kegaro: "Wow!!  I really like this Wobject!!! I have changed the code slightly, though, to better suit my tastes:  I have added a scrollbar so I can view history and I have changed it to work more like most Instant Messengers by adding new messages to the bottom of the window rather than the top.  I am working on making these options so they can be set as properties to the asset.  I will send you my changes when I have it done.

Another feature that would be valuable would be to see who else is online and available to chat.  Once a user can see who else is online, many more possiblities open up -- perhaps having private chats with individuals (like a /msg or /dcc chat) rather than in the main channel.

Ability to use /me command.

Another IM-like feature that would be great would be the ability to allow the user to determine the colour in which his or her messages are displayed.

Again, I cannot thank you enough for writing this wobject!  It will be the most heavily used wobject on my site!!

Kegaro"

kimd: "I would love to test this asset but I cannot get it installed. I imported the package containing the template, js and css stylesheet. However, the js and css sheet are not accessible afterwards. I can see them in the folder view. But when I try to edit them the following error message is displayed "Not Found - The requested URL /chatbox/chatbox.css was not found on this server". The template is there and can be edited properly. Am I missing something?"

kimd: "Working now! For some reason I had to manually change the URL of chatbox.css and chatbox.js in the database. Maybe that was due to me accidently adding the package twice and removing the duplicates afterwards.
Cool proof-of-principle! It would be very nice to have something like that in the core.

Currently, I still see the following flaws:
- The database does not seem to be cleared out.
- The number of messages queried from the database is not limited.
- Umlauts and probably other special characters get corrupted.
- The pop-up boxes indicating failure to connect (chatbox.js) may lock the browser.
- Formatting of the chat takes place in the javascript.
- The timstamp is not available as an epoch, which can be formatted.

Any plans to continue this work, Doug? I do not have much time at the moment. But I would very interested in improving this asset a bit. "

kimd: "Whew, took me quite a while to figure it out: the escape function used in the javascript is not capable of handling utf8-econded strings. Using encodeURIComponent() instead solves the problem of malformed extended characters."

preaction: "I don't currently have time to address any of these, but I will accept any patches anyone cares to make. If you want it in WebGUI, make an RFE and link to here.

Hopefully sometime during WG 8 development I'll have some time to get this ready to go in."

kimd: "I ran into a problem with forms after proxying a chatbox asset into the style of my site. There were two things that happened:

  1. The rich editor linked to the bodyText form field of the commenting function in the photo view of our gallery replaced the bodyText field of the chatbox asset. The form field of the commenting function appeared as a simple text box. I assume this was simply due to identical names of the two fields.

  2. Saving a new comment resulted in publication as a new chatbox message as well. Strangely, this happened even though the submit handler of the chatbox should listen to the submit button inside the chatbox div only. But maybe, I do not understand the JS correctly.

I could solve the problem by prepending "chatbox_" to chatbox form fields. Not very elegant but it works."