Chat Revisited

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Avian
One thing I'm looking into is combining the white and black room, if it's possible. Have this sitting in one pane on the main page that would be the main chatroom. I know people have done this with FlashChat, but I don't think it's a good idea to having to download the flash app and have CPU cycles running right on the main page. I dunno. Maybe it's possible with the X7, too.

The white room is a specialized feature, and is not utilized that often mainly because it's labor intensive. You just can't chat and do anything else. I have that issue in black also, but I can always get up and walk away, come back and see what I missed.

I also like to see what's going on that day. Especially in my situation as a DJ (and especially since the friggin scheduler doesn't work!), I need the black box.

Please don't mess with a good thing...tweak the white room all you want, but the black box is a good thing.

[Avian(Admin)]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
The white room is a specialized feature, and is not utilized that often mainly because it's labor intensive. You just can't chat and do anything else. I have that issue in black also, but I can always get up and walk away, come back and see what I missed.

I also like to see what's going on that day. Especially in my situation as a DJ (and especially since the friggin scheduler doesn't work!), I need the black box.

Please don't mess with a good thing...tweak the white room all you want, but the black box is a good thing.

I think you misunderstood - I'm talking about making the black box the white box as well. In other words, there wouldn't be a white room - the black room on the main page would be the only chat feature on Aural Moon.

The black room is changing a little too with the new website, since we have to migrate to new software. But the new one will be a huge improvement. The only thing that may be different to some people is that you may have to type in your smilies instead of click on them to insert them in there. But we'd be working on click-in smilies for the future.

[Yesspaz]

Technobabble = or or even

I say whatever keeps the CPU usage the lowest to minimize buffering. If that's got nothing to do with this, nevermind.

[Wojtek]

Originally posted by Avian
I think you misunderstood - I'm talking about making the black box the white box as well. In other words, there wouldn't be a white room - the black room on the main page would be the only chat feature on Aural Moon.

Avian, the blacbox seems to be used as a feature for greetings, short faff, tool for Moonies at work. I can't imagine that people who are working are up to date with discussion in white room. Too much is goin on there, this is ordinary chat.

Both these rooms are chats but mixing them is in fact mixing COMPLETELY different things. Please think it over. Thank you.

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
Technobabble = or or even

I say whatever keeps the CPU usage the lowest to minimize buffering. If that's got nothing to do with this, nevermind.

The station and the web site are two different entities.

Currently, SPChat chews up CPU cycles needlessly due to the scrolling "SPChat Welcome" in the bottom left corner. I've found that this can be stopped if you position your mouse over the SPChat logo graphic when it comes around. A small "_" link will appear when you do so. Click on it and it will stop this scrolling.

FWIW, this scrolling, animated GIFs, and certain Flash mechanisms tend to loop (idle loops waiting to break out to do something useful) and consume CPU cycles doing nothing. The results are often times more insidious than the C language select() function.

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Wojtek
Avian, the blacbox seems to be used as a feature for greetings, short faff, tool for Moonies at work. I can't imagine that people who are working are up to date with discussion in white room. Too much is goin on there, this is ordinary chat.

Both these rooms are chats but mixing them is in fact mixing COMPLETELY different things. Please think it over. Thank you.

Thank you Woj.

Ultimately, any decisions I adjust to. But there's a general shout and a more intensive discussion. Upgrade as you see fit, but the chat features work nicely and are unique to the Moon.

[Wojtek]

Unique and fantastic. I think that in present form (and I don't mean SPC but division into 2 rooms) it's one of AM's stunning features.

[progdirjim(Admin)]

I like the look of the Flash chat, but not enough to sway the decision if performance will take a hit.

Spaz, it's quite easy to turn sounds off in "options - sounds"

I had no performance issues with either, but I'm on a 1.6GHz machine with loads of RAM, ROM and magnetic core memory (just kidding Vax)

IE6, cable modem at home/T3 at work, blah, blah blah

[VAXman(Admin)]

Originally posted by progdirjim
I like the look of the Flash chat, but not enough to sway the decision if performance will take a hit.

Spaz, it's quite easy to turn sounds off in "options - sounds"

I had no performance issues with either, but I'm on a 1.6GHz machine with loads of RAM, ROM and magnetic core memory (just kidding Vax)

IE6, cable modem at home/T3 at work, blah, blah blah

Powerbook G4 17" 1.5 PowerPPC with 2GB RAM and a T1 and Cable modem...

It doesn't matter. It's wasting CPU cycles (and on a faster machine, it just wastes 'em faster) like driving a Hummer SUV in circles wastes gas.

It's also more data (the flash code) that will be sent repeatedly and needlessly down my T1.

[Avian(Admin)]

Originally posted by VAXman
Powerbook G4 17" 1.5 PowerPPC with 2GB RAM and a T1 and Cable modem...

It doesn't matter. It's wasting CPU cycles (and on a faster machine, it just wastes 'em faster) like driving a Hummer SUV in circles wastes gas.

It's also more data (the flash code) that will be sent repeatedly and needlessly down my T1.

Yeah, I'm thinking of those kinds of issues. The new shoutbox will make a huge, huge difference with the site bandwidth and server load.

I'm leaning toward the X7 chat right now - it's pretty speedy and clean.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

I've checked them both out and have to throw my weight behind X7 as well. Flash is all well and good, but Vax is right -- it's a lot of bandwidth that can be better used elsewhere. There really isn't anything in Flash Chat that makes the extra load worthwhile (at least that I've seen).

Just my $.02.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Oh, and a serious kudo on this new forum package: this quick reply feature rocks my happy little world all to pieces.

Now I can spew twice as fast!

Although I'm wondering if there's any line length or character count allowed for this feature. I note there are indeed scrollbars that pop up after a sufficient amount of time. The only question then is if there's a limit to my spewage in this feature.

Alas, I'm sure time will tell...

[Avian(Admin)]

We would've evaluated X7 last year, but it was still in development back then. I wnat to clean up the look of it too - hopefully, it'll work

[teermin8r]

I like the X7 Chat MUCH, Much better than FlashChat. And having one chat is fine with me on the main page. Did I tell you I like the lighter colors? I think I did, but if I didn't let me just say I like the lighter colors and the X7 chat.

[Roger -Dot- Lee(Admin)]

Originally Posted by teermin8r

I like the X7 Chat MUCH, Much better than FlashChat. And having one chat is fine with me on the main page. Did I tell you I like the lighter colors? I think I did, but if I didn't let me just say I like the lighter colors and the X7 chat.

Well, I see your point, Tee, but I'm not at all fond of the stock skin. It's too much of a "grab you by the throat and shriek unintelligible nonsense in your face before dopeslapping you and leaving you to wonder just what the heck happened. Perhaps something in a medium type theme?

[Rick and Roll]

Originally Posted by Roger Lee

Just my $.02.

Keep that up and we'll have plenty of money in no time!