A new chat room is available

[Robert]

I've added a new chat room that overcomes some of the limitations of the old chat room. I'll run both in parallel for a while to see which one is preferred by the community. You can access the chat room by clicking "Chat Rooms" on the upper, far right navbar. A drop down menu will show both chat rooms with the new one on top. Just click on "Flash Chat" and a separate window will be spawned and off you go.

Here are some of the features of the new chatroom:

1. Written using Flash.
2. No blinking and no mangled lines.
3. Multiple color themes.
4. You can upload your own background image.
5. Sound can be enabled/muted for 16 different events.
6. You can save chat sessions
7. You can create new chat rooms
8. When you are the only one in the chat, Carly will personally greet and talk to you!

I'll be adding a "Who's in Chat" at the bottom of the forum page shortly. It will be similar to what we have for the old chat room. Try it out and let me know what you think.

--Robert

[Robert]

It seems the new chat room is causing logout problems with the main website so I need to disable the chat room until I can figure out what is wrong. The original website is still available however.

--Robert

[Robert]

Chat room is operational again. Loging out should not be a problem anymore. Have you guys meet Carly yet? She comes out to talk to you when you are the only one in the Lounge.

[Masa Hiryuu]

In the new Flash chat is there a way to show the text of what was said in the chat room before you logged into it? so that users can catch up on topics if they come in in the middle of a discussion.

[Robert]

In the new Flash chat is there a way to show the text of what was said in the chat room before you logged into it? so that users can catch up on topics if they come in in the middle of a discussion.

Hi Masa. Great suggestion! I have configured the chat room to remember the previous 2 days worth of conversation. That may be too much and I may need to reduce it later on, especially once it gets higher traffic. Have you met Carly yet?

P.S. Happy Birthday to you!

[Robert]

There is a new release of the chat room software. I made some of the updates that might increase performance, but will hold off on the rest, due to fear I will break it right before the chat session tomorrow. I'm a little concerned about performance when several people use the chat room. Other website owners have reported problems when 20-25 users use it. I'll post here once I update it and I'll list any changes that you will notice.

Also, I lowered the messages shown at login to 1 days worth. Again, concerned about performance and clutter.

Regards,
--Robert

[Robert]

The new chat room has been updated to the latest release of the software. The code has been optimized better, some bugs fixed, and I think Carly is speaking better too.