 September 5, 2007 - 9:26am | I really like the idea. It will take a lot of work, though. For example, I can't do it with the chat applet I have now. I simply don't have the level of control I would need, and it's a third-party non-open-source chat program. That means I'd have to either 1) make something myself or 2) find some open-source project to adapt (I've done that with a great deal of the site). Currently, you *can* do as you're suggesting, but it's in a separate window. The real estate on my laptop's monitor is sufficient that I can have the website in one window and next to it have the java popup window. But not everyone has that setup. I do like the idea. Frames are considered bad programming by today's standard, but it's the simplest way to create such a section, in my opinion. I'll start exploring open-source chat applications. There must be something I can adapt. Creating one from scratch would take a LONG time. 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
 September 5, 2007 - 10:41am | Yeah, I've seen stuff that says that, but I've never understood why frames are considered bad programming. I've seen some really great sites that utilize frames. Heck, most email programs use frames. The thing is, frames aren't what make bad programming. Frames are a tool that can be properly use or it can be misused and abused. I think what they mean when they say frames are bad programming is that people use frames when they don't need to. Just to navigate from one page to the next, you don't need frames. But when you have a trick to apply to a sight, such as navigating emails or adding a fixed chat applet, then frames are necessary and make for good potential for new things such as this. What would be bad programming is to have the chat applet but reload it every time you navigate to a new page. Besides clearing the screen, it wears on bandwidth and pageload time. |
September 5, 2007 - 11:04am | I agree with all you've said, honestly. I'm thinking about real estate currently. Where would such a static chat box go?! It won't fit anywhere if I try to keep to the 1024 pixel-wide theme I'm currently using. :-( 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
September 5, 2007 - 11:33am | Lots of programming in this particular idea, but here it goes: A slide-in window from the right. The way Geocities or Yahoo has the bar to right. Except you would default it to the closed position. You can put an indicator on the leading edge of the bar showing that someone has sent a chat text within the last 30 seconds or something. Maybe even a two light system. A green light shows activity within the last 30 seconds or a minute and a red light shows activity within the last 1 second, so that you can see how much activity is taking place without having to open the slide-in. I realize how much programming that would be, but I figure I'd toss that out there. |
September 5, 2007 - 10:15pm | wow yeah that does sound nice... but maybe a bit beyond my abilities. But then again who knows? This whole site was beyond my abilities about six weeks ago :-) I don't know that I can provide what you've described, but I'll see what I'm able to provide. If the chat can't hide in some way, and if you don't want it in some kind of window, then I'm really out of screen space for it. 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
September 5, 2007 - 10:44pm | There are sites that provide coding for such things. It's not too hard it just takes time and a lot of error checking. javascript2.org should have it. |
September 8, 2007 - 5:29am | You could name the chat slide-in bar something like SiteComp or Chat Progit. Speaking of Star Frontiers nominclature, how about calling the Navigation menu the Astrogation menu?haha... cute. Yesterday I proposed calling our private messaging system "StarMail" or "Chronocom Relay Message" or something... but a couple users in chat shot that down saying "use what people can identify with" and "there's enough meat on the site that some people will be overwhelmed already" and stuff. I figured I'd keep things identifyable. |
