Chatting And Instant Messages To Other Users
Joel
It would be cool if we could see which users were online and send them an instant message that would pop up on their screen. (It seems like you can do this if the user is already in the chat room, but I don't know if you can do it if they're just in the site)
I like the chat room and the idea of it, but It seems like it doesn't get as much use as it should. It would be great if on the homepage it said "7 users chatting" or something like that. As always, thanks for all you do.
When we are having a focused chat session there are notices at the top of the screen and such.
We could do a pop up window to do the private messages, but I personally think pop ups are annoying. That is why we never built anything in.
rather than a pop up what about a secondary code that would run concurrently with Yahoo messenger or MSN messenger, so that you also wouldnt have to re-invent the wheel. Use there secondary chat program with some sort of script that would show who and how many are available through chat? Or would that be a year long venture?
MSN, IM and other chatting like tools, work on a totally different protocal and port than just browsing the internet. Also, to be honest, we don't want to handle the support questions as well, since this is a free website.
One simple solution might be to have one list of usernames of individuals that are logged into yahoo chat or MSN. From there you could log in yourself and PM them.
Seems like it would be relativly easy to do.