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The chat room splashes out on a makeover
It’s time for change in the TgR chat room.
We have been using the current chat room software software for about two years – and on most nights it runs without issues letting members socialise. So I think it is time to splash out a few more $$ and upgrade it to the very best and latest version.
The new room is in beta testing and I’d like to preview what is new (and exciting) on the way…..
😉 Video Chat
In the new chat room anyone with a web cam can broadcast video whilst chatting. Members have to be individually approved by the broadcaster before they can see the video stream.😉 Audio Chat
The new chat room supports an audio chat linkup between two or more members.😉 One-to-one Chat
The new chat room has a dedicated room – Lounge 121 for those wishing to have private conversations. The site conduct rules will be relaxed in this room. Private conversations by text, audio or video in Lounge 121 are assumed to be by the mutual consent of those involved and will not be monitored. (In fact it is completely impractical to monitor in any way audio or video conversations so the rules have to change!!)😉 User Chat Rooms
Any user can create their private chat room which will remain active just as long as they are using it.😉 eCredits
Each member will automatically receive 1000 minutes of credit for private chat (by text/audio/video). Anyone donating to TgR will automatically receive another 1000 hours of chat credit. (This will in part offset the costs involved in providing audio/video hosting).😉 Improved file sharing
Members can now share pdf, zip and txt files as well as jpeg and gif images.😉 Improved support
By removing most of the modifications that were made to the original chat room we can benefit from ongoing bug fixes and improvements to the room.I hope that the new features, and the significant improvements to one-to-one chatting will attract more members to the chat room for support and socialising.
I’ll be inviting people to help test the new chat room – if you would like to help drop me an email. But I anticipate we will go live soon.
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8 Replies
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The new chat room has been tested out quite thoroughly over the last week, and unless we find any show-stopper bugs I propose to make the switch-over on Sunday (10th Nov 13).
In addition to the features listed in my first post we have integrated the chat better with the main forums.
😉 Chat Requests
It is possible to invite another member who is on-line to meet you in the chat room. You no longer have to wait for others to come into the chat room to have a talk. Now you can proactively select who you want to talk with and arrange to meetup for a private chat.A couple of the features of the new chat room may be unfamiliar to members – and so I’m putting together a few tutorials to help you get up to speed and make the best use of the room.
The first tutorial explains how to invite your friends into the chat room.
View it on YouTube here:
http://youtu.be/iIRIpG0FyQQ -
Hi Amanda,
I hope you do not mind but I thought I would give feedback.
The new chat rooms are great, I like the video aspect. What I don’t think works that well is that to do a video chat one must go to another room. So if A is chatting to B and A has a web cam and then wants to also chat to C who has a web cam too, they go to the video lounge. By definition this is for those with web cams and not for those not using them although one can be in there without a cam.
It would seem better if we could video and chat without video in the one room. I cannot see the point of a separate video chat room!
June
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Quote:Hi Amanda,
I hope you do not mind but I thought I would give feedback.Not at all! I would rather have feedback than a stoney silence!
The changes to add a second room in the chat rest on a number of assumptions that may or may not be true.
Who is in chat to just talk privately?
The most certain assumption is that people having private chats in a room where others want to talk as a group is frustrating to the group chatters. Many times I have observed people wondering why the main chat room is so quiet if there are so many people logged in. At the moment it isn’t clear the reason why people have entered the chat – and the assumption seems to be “they are here because they want to chat with me”. Moving private chat partly into a second room is therefore a positive design choice. I expect this would otherwise be much more of an issue as the new chat room integration positively encourages people to come into the chat room to chat privately. I would like the room you are to speak to why you are in the chat – it isn’t something that can be enforced for private chat – but is something I can encourage by steering people into the appropriate rooms.Who uses video chat?
Next we have the more unknown issue of why people would video chat or more specifically who they will chat with. Because of the issues with un-moderated (or actually un-moderatable) content on video I see sharing video as an extension to private chatting. The process whereby one person launches a web cam and then others ask for permission to view it is more compatible with a private conversation. I don’t want the video to be used as a “live avatar” when group chatting. By only allowing the video to be started in a second room the design will start to separate those having a private chat with or without video from those having a public group chat.I feel that most members would not be happy sharing their live image with strangers – and the private one-on-one model allows greater freedom for how the video is used.
Who watches video chat?
In the new chat room you don’t have to be in the same room as someone to have a private chat with them. If someone enters the chat room wanting to start a private conversation with video then that person has to be in the second room. Because of the way the chat room is built this means people in the main room can be participating in a private chat and viewing video. I’d prefer the viewers to move to the video chat room (and they will have to if they want to send video back) but it isn’t something the chat room can enforce easily.I hope these ideas work out when we go live. But if they don’t or need refinement I’m happy to respond to other ideas.
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Three problems that I’ve noted since the new Chat Room was rolled out.
1. You can no longer click on a member’s name in the ‘Who is online’ box on the Home page, and see that member’s profile. Clicking on a member’s name in that box, immediately goes to open a private chat session with the member clicked on.2. The ‘Who is online’ box on the Home page, no longer shows which State/territory/country a currently online member is from.
3. The chat room entry page no longer shows any recent lines of chat from the main room in the Chat Room.
Jenifur Charne
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Looking good one question when I click on the profile pice of people who are about I get an error in finding the page . Is that just me or are there links missing?
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Thanks for the feedback….
Quote:When I click on the profile pic of people who are about I get an error in finding the page .– Fixed the missing link
Quote:You can no longer click on a member’s name in the ‘Who is online’ box– The link was only on the profile pic and not the name. I’ve extended it to both. To go into chat you have to click on the green circle.
Quote:The ‘Who is online’ box on the Home page, no longer shows which State/territory/country a currently online member is from..
– True but being different isn’t necessarily a problem. The state display was squeezed out by the green circles. To elevate this from “being different” to “being a problem” I’d need to understand the issue.
Quote:The chat room entry page no longer shows any recent lines of chat from the main room in the Chat Room.The entry page is quite different – but that doesn’t necessarily make it a problem. I decided not to repeat the hack I did last time to extract that data to eavesdrop into the chat room. It only really works for one room (not the two we now have), it looked messy with all the different colours – and was a legacy from a time when people were being naughty in the public chat!
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Quote:Thanks for the feedback….
You’re welcome Amanda.
So far, apart from niggling matters, the new chatroom seems to be working well.Quote:You can no longer click on a member’s name in the ‘Who is online’ boxQuote:– The link was only on the profile pic and not the name. I’ve extended it to both. To go into chat you have to click on the green circle.Thanks Amanda.
Quote:The ‘Who is online’ box on the Home page, no longer shows which State/territory/country a currently online member is from..
Quote:– True but being different isn’t necessarily a problem. The state display was squeezed out by the green circles. To elevate this from “being different” to “being a problem” I’d need to understand the issue.When it was combined with the name not being clickable to get to a member’s profile page, it made things harder to find the profile of members online.
With the member’s name once again being a link to their profile page, needing to have which state a member is from, visible on the Home page, is not an issue.Quote:The chat room entry page no longer shows any recent lines of chat from the main room in the Chat Room.Quote:– The entry page is quite different – but that doesn’t necessarily make it a problem. I decided not to repeat the hack I did last time to extract that data to eavesdrop into the chat room. It only really works for one room (not the two we now have), it looked messy with all the different colours – and was a legacy from a time when people were being naughty in the public chat!I’d always use that chat log fragment to get an idea of what was currently being talked about, before entering the chatroom.
I hadn’t realised it was a messy hack, only really workable with one chatroom.Jenifur Charne
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I used it for the first time yesterday and given I was in male mode and did not have any lippy on, it took me a while to “hold my mouth right”.
But after that is was fine.
Well done Amanda
Caty
