Chat flag on the main page

[Rhizomorph13]

How hard would it be to have a place on the main page showing who is in the chatroom? It would make more people jump in there if they could see that others were already there.

Just a thought,
Rhizo

[Tiberius]

Very hard considering the chat system is third party.

[Rhizomorph13]

Couldn't you have the chat link create a flag or something that tracked when the user closed the third party window?

[Tiberius]

Not easily...

[Rhizomorph13]

Well, ok, maybe some other chat setup could be used? I dunno, just seems that it would be cooler if there was more chatting going on instead of the long shoutbox ramblings. Thanks for listening.

[fr0d0]

Couldn't you flag that someone had the page open?

[Tiberius]

The problem is that the forum logs which page people are on, but that only stays the same until someone moves to another page, or they stay on the same page for 15 minutes or more. So you have two scenarios:

1) Person A visits the chat room, loads the Flash chat applet, then opens another AF.org page in a new tab, overwriting their location.
2) Person A visits the chat room, stays there for 15 minutes (as is usual) without reloading the page, and their session location expires.

The internet is stateless...it ain't meant to have a memory.

[Violet Lilly Blossom]

Perhaps a popup window when someone's location has expired could be used to refresh their status there (if indeed they are still there), and if they aren't then their session expires because it is quite likely they aren't there anyway (ie: a popup window with a button asking "Are you still there?", if clicked refreshing their status on the page, and if not clicked sitting there until they come back (because they probably aren't there to click it))?

Not sure if that makes sense... but ti sounds like hell to write...