Give your input on chat

[rawTOP]

1 hour ago, punaman said:

Don't like the background. No pics needed, it detracts from the chat.  Don't like the white vertical "bars" on the comments.

The vertical bars are there because it's quoted text from someone else's comment. It distinguishes it from the remark that person is making. 

An option to turn off background pics and enable sound will be coming for accessibility reasons. 

[Guest GoodExercise]

Something as close in look and feel to the old chat would be good.  

[BlindRawFucker1]

Thanks for adding sound notifications.

 

Yes, they can get irritating, but they are extremely helpful.

 

Being able to just hit "return" would also make things a lot easier.

 

Thanks for listening to all of the "complaints" comments about all of your hard work.

 

Extremely appreciated.

[rawTOP]

2 hours ago, GoodExercise said:

Something as close in look and feel to the old chat would be good.  

1. I have no recollection of what it looked liked
2. Why?

[rawTOP]

The comment box is now smaller. But it will grow as you type stuff in it.

The backgrond image has been "tamed" by putting a mostly opaque color behind the comments.

I'll work on sound now. Otherwise, let me know your feedback on how it stands now.

[rawTOP]

There is now the option to play a sound when new messages come in (and turn off said sound). And your sound preference will be observed when you come back the ne

Also, the new background for new messages goes black when they come in and then goes back to normal when they're no longer new messages. (It gets a bit confusing when a whole bunch come in at once).

So let me know what else you guys want…

[BlindRawFucker1]

Thanks for the sound.

[bootmandc]

8 hours ago, GoodExercise said:

Something as close in look and feel to the old chat would be good.  

Understand my hero GoodE's point.

5 hours ago, rawTOP said:

1. I have no recollection of what it looked liked
2. Why?

Ok you asked - so here go my thoughts. (I know the misery of designing a new system so you have my respect.)  Screens are just TOO BIG.   In the old group chat, all the posts were basically in one box.  I could read and follow the chatter, step away, come back and still see the convo.  Now, it's scrolling up and down to see who said what, and the format is difficult to review or make sense of, much less engage in the chatter.  IMHO, this format might be fine for 1:1, but it's really not conducive for a group chat like we had before where folks were making lewd and lascivious comments all over.  I'll keep trying it a bit, but it's challenging.  The few times I've been in did not make me want to come back.  How's that? ...   

[Pozboy79]

We all greatly appreciate the hard work and effort you're putting into this, thank you so much RawTop.  A couple of things:

The font is really visually unappealing to me, and as others have said, its also just too big--on my laptop screen I can read about 6 messages in total.  

Are there any plans to have the ability to private chat?  I'm never been one that really enjoyed group chat, I prefer 1 on 1 conversations. 

It would be nice if the names of the people who are in the chatroom were more prominently displayed--perhaps at the top of the page so you dont have to scroll the way to find them, or in a sidebar to the right or left of the main chat window.  Its hard to find at the bottom where it is now.

[rawTOP]

If you're on a computer and the fonts are too big, your browser will have the option to make them bigger/smaller (it's command + and command - on the Mac – I assume it's something similar on Windows – all browsers have it so they comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act). On a smart phone it's more complicated. On iPhones i'ts a system setting – which isn't granular enough, I know. But the point in, font size is a personal preference.

I did notice that the profile pics were too big when I was on my iPhone. That's been resolved.

As far as the placement of the list of who's online – it's just above where you type a reply. That seemed to me to be the most sensible place to put it. From that area you can see 1) new responses, 2) who's typing a reply, and 3) who's online – all things you may want to know as you're typing your own response. If I put things at the top as well that would increase the "jitteriness" of the page when there's an update and the page has to resize to accommodate the new list of who's online. And there is no sidebar because I take a "mobile first" approach to design. So I see more negatives with the other solutions than I see positives.

[kywolf]

I  tend  to  agree  with  Hungrypighole's  take  on " 1 on 1 chat".   Sometimes  a private  conversation  with  another member  in chat  is  preferable  to  everyone  being  subjected  to  it.

[shinelover]

I used the new chat for the first time yesterday. Since I was on my laptop the page and font size didn't bother me at all. I did find that I had to keep refreshing the page because messages weren't showing up. After a refresh suddenly it showed several messages posted minutes earlier.

When I posted my comments, sometimes it did show up that I'd posted it 20 minutes earlier, so that's a little bit hinky. The delay and refresh thing wasn't constant because some messages showed up as they came in, along with the notification sound.

Overall I like it. The background is fine by me, and like I said the size and font work for me, too. Being able to do private chats is really the only thing I was missing. Good job, though. Thanks rawTOP -you keep us pigs happy!

[rawTOP]

37 minutes ago, shinelover said:

I did find that I had to keep refreshing the page because messages weren't showing up. After a refresh suddenly it showed several messages posted minutes earlier.

When I posted my comments, sometimes it did show up that I'd posted it 20 minutes earlier, so that's a little bit hinky. The delay and refresh thing wasn't constant because some messages showed up as they came in, along with the notification sound.

It polls the server for new messages every 12-45 seconds (12 seconds if it knows someone is typing a response, 25 seconds normally, and 45 if you're the only person in chat). So you shouldn't need to refresh the page. That said, it won't poll for new remarks if the page is not visible. So if you jump to another tab, while you're on that tab chat will not refresh.

I've just done two things to make it feel faster. I've dropped the regular refresh from 30 to 25 seconds, and I've implemented a 3 second max refresh when coming back after the tab is hidden.

Also really weird that it would show new comments as 20 minutes old. Given time zone issues, time is actually pretty tricky to get right. I give the browser the datetime on the server, and when the page is loaded it determines how much the browser time is off from the server time and then all of that gets used to calculate how long ago a remark was posted. Definitely let me know if you continue to see problems with times.

[shinelover]

Thanks, rawTOP. And you're right -I was bouncing between tabs sometimes, so that explains it. The thing about the posts showing up saying they were 20 minutes old -I forgot to mention that after a minute or so it did correct itself. So who knows what happened there.

Anyway, thanks for all the hard work  

[rawTOP]

4 minutes ago, shinelover said:

Thanks, rawTOP. And you're right -I was bouncing between tabs sometimes, so that explains it. The thing about the posts showing up saying they were 20 minutes old -I forgot to mention that after a minute or so it did correct itself. So who knows what happened there.

There's a background process that runs every minute that updates how long ago a remark was made. It also gets kicked off after new comments are written to the page. Odd that it was wrong the first time. It's the same code. But it helps hearing that.