Chat Revisited
 

Okay - it looks like for the new website, we'll have to get a new chat system. I'm going to post several different chat demos in this thread - I'd appreciate it if folks could try and use these chats, and see what happens, and which ones you prefer. Keep in mind that these chat systems will automatically logged in with your user name when it's integrated into the Aural Moon site in the end.

When you describe if the chat works, or doesn't, please list your:

computer type & speed
internet connection type
web browser

Thanks for the help! Also, if you find a chat system out there that you'd think we'd like to use, post it here!

Avian

first one to try out
 

Try:

FlashChat (Flash must be installed). Username: Guest Pass: Guest

There are other chats that aren't out there yet. I'll post a link to that soon once they're stable.

I'm probably being dumb but.....
 

Tried Flashchat and was told that user called Guest was already logged in........... :(

PC Pentium( R ) 4 CPU 3.00Ghz (Using MS Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2)
2.99 Ghx 1Gb Ram

1 mg Broadband

AOL

**************************************************

Tried again after poda left. Seems very similar to one we used to have on the home Page a while back.

that didn't get to many fans among the morning crew I seem to remember. I thought it was OK though.........but then I'm English and use a PC ;)

flash chat
 

macintosh G4, OS 10.3.9, firefox 1.0.4 browser. DSL line i believe.

seems to work fine, however i was there by myself. :D

Windows XP Professional.........Pentium 4..........3.2........2 gig RAM.....Right now.......extremely varied broadband. Works well, no problem logging in but as with Poda........all by myself.

Forgot my browser........:aua: Mozilla/Firefox at the moment.

I clicked on the link, and was there with aaa and punkais....i knew neither. i asked "where am I" and one said "in a chat room". Then they left. Quite strange.

I have windows xp.

Re: Chat Revisited
 

Seemed to work great and looks way better than white room. However, I was alone, and I don't like the various noises and buzzers - distracts from the music. I didn't check but if the sounds can be turned off - it's got my vote.

Cable modem, IE, Dell Dimension 8200. I have no idea about my speed or even how to find out :dunno:

Re: first one to try out
 

This works nicely Avian. You can customise the font size which is nice for those of us that have been around since the early days of rock-n-roll. ;)

My only concern is that it is Flash... very CPU intensive.

Flashchat - it seems to use a littel CPU intensive, but on my little 1 GHz PC, it was OK. It's a memory hog, that's for sure. We'll have to test it again to be sure.

Try this one - it looks a lot like SP Chat:

X7 Chat

Re: Re: first one to try out
 

I just tried it out on my 333 MHz P2 (broadband, IE). All of my actions had about a 3 second delay. I rarely use the chat, so I personally don't care, but some people using similarly ancient machines might find it a bit sluggish.

Re: Re: Re: first one to try out
 

Hey Bob!


Good lord! 333 MHz P2? Well, I think around 1 GHz P5/AMD is probably the "base" system that I'll go with - that's just too old to try and gear it towards.

What browser are you using, pray tell? I can't believe Flash even runs on your machine.

Re: Re: Re: Re: first one to try out
 

Internet Explorer 6. I can get by alright on most flash websites provided they don't try anything too fancy. I agree that my system is probably too old to gear towards.

FLASH
 

Flash - Bang

Got in OK but did something so the whole page zoomed in and I had get difficulty in seeing the panel on the right.

Has advantages over SP chat but lacks the nickname possibility

Feels like the old chat on the website and I wonder if it's stable

Don't bother if its CPU hungry - not worth it

The day Vax has no reservations about anything I'll have a heart attack and drop dead.

I have a XP 3 Ghz machine with 1 Giga RAM running XP and Explorer

I like this because it's lean... and it works with Safari... unlike SPChat.

Re: FLASH
 

Gigaherts Schmigahertz... clock speed doesn't mean squat.

However, I would rather have my CPU chugging cycles on something useful instead of the braindamaged idle loops in the Flash engine clock and event scheduler.

I prefer X7 to Flash.
I like very much simplicity and climate of current SPC and IMHO some very modern looking chats may have technology but miss that old atmo of AM White Room.
Presence of this is for me the criterion number 1.

Sempron 2800+, 512 RAM, 640 kb broadband, Avant Browser.

flash is nice...
 

but the x7 simpler.


my 2¢
O_o

I prefer the black box, I like to see who's around etc. The white is ok...I'm sure you'll pick the right one.

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.

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.

Technobabble = :headscrat or :shootmeno or even :bash:

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

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. :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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

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?
:hrm:

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