New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi everyone,

I'm happy to announce the newest feature on AikiWeb.com:

The AikiChat Real-Time Chat Room
http://www.aikiweb.com/chat

You'll now be able to chat with AikiWeb members from all over the world in real-time! I'm hoping to schedule special "chat" times for special topic discussions (eg "Let's meet on Thursday at 6:00pm EST to discuss beginners' ukemi issues").

A few notes:

• You'll need to be an active AikiWeb Member in order to use the chat room.
• The "chat area" refreshes about every eight seconds. When this happens, you may see that area "blink." This is expected and is, unfortunately, necessary.
• In order to send a "private message" (a message only seen by the recipient) to someone , you can use a command of the following format:
  /msg [recipient's username] Hi! How are you!
  You can also click on the user's name in the right pane to put in a default private message template in your Message area. Simply click on their name and then edit the "<Your Private MSG Here>" to your message.
• To do an "action," type something like:
  /me does a forward roll
  The above will show "*USERNAME does a forward roll*" in the chat area.
• There are some user settings that you can set for the chat room including your username color/font and "ignore" features. Click on the "AikiChat User Preferences" link near the top of the chat window.
• The "Show Archive" button will launch a new window with the last 100 messages. You can use this window to "catch up" with recent messages.
• The time on the left of each message should be your local time when the message was posted. If it is incorrect, make sure that your Options Preferences are set correctly (including Daylight Savings TIme (DST) settings).
• You'll need a browser that can handle "Iframes." If your browser doesn't work well with the chat room, I suggest using a newer browser. My personal recommendation would be the Firefox browser.

As always, please do not forget that the primary rule on AikiWeb is, "Treat your fellow AikiWeb members with respect." The same rule is also primary in the AikiChat area.

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues, and I'll do my best to resolve them.

Enjoy!

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Very cool!

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Finally :D

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Thanks Jun: looks interesting. Let us know when there will be a topic chat- I'll try and check it out then.
E ya later
Jill.

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Jun,

Looks good. I noticed that when I send a <private> message that it says "To Maikerus" instead of "To Xuzen"

For example, when I put this "/msg [xuzen] <Your Private MSG Here>" in the message box I get

To maikerus (private): <Your Private MSG Here>

Coming up. Shouldn't that be "To Xuzen" as the person sending the message. When I receive the message it says its from the right person. This seems to only happen as the poster.

cheers,

--Michael

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi MIchael,

Thanks for the bug report. It should be fixed now...

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Very cool!

I am going to have to get my staff to have the page blocked. I wouldn't get any work done!!! :D

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi everyone,

I'm glad you're finding the new AikiChat feature fun and interesting!

There are more new features (outside of AikiChat) coming up, too. Stay tuned!

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi all:
The chat thing is great fun. I'm having a bit of difficulty though....
I find it hard to get caught up on the conversation sometimes when I go on because when I screen up to read what has been said, it keeps dragging me back to the bottom when it refreshes. I have double vision so I just get focussed, and then........DOH? (no- it has nothing to do with use of social lubricants the night before...really!)

Any suggestions are welcome. This really is a problem for me.

e ya later
Jill

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi Jill,

Try clicking on the "Show Archive" button next to the "Post" button. It should pop up a window with the most recent batch of messages in it that won't do any refreshes.

Hope that helps,

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Nice idea Jun, thanks for adding it. I haven't caught anyone on it yet though (guess it is hit or miss), should we do something like post that we are going to the chat room to see if anyone wants to join in?
Again, nice idea!

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

You can type in Japanese in it too.... nifty..

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Looks like the chat program I wrote in perl a few years ago. Man chatting using http is kludgy.

Just wondering why you went this approach instead of say... setting up an IRC channel and providing a java client on the webpage?

Not criticising by any means, but just wondering what you had to consider.

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Oh my GOD. If I actually participated in that there would be no turning back from being a true aiki nerd.

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

I tried this very approach (Java-based IRC client, IRC daemon running on the server), but I didn't really like the insecurity of IRC, the non-integration of the Java-based client with the AikiWeb members feature, and the non-ubiquity of Java on some people's browsers.

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Very cool.

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Jun,

I notice that the ACTIVE USERS LIST inside the chat room and that which is at the FORUM doesn't match.

For example in the Chat Room it may list 5-6 users but when I switch to the forum page it list only 3 users. It is probably a bug.

Thanks again for the wonderful feature.

Boon.

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi Jun:
Thanks your advice works fine.
e ya later.
Jill

>>Hi Jill,
Try clicking on the "Show Archive" button next to the "Post" button. It should pop up a window with the most recent batch of messages in it that won't do any refreshes.<<<

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

That's odd. I'll take a look into it...

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Another thing for the To Do List:

There is a serious script error when posting links: for some reason, the parser adds spaces within both the html and plain text. Which, from a coding stand point, just weirds me out... :hypno:

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi Jun

Thanks for setting up the chat function. Looks great so far :)

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi Haruo,

How long was the URL? If it's too long, it'll probably invoke the word wrap feature which prevents very long strings from messing up the display. I'll see if I can modify that section of the code to ignore URL links.

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Hi Jun.

That's the odd thing... some of the URLs weren't even that long. Here the kicker though: for example this link
was shortened to something like
in the text. Fair enough. However, the parser does not copy the link correctly, adding spaces to the URL and then using that for the anchor. Something like
So, naturally, when you click on the link and the escape sequences are added, brings up a 404.

Hope this helps.

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

I think the URL thing is now fixed. Please let me know if otherwise...

-- Jun

Re: New Feature: AikiChat!
 

Works fine now.

Domo arigato, Jun-sama!