By popular demand, the chatbox is now adjusted to not scroll to the bottom if you're not near the bottom already. We'll see if this causes other problems.

That was a great idea to make it not scroll to the bloody bottom every time it refreshes. Good job WW, you are really on the ball right now.

EDIT: Still I wonder were you able to block html <object> scripts from running in the archived area?

[WetWired]

That area is going away for a completely different version, anyway, but I isolated the bug.

[Goodlookinguy]

Aw, all is well and good then. What is going to be different from the new one compared to the old one?

[Thanatos]

I....


think I love you.



















































but I'll hate you in a week.

[D3V]

<3 in the words of borat





VERY NIIIIIIIIIIIIIICE

[Goodlookinguy]

Where did all of this come from?

[D3V]

Where did all of what come from?

[Goodlookinguy]

All of the nonsense, pure unadulterated nonsense.

[D3V]

I'm being serious, I'm glad there's new versions coming up, <3 to WW for making it happen.

[Goodlookinguy]

I'm being serious, I'm glad there's new versions coming up, <3 to WW for making it happen.

No, not you. Thanatos' comment, it was nonsense.

[Thanatos]

YOUR WHOLE EXISTANCE IS NONSENSE.

Assclown.

[Goodlookinguy]

YOUR WHOLE EXISTENCE IS NONSENSE.

Yes, I know it is.

Nonsense is a great word, and I seem to be using it a lot lately.

*You spelled Existence wrong. In the quote I fixed it.

[Thanatos]

u win this time cheese lover

prepare for round 2

[Goodlookinguy]

You win this time cheese lover

prepare for round two.

There's a round two!?

[Demosthenes]

Is there any way to get the chatbox to show up without restarting your browser once you have closed it?

[WetWired]

What do you mean? The chatbox lives in a browser window.

[Demosthenes]

Once I close the chatbox or shoutbox, is there any way to open it back up without having to restart Mozilla?

[WetWired]

No, since it would be Mozilla that is running it.

[WetWired]

The new log page is in place. I'm still working out what kind of stats I'm going to do.
The new corner chatbox is in place.

You can now personalize the color of your name in the chatbox (Click here, scroll down (http://zelaron.com/forum/profile.php?do=editoptions)). Don't abuse it.

[Lenny]

Just something about the name colour which I said in the Chatbox, but you might have missed:

When the standard colour is selected, if you hover over the name, it turns white, as links are prone to do. If the user has a colour selected, however, and you hover over their name in the Chatbox, there is no change.

I don't know whether this is intentional or not. The cursor still turns into the hand, by the way, it's just that the link doesn't turn white on mouse hover.

[WetWired]

Nothing I can do about that. Really, I'd rather the names be the normal text color, but since that varies, it's a pain to fix it up that way.

[Lenny]

Can I ask how things like that work with the Chatbox?

And a question that's slightly off-topic, but still relevant - can PHP variables (I think would be the right name for them) be used in CSS documents?

[WetWired]

Can I ask how things like that work with the Chatbox?Not sure what you mean.

You can use PHP variables in CSS if the CSS is being output by PHP

[Lenny]

Sorry. What I mean is the name colour, mostly, and how it works as a link. What type of scripting is used to achieve that within the Chatbox?

The relation of CSS to this is that... in fact, I'll post some CSS code I use on my sites for menus:

A.menu:link {
color: #000000;
text-decoration: none
}

A.menu:visited {
color: #000000;
text-decoration: none
}

A.menu:active {
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none
}

A.menu:hover {
color: #FFFFFF;
text-decoration: none
}

I don't need to explain it to you.

My thoughts were that, if the Chatbox makes use of stylesheets for it's style, code such as that above could be used to set the links - for the first two (:link and :visited), the colour code could be replaced by a PHP variable, whilst the bottom two (:active and :hover) could have the #FFFFFF colour code to make them white.

Just to go to the PHP variable - I have very little knowledge of PHP, so I'm probably wrong, but is it possible to send what the user chooses as their name colour in their user options as a PHP variable, which can then be placed into something like that above?

---

I have doubts that above would work, but they're my thoughts on the link hover =/= white matter. A lot of fuss for a tiny... well, it's not even a problem. :p

[WetWired]

The issue is that the PHP code doesn't have access to the default color and that the set color overrides the color for all states of the link, including hover.

[Lenny]

Ah, fair enough. So to try and 'solve' it would mean re-writing a lot of the code? A hell of a lot of work for something that's purely aesthetic. :p

[WetWired]

To prevent confusion, which was the true point of the colored names in the first place, I've put in place a system where colors are first-come, first-serve. If someone else is already in the chatbox with a name length close to yours and your selected color, you will be assigned the closest alternate.

For example, if Chruser (length 7, profile color red) is already in the chatbox, and Lenny (length 5, profile color red) joins, Lenny's name will be in orange instead of red.

[Demosthenes]

Any way to still check shoutbox stats?

[WetWired]

The old archive page is still up, though not for long.

[WetWired]

And recent threads is live!

[Asamin]

So whoever has the longest name gets to keep their color?

[WetWired]

No, whoever is already using it gets to keep it. If there's someone already in the chatbox with a name of similar length using your color, your color gets changed for the session (not permenantly). This is so you can keep up with who's saying what without having to read the names, which was the whole point of adding the colors in the first place.

[WetWired]

Opening the Chatbox no longer disables the Recent Chatbox Messages window. Instead, the Recent Chatbox Messages window is disabled as long as the Chatbox is open; once your Chatbox session expires, the Recent Chatbox Messages window will reappear on the next page load.

Also, I'm working out a technology in my head that will allow you to open the chatbox in the same window/tab as you're browsing in. I'm not sure if I can make it work, or how well it will work, ATM.

On the Recent Threads display in the chatbox, you can now clear the list and only threads with new posts since the last time you cleared it (during the session) will appear; this makes it easier to "bookmark" your spot.

[WetWired]

Mini chatbox first stage is live. Right now it doesn't stay open between page loads. That's part of its second stage. In the meantime, feedback on the rest is welcome.

[Grav]

It's a lot less annoying than a popup when I type.

[WetWired]

I also attempted to fix your z-order issue. Does it still appear under avatars?

[Grav]

Doesn't look like it. The weird flashing image (of wires, on Synthesis) that used to appear when I moused over someone's avatar is gone too.

Edit: spoke too soon. The weird flashing wires thing doesn't happen in THIS thread, but happens in others. Buh?

[WetWired]

User join/leave notifications added at KA's request.

[Thanatos]

Good going KA.

[D3V]

Here's a suggestion, get rid of the counter that displays people leaving and joining the chat, it just clusterfucks it up.

[Goodlookinguy]

Here's a suggestion, get rid of the counter that displays people leaving and joining the chat, it just clusterfucks it up.

Yeah. It does really. Maybe a way to prevent multible "has left," "had joined" in a row from one user.

[WetWired]

Trust me, I've been thinking the same thing since I implemented it, but I'm not sure how to make it work. When I get home, I'm going to disable them on the recent messages display, though.

[D3V]

I'm thinking atleast make the timeout longer, instead of 1 minute or whatever it's set at, put it more like 30 minutes, and no duplicates within 30 minutes or something...

[WetWired]

At that time scale, it would be useless. As I said, I wanted to remove in and out messages with no messages between them (on the log or when starting, but you'd still get them if you were in-channel ATM), but there's no point in telling you that someone has left the chat 30 minutes after it happens. I do intend to reduce the timeout on communications so that they will retry before you idle out of the chat, but it would appear that your real problem is due to trying to use the minichatbox in the same window while you browse arround the forum, which really isn't viable untill the next phase.

[WetWired]

In this update, I've removed comm timeouts. That's not to say that they can't happen, but they won't be so intrusive. The new system uses an adaptive timeout so that it should quickly recover from network/server transients, but still work on higher latency connections. Also, instead of a comm timeout message, the update time will change color to indicate high latency. To top it all off, the popup chatbox uses a different domain so that other Zelaron activity doesn't squash the chatbox under the "two simultaneous connections per domain" rule; couldn't fix this for the mini chatbox as HTTPXMLRequest doesn't allow cross domain requests.

Also this version, you can see who's in the chatbox from the recent messages display, to hopefully prevent some of that retarded in-and-out that certain people likes to do.

[khwiii]

Nice work WW.

[WetWired]

Persistant chatbox is up. If you're AFK for 5 minutes, it will close. Idlers can idle in the real chatbox.

[alex132005]

The chatbox rox

[Goodlookinguy]

The chatbox rox


Useless Revival! Ban him! :)

[Wallow]

Nice Job WW. I probably use the chatbox more than I post.

[D3V]

<3 ,3

[Wallow]

<3 ,3

I honestly hate those smiley faces. I like the =/ face the best