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Post by MegaDude on May 28, 2010 1:59:02 GMT -5
Hey Everyone, I just activated the free version of the Live Chat addon that's available for each forum as an experiment. You can get to it by clicking on the item in the top menu or by going to postapocalypticforum.com/index.cgi?action=chatI don't really know exactly how it works. I'm pretty sure it's restricted to forum members, but I'm not entirely sure. Can someone try it out and see if they can get in? I'd hate for a live chat to detract from actual forum posts, but it might come in handy for certain kinds of discussions, like a potential book club we're considering. Let me know what you guys think.
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Post by blightedbaz on May 28, 2010 7:30:02 GMT -5
Chatted with myself for a few lines...looks like it works fine. I was thinking book club as well, are you going to post a thread in the books section?
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Post by MegaDude on May 28, 2010 15:01:09 GMT -5
By the way, if you click on the Live Chat link and it tells you you need to install Java, then you can get it from www.java.com/en/downloadThen after you install it and restart your browser, it should work fine.
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Post by MegaDude on May 29, 2010 1:54:02 GMT -5
Was chatting with Denny in the live chat, and he got me thinking about whether we should just register a channel on good old IRC for our chat. The basic chat we've got now seems to work ok, but the free version is a bit limited.
I've mentioned before that I have the patience of a 2-year old, so I went ahead and set up a channel called #post-apocalyptic on irc.foonetic.net.
So what do you guys think? Simple Java-based chat that links from the forum, or IRC chat room that you can get to from any IRC client?
I'm ok with whatever the forum members choose, but I guess if I had a choice I'd prefer the IRC method, since I can login to it from Pidgin (my instant messaging client) and so could basically stay in there all the time. We can also password protect the channel if we want to keep it sort of restricted to members.
The Java-based chat is definitely easier to use, but at least here on my current laptop, it eats up a bit of processor. And it automatically logs you out after a period of inactivity, which we can't change. So you can't just hang out in there unless you keep typing something.
Chime in with your opinions.
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Corny
Wasteland Warlord
Posts: 281
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Post by Corny on May 29, 2010 4:12:41 GMT -5
Well, I wanted to ask if you could just register an IRC channel instead of that Java chat, so I guess you can imagine my opinion
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Denny
Survivor
For Future Reference [F4:DennyHaze]
Posts: 45
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Post by Denny on May 29, 2010 8:41:10 GMT -5
Opera has IRC built-in (Under chat), and firefox has the ChatZilla add-on, which is very easy to use. It even dumbs down a lot of irc commands. Chrome, from what I've found, doesn't have an adequate irc addon, but Safari does have something. In addition, there's countless of web clients.
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Denny
Survivor
For Future Reference [F4:DennyHaze]
Posts: 45
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Post by Denny on May 29, 2010 13:25:43 GMT -5
Alright, so we tested this IRC thing out a bit, and the direct link is irc://irc.foonetic.net/post-apocalypticIf you click that when using Internet Explorer you should just get a "Page not found" message, unless you have an irc program tied to that. If you are using Opera it should automatically open the Opera Chat, and connect you to that channel. If you're using FireFox, and have ChatZilla, or other irc/chat addons installed it will use those to connect you. If you do not have any IRC compatible addon installed FireFox will open a window prompting you to choose an application to use for the link. In the list you should see Mibbit (www.mibbit.com) as a suggestion, and a possible choice to connect to our irc. Below that there should be a "Choose" button, that allows you to browse your computer for an IRC compatible program, if you have one installed, and not associated. I am not able to test what happens, if you open the link using Google Chrome, or Apple Safari (or any other browsers you might use.) If you have any problems connecting, or questions/suggestions do post them.
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Post by wastelandz on May 29, 2010 16:46:09 GMT -5
Well, I wanted to ask if you could just register an IRC channel instead of that Java chat, so I guess you can imagine my opinion I agree about that. Irc is so much better than javastuff. At least for me who uses linux.
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Post by MegaDude on May 29, 2010 16:59:25 GMT -5
Well, I wanted to ask if you could just register an IRC channel instead of that Java chat, so I guess you can imagine my opinion I agree about that. Irc is so much better than javastuff. At least for me who uses linux. Hey Wastelandz, I've been using Ubuntu/Mint for 90% of my home computing for several years now. Always cool to meet another fan of opensource stuff. I think I'll go ahead and pull that Java-chat link for now, and see if anyone has any problems hooking up with the IRC channel. It's easy enough to install an IRC client, or just head to mibbit.com if you don't want to bother installing anything.
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Post by MegaDude on Jun 6, 2010 3:22:15 GMT -5
OK, the live chat experiment is proceeding to the next stage. Using IRC for our live chat has many advantages over the Java-based chat built-in to the forum. But at the same time, the Java chat is way easier to use, and that ease might be what is needed to get anyone to bother logging in. So, this next test tries to blend the best of both worlds. I've signed up for a free (ad-supported) Java chat widget that allows you to connect to our IRC channel with zero setup or additional software required (beyond making sure Java is installed on your machine of course). That chat room is at www.megat0n.com/chat.htm Then I found a Javascript that let me add a new button into the forum menu, so now when you click Live Chat up there, it will send you over to the chat page on Megat0n.com. It's still Java based, like the other one we tried, but it auto-connects you to our IRC channel with one click. You just need to choose a username that's not already in use. As usual, I'd appreciate any suggestions or feedback.
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King of the Wastes
Wasteland King
GTFO MY PORCH [F4:PA_Earth][F4:KingoftheWaste]
Posts: 1,910
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Post by King of the Wastes on Jun 8, 2010 13:00:32 GMT -5
I will try this out, I use xfire and steam a lot for this sort of stuff mostly though.
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Corny
Wasteland Warlord
Posts: 281
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Post by Corny on Jun 17, 2013 11:35:23 GMT -5
I really hope at least the chatroom would fill up a bit. There's a lot of stuff that's not necessarily connected with PA you can talk about in a chat, but wouldn't post in the forum.
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Corny
Wasteland Warlord
Posts: 281
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Post by Corny on Jun 19, 2013 12:14:24 GMT -5
One thing I like to add. Some of us (well, at least me) use a dedicated IRC client which we might not be staring at all the time. So, if you join and nobody answers to your "Hi" immediately, don't just sob and leave again. Just highlight someone (i.e. say their nickname) - people with IRC clients usually get notified when they're highlighted. Of course, that doesn't make sense when someone is away. You should be able to see that pretty easily, though, if someone has "AFK" at the end of his or her nickname
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Post by KevinTheCynic on Jun 20, 2013 4:11:27 GMT -5
Overall I like and support the idea of the chat channels. Unfortunately I won't be able to participate much because my timezone usually puts me into daytime when you guys are in nighttime
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