At this point, Glodenox and I need to get in touch about database connectivity, because that's the last thing that needs serious work (aside from more bug testing, obviously). It's ready to go any time, aside from that.

EDIT: there's also a lot of backend stuff to be done in general, but the chat server itself is running fine at this point.

This is the best thing since sliced bread. <3

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[align=center]

Well, the smilies and sounds are back now.

As promised: I'll split the smilies up in more categories and then I'll work on the authentication script.

Greetings,
Glodenox

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Sweeeet, though, a few questions:

Why are chat mods green? D:

Why does MeepBot have an idle counter, I don't think he used to (could be wrong)

Will you be restoring the old quote database ( viewtopic.php?f=16&t=428350 )

EDIT: what's up with name colours in general? as a mod I'm green, as a normal user I was green too, kikori kid was white as a normal user and MeepBot changes colour every time I kick him and he rejoins

Also I couldn't figure out a way to /forcejoin users to a room with spaces in the name, using quotes did nothing, using quotes on a username gave a syntax error

and lastly, you may want to look into the Applet.stop() and Applet.destroy() methods to see if you can let users send a logout message to the server when they close their browser window (Maybe this is more for Glode as I tihnk he was going to work on the applet, and it requires no back end code, though I'm not sure how faithful browsers are when it comes to calling those methods; see here)

EDIT2: Okay I'm just going to be picky

You could consider making it so the idle counter doesn't display until you have reached a certain amount of minutes (I think the threshold used to be 5 minutes) I just thinks it looks a bit messy otherwise, but that's just my opinion of course

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Currently the colours are just random. They'll be bound by the colour you have on the forums once we've established that connection.


That won't be a difficult fix as far as I'm aware.


Why wouldn't we?


I'll certainly look into it. I also noticed messages about it in the Console Window and it would indeed be the best way of sending to the server that the person is leaving. Even if not all browsers support it, it would be handy enough to just implement it.


There is a threshold, it's just currently set to 1 because Fire_Adept wanted to test it out and didn't want to wait 5 minutes for it to appear

Thanks for these remarks, I'm glad that you went into that much detail to test it out.

Greetings,
Glodenox

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Great work so far guys, but I have a few little suggestions...

-The flashchat userlist looks all nice and colorful and pretty, could we possibly have colored usernames in the javachat userlist? white for normal, red (and bold) for chat mods, purple for board mods, etc.? I just think that having an all white username list is really boring, and the current userlist does not distinguish board mods from normal users, so it's kind of impossible for a normal user to know which users are board mods unless they're actually speaking. I know it's not 100% necessary to have colored names on the userlist, I just think it would make the chatroom look nicer.

-IIRC, admins in javachat were given that hiddeous brown/darkred color. Can that be changed to something else, like green (which is now available because there are no forum mods) or maybe pink? Please, anything but brown.

-The smiley list is kinda... weird. I guess I've become used to using a dropdown menu, could we have something like that in the javachat? Also is it possible to display the actual similey images in the menu (right now it's just displaying the smiley code)? That would be very convenient.

-Flashchat has a few different statuses; Away, BRB, Dead, and Busy. Javachat has one; Away, and the away tag (A) might be confusing to some people who aren't quite familiar with the old chatroom. It would be nice to have some more status commands (/away, /busy, /dead, /brb), and for them to show up next to a user's name as whole words, not just letters. Also, not completely necessary, but it would be nice if the status tags could be a different color (like dark gray) and italics to distinguish them from users' names.

-A bell button, of course. The bell sound will probably be changed several times a year (we try to change it once a month), sometimes we like to use more than one bell sound at the same time (for example, this month we're using these three sounds: 1, 2, 3)

-Some useful options: Enable/disable bell (basically turns off all bell sounds for people who don't like the bell), bold text, italics text.

-I just realized that javachat minimizes chat PM conversations to the taskbar. Flashchat minimizes chat PM convos to the userlist with a little icon to the right of your chat friends' name (saving you precious taskbar space). Is that at all possible with javachat? I would really appreciate something like that.

-Is it possible to give chatmods/admins the ability to have smilies next to their name on the userlist and chat window? That's by far my favorite feature of flashchat.

Edit: One more suggestion... Is it possible to organize the usernames on the userlist by which room the users are in? Right now all we have is an (S) tag for Spam Room, which may be confusing to people who are not familiar with the javachat.

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Here's a little mock-up with all of my ideas, I hope this helps. I know that most of my suggestions may sound like tiny, unimportant details, but if we're gonna make this change then we should do it right, there are some pretty useful features in flashchat that a lot of us have gotten used to.

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I support Jack's suggestions, but I also know that it's not as easy to place images everywhere with Java, so maybe that'll be a bit harder

Also, one thing I always loved about the old Chat was the ability to have PMs in a separate window, being able to alt+tab through them, I wouldn't want them a part of the applet D: (though it's certainly very possible to do with Java, in fact it's probably quite easy)

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The way the chat is built, the colours of people are stored on the server and sent along with each message they send out. Therefore the userlist has no clue which colour a particular person has. We could however expand the information codes that get sent when a user joins the chat so that it includes the colour of the user, which would solve that issue.


Perhaps just the colours we get on the forums? (aka: blue) I'm perfectly able to send which colour a user has at the authentication at the forum, so it would be a possibility.


I was actually trying that out yesterday. Sadly enough the chat client is currently built up from AWT components - the old Java User Interface system. I'm planning on transforming the whole layout to Swing - the new Java UI system, which will make it possible to easily add such images (it's also possible in AWT, but I'm not too fond about modifying the paint() procedure. Anyway, I currently don't have the time for that, but I'll look into it when I do.


Having another font behind the name isn't exactly an easy thing to do right now (quite easy to do with Swing, I'd just use HTML). Nothing is impossible, but it'll take some time to get such a thing working properly.
Having more commands isn't overly complicated, we would have to add extra options on the server and on the client. But I wonder: is it of any use to have those other commands once Away is written out in full? Also, what is the purpose of giving yourself the Dead status? Its use eludes me...


I personally hate the bell because I've hardly seen *anyone* use it the way it was intended to be used. I'm even pretty certain that if I'd go over all bell messages, I would find out that no more than 3% of the bells were actually meant to notify people of something they've said. Nonetheless, it seems to have gotten popular, so I'm willing to have a stab at it after my exams (so in at least 3 weeks). In theory we should be able to load them somewhat the same way as we handle emoticons at the moment (so in an archive on the server).


Enable/Disable bell: that'll be there for certain if I get the bell going, Bolds & Italics: not impossible, but would need so many changes that I simply refuse to spend my time on it. Also, now that we finally have a clean chat window, I'm not really inclined to let it get cluttered again.


Flashchat doesn't actually even open a window, it's out of reach for Flash to open a window. If the PM windows are stored somewhere I can access it from the user list though, I'm willing to have a stab at putting a small button next to usernames with who you're having a conversation. Messages would still minimize to the task bar, but clicking that button in the userlist would then bring up that window again.


Don't you think that would look cluttered? In my opinion, the pros don't outweigh the time I'd have to put into that.


Hmm, that would be quite advanced. It would also force people to use the /join command to join a room (unless we provide a right-click option on the category and people actually manage to find that OR if we provide a small button, a plus sign or so, on the category title). Also, it will never look the way you are presenting it now. At minimum I'd be able to display the categories, but there won't be any spacing underneath the list of users of one room and the title of the next room. If there are more than x people in the chat, scrollbars have to appear in the userlist and therefore we'd be wasting space the way you currently propose it in the mock-up.
All in all, it's perfectly possible, and I'm willing to put time in it because all changes would be client-side. It'll probably have to wait till the client is transformed to the Swing UI though because otherwise it'll be overly complex to do.

Greetings,
Glodenox

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Glode, about the PM windows, all the information concerning them must be stored somewhere (even if it is just in the window itself) wouldn't it be fairly easy to just get a getText() on it or something, store it in a String (add any new messages to the string of course) and simply close the JFrame (assuming Swing) and create a new one once you want to open it again, restore the text in it, et voila

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Hi Jack

What's the point of coloured usernames? I don't see the purpose. An active mod/admin will speak if spoken too. That's why it's possible to beep them. I like the simple one coloured userlist with mods in bold. People with the power could be recognised quickly. Why do people need to know who a Board Mod is if they aren't speaking? Chances are if they are active they will respond to a forum PM just as quickly.

I wouldn't use up the green rank, there may be room to use the forum mod rank again in the future. The pink colour isn't an admin colour, it's only a mod colour with the extra ability to mute a chat mod. This would require more coding which I think for the time being should be saved to actually getting the chat into working order. I like the brown, it's a more boring and serious colour than red, pink, white or green. Besides brown is nostilagic.

The smiley list we used to have worked reasonable. It was similar to what the current chat has but it was broken up into sections... I forget what they actually were but for example there were sections such as: plain smileys, extra smileys and admin smileys. Your idea looks like something that resembles that

Most of the users that use flash chat actually migrated from the meepchat anyway so this won't be a problem. You may not remember how the away chat worked but if you typed "/away Gone to the shops, back in 5 mins " this would appear if you clicked on the users name so it is actually incredibly more informative than the flash chats brb, dead and busy functions. Surely the big A next to their name is enough to distinguish if a user is away? I think it is more something people will get used to in a week and is actually better than the current system anyway..

Why do you need a bell button? You can beep users or PM them. The PM actually brings up a new window so even if they have their sound or beeps set to off you can still get their attention.

I dislike the idea of bold or italic text, is it really needed? Unless you have future plans to force people using sarcasm to speak in italics or something...?

I see the flash chats version of PMs and containing them to the one window as a disadvantage. I can see your opposition to it though. Maybe somewhere down the track this could be an option that users could choose to turn on/off at their leisure? I don't think removing it all together would be best as I find it quite useful at times.


I really didn't like this feature which is why I decided not to use it. Besides, wasn't it's main purpose to make it possible for people to differentiate who is a chat mod and who isn't? Bold does that in meepchat.

The spam room suggestion could work and is quite a good idea, but again, can't it wait until the chat is live and running?


I think that a good start would be if fant (and glod) could get something up and running that had the same functionality as the old meepchat. Once this was achieved I'm sure all these other ideas could be debated and put into some kind of order.

Before any of the superficial things you mentioned I think it would be within the moderators interests to develop a better IP tracking system. The old system with typing /query and then having to log into the mod control panel, finding the right tab and manually typing in the IP addresses to find a match was a pain. Then having to try several more searches to find a wildcard match.. The old ban page was also a pain. It was extremely hard to use as it wasn't put into pages but all dumped onto the one page. This put stress on my internet connection and my browser. This was further complicated when people would ban certain things and also bbcode. Such as being able to ban an image and have it appear in the chat ban log... This then went ahead and stretched parts of the database

The mod cp definately needs to come with improved functionality this time around

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What we've got here is failure to communicate.

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Mack, I don't know if you've tried the chat out, but it is basically at the point that it can do almost anything the old chat could, and some extras

also /query still works

The old modCP was extremely useful (when it worked) I bet the chat mods would love to have a new one

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.setVisibilty(true); to show the Window and False to hide it ?

It will take a little bit of Memory - but will be very easy

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Right now the PM Windows are Frames, not JFrames. But setVisible also works on them (JFrame is just a type of Frame as far as I'm aware), so that would be possible.

Instead of the Bold and Italics, perhaps we could have a "Hide PM windows" which would then work with the userlist instead of the task bar. That is, if we manage to get such a button in the userlist

Greetings,
Glodenox

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Yeah, wasn't sure if that would actually remove it from the taskbar or if it would just not paint the window

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That would be great.


Anything but brown.


Sounds good.


Dead status is just for fun. It means you're dead.
Away differs from BRB and Busy, especially Busy. Someone may not be away, but they may be busy.


Good thing we'll have the option to turn off the bell sound! I completely understand why you hate the bell, but a lot of us really really like it.


Ah, that sucks, I thought it would be an easy change.


A few people have posted responses to this while I've been writing out my post. Still not sure if it's 100% possible, but it sounds like it might be (or I could have misunderstood something).


Not really, it's a feature we have in flashchat and it doesn't look too cluttered right now. It's not absolutely necessary, but it would be nice.


It's only one line of space per category, maybe you can increase the overall height of the chatroom to make up for that lost space.

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TBH the main reason why I want that change is because the userlist looks really boring, it could use some color. Plus it's always convenient to know exactly which users are mods/admins, especially for newer users.


I don't like boring and serious. Pink should be available, there's no need for two types of chatmods (those that can mute and those that can't... they should all be able to mute ).

How much more coding would be needed? It's just a matter of changing the admin name color.


Yeah but that smiley list didn't show the actual smiley images in the list, did it?


I know, but some of us have gotten used to the new features in flashchat and that should not be ignored just because the similar javachat features are good enough. Also, away means that you're AFK for a long period of time, BRB means you'll be back in a few mins, and busy means that you're at you're computer, but not able to spend a lot of time chatting. It's nice to have more status options.

How is (A) better than (Away), (BRB), (Busy)? Users who are not familiar with javachat will have no idea what it means, and we can't expect them to click it to figure out what it means. I guess after a while everyone would get used to it, but when I enter a chatroom I like to know what's going on, I don't want it to take me a few days to figure everything out.

Dead is a status born from the mafia chatroom. It's basically just there for fun.


Ringing the bell is just one of those fun little things to do in chat. It's different from beeping or PMing a user because you're not always trying to get a person's attention with a bell.

Sometimes we like to see how many times we can ring the bell before someone breaks the combo.

A lot of us like the bell, but users who don't like it can easily turn it off.


No, I don't plan to force anyone to use bold or italics. Some people like having bold text, some people (like me) like using bold/italics to emphasize a word or phrase.


How is it a disadvantage? It saves taskbar space.



What feature are you referring to?



I guess, but I don't see why it can't be done now, unless it's something really difficult.



That's basically where they're at right now. MeepBot still needs a bit of work, but I'm pretty sure everything else is up to speed.


We have a pretty nifty IP-check command in flashchat, /whois. It displays this information:

User=Jackstick room=RV Chat created=08:58 lang=en tz=360 ip=<removed> host=<removed>


No arguments here. I don't know anything about the javachat mod cp because I wasn't a mod in those days.

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Basically the old modCP was just a webpage you could open from the chat by typing /modcp

From there you could look up IPs user shave logged in from (like the IP thing on the forums) look up what users have logged in from an IP (like the forums) and see the permanent ban list, and the temp ban list

The temp ban list only contained people currently banned I think, and the other one was just a log of all bans

You could make comments on all those things too or all othe rmods to see, but no one really used it

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About the italics and bold thing, Just use html ?

Java works with HTML

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Would that also make it possible to turn bold/italics on and off in the middle of a message, like it I just want one word or a few words to be bold/italics?

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Yeah - similar to the forums


half a message



But you would be doing < instead of [ and > instead of ]

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Correction: Swing works with HTML. AWT didn't have a clue about HTML - at least, that's what I was always told.

Also, I'd never allow plain HTML in those messages, that's way too dangerous for exploits and abuse.

Greetings,
Glodenox

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