Live Chat - Beta

Discussion in 'News & Announcements' started by ChrisTurk, Aug 12, 2017.

  1. ChrisTurk

    ChrisTurk Administrator

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    Hey y'all,

    Par for the course we keep getting bigger & bigger. A lot of y'all have grown real friendships with each other and we're hitting that maturity stage of the site (zomg closing in on 1 year shortly!) where some of those convos aren't meant for everyone to see haha. The conversation system built into XF is alright, but it also drags folks into another tab and/or off the daily thread (which is where I like keeping everyone herded up :p) and ultimately isn't very robust and doesn't have any great upgrades to it available as add-ons.

    So to help relieve some of the social pressure from the Daily Thread I'm going to beta test a live chat feature on the site. It'll allow you to have side-convos with folks without having to roam away from the daily thread (to go to PMs, different sites, etc).

    For now it will be "opt-in" only, meaning you'll have to press a button in order to get access to it. You can do that here. It pops up with some blah blah about reviewing the thing but its instant, as soon as you submit it you can go to anything under the Daily Thread subforum and you'll have access to the chat.

    For now there are two open groups, General & Scripting. You can also create private chats with each other, or private group chats (though the feature is buggy atm). Same rules apply in chat as on the rest of the forum - don't be a dick, blah blah.

    The software is modeled off of Facebook's messenger system, play around do whatever - please let me know of any bugs that aren't listed below. It has GIPHY support and I've imported a handful of the forum smilies to it, adding more is pretty easy

    Known Bugs
    • Private group chats require password confirmation when switching between tabs - which is annoying and will be my #1 priority to fix
    • Some UI features aren't intuitive, clicking away from a menu doesn't dismiss it like it does on most sites so I'll be diving into the JS at some point to try to clean up some of these interaction.
    • There is no dark theme *shock* *horror* *gasp* - it works on the dark theme but it isn't skinned properly for either theme yet.
    • The emoji set is different, ideally I'd like to standardize it with the set currently available on the forums but this is going to be an arduous manual process so its definitely "low-priority" right now.
    Where possible, keep work related chatter to the daily thread. Please reply here with any bugs / feature requests / feedback / discussion on the application. I'm interested in how folks utilize it (if at all).

    Live Chat Opt-In
    Once again you can opt-in by simply clicking the "Submit Application" button on this form. Then load any page in the Daily Threads subforum (like, today's threads) and the bar will appear at the bottom of your screen.

    upload_2017-8-12_14-39-54.png
    (yes, @jessers, I grabbed your post on purpose haha)
     
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  2. ChrisTurk

    ChrisTurk Administrator

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    Feature Requests / To-Do List:

    tab complete
    @tag system
    GIPHY cleanup
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2017
  3. Celtic Lady

    Celtic Lady Survey Slinger

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    I'd like to request that people you have on ignore are also ignored on the chat :)
     
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  4. ChrisTurk

    ChrisTurk Administrator

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    You can block people from convos:
    upload_2017-8-12_15-42-27.png

    And/or in the chatroom itself:
    upload_2017-8-12_15-42-55.png

    And their messages will no longer show up (and they can't PM you).

    Out of respect for everyone's privacy (I'd have to go through and manually copy over the current ignore lists) & my own sanity (I don't even want to know who's seeing who, and who's being true, and who don't even care anymore..) I'm gonna have to let folks do this on their own :S

    Video for anyone who doesn't get the reference:
     
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  5. Celtic Lady

    Celtic Lady Survey Slinger

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    There is someone in the general chat room who is not showing up on the list of users. How do I block them?
     
  6. ChrisTurk

    ChrisTurk Administrator

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    You should be able to go to the main chat tab, click on them to start a convo and block them w/ the gear icon in that
    upload_2017-8-17_12-18-18.png

    upload_2017-8-17_12-18-36.png

    Its listed alphabetical order, but its split by "available" and "away" so if you can't find someone make sure you check both lists.
     
  7. Celtic Lady

    Celtic Lady Survey Slinger

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    They weren't showing up in the list of users (your fist SS). I refreshed the daily thread tab and they showed up.