OLD - ChatBox II - Discussion and Feedback

So far it seems to work without the dynamic Updating. I have to wait a little and see if that is going to continue working without the dynamic stuff at least. Will post later if i know how it will turn out on the long run.

Thanks for your support anyways.

To be honest, I don't have a lot of sites that need the Chatbox II, I just saw someone wanted something like that in a plugin request, and I thought I'd take a shot at it. A challange I guess.

So, seeing as I don't really have any sites using it heavily, I REALLY would appreciate people posting feedback;

On sites with many visitors trying at once.
On sites using it in general.
On any security issues (email security issues rather than post them).

Some things, like sound, may have issues with individuals depending on the browser, player, and configuration they use. SO, I am not too concerned with the sound aspect at this point. I may add a open source player for consistancy in the future. Or if one is made a default player for e107's next, or future versions, I'll use that.

I am mainly interested in the security and functionality of the Dynamic updating itself.

Also, any more suggestions for the future.

Thanks in advance.

Someone asked, can they keep the old chatbox posts if they install this, here's my reply.

Yes, if you read the info page, there's a script you can run if you are logged in as ADMIN. it's not accessable through admin though for a reason.

Once you install Chatbox II, but before you allow postings to it, just point to that script and it should copy all previous posts over to the chatbox2 table.

Then you can just go to ADMIN - MENU and deactivate chatbox_menu and enable chatbox2_menu. You shouldn't have to remove the chatbox table or the files or even ununstall the original chatbox.

You may eventually want to uninstall it and just leave the table and files incase you decide to go back to it. If you decide to remove it, I would back up first, as that's always a good idea on any type of changes with sites.

I just noticed, the speaker image is pretty ugly on a dark background. Sorry. I will try to make some better ones.

Hey i couldn't find ur email address on the other site so i thought id post here

Erm what seems to be happening is the new posts bit and the moderate chatbox bit seem to be disappearing when you click a link to a page you have already viewed there is a screenshot below:



As you can see it has the new post updating thing gone as is the moderate chatbox if you want to view it on the site you can see it on [-link-] The only way i have seen to get it back is to go onto the chatbox admin settings and click update settings

Apart from that the plugin is really great

Have you tried to deactivate the original chatbox? Not delete it, just deactivate it so there's only ONE on the page at a time. There may be some conflicts with some variables. I didn't rename every one of them.

Also, There may be a conflict with the theme, if it has the $CHATBOXSTYLE defined elsewhere, either in the theme or somewhere else. I should probably change this to CHATBOX2STYLE. But for now, you could either find where it's defined in the theme and comment it out, or edit chatbox2_menu, chatbox2_control, chatpage and chatpage_control and comment out the line that says;

GLOBAL $CHATBOXSTYLE;

that should work.


I will try to go through the chatbox again tomorrow and rename all variables that may still conflict to see if that helps.

Good Luck!

Thank you for your help yesterday and today this plug-in is rly great but i have a few suggestions you might like to consider for future versions

Allow admins to change exactly how many posts are displayed in the settings rather than having the drop down menu

Either make it compatible with alternate bans list or add a way to ban users from posting

Just a few minor things that it would be nice to see incorporated

Man, you want me to work on this thing for ever huh. I planned on doing it in a week or two, I am on two months now lol I QUIT!!!!!.....

Seriously though, it was great working with you, site looks awesome, and glad we worked it out.

As far as the suggestions, the first one would be easy. But, but for now I am gonna leave it as a pulldown. I don't want ot change too much at once.

The second would be harder, I don't want to depend on anything but the core. But there may be some ways you could do it;

1. Maybe set up a CBBANCLASS, a chatbox Ban Class, and add some code to look at that class before allowing people to post. Making sure they aren't in it.

I may do it that way, or some other way, like with the alt ban as you suggest, in the future though .

I fixed 3 fires this weekend, time for me to get back to some work.

V1.4.5 will be out today with the fixes you helped me solve, and with the ERROR: noerr Hans helped me solve.

The ERROR: noerr apparantly comes from some servers sending a leading space in passing parameters, It was a rare thing, but I trim the input now in js, and it's working fine. SO, that should make some people pretty happy.

THanks for trusting me, both of you. Now secure it back up and delete me

Enjoy and Good Luck!! I will check from time to time to see how it's working...

Well a little note about the fact that I helped you... I am not the one who helped you but you're the one who helped me a lot the last few days. Really great support and I hope the Error: noerr is fixed with others now too!..

About the security... everything has been deleted... you never know with those americans
Seriously... really appreciated your help and your time for looking at my Dutch website without any "Dutch knowledge"

Cheers,
Hans

Hans,

Np. Anytime I enjoyed, and nice meeting you. good luck....

*******************************************************
********* CHATBOX II - Version 1.4.5 RELEASED **************
*******************************************************

It's now available at;

e107coders.org. [-link-]

And at;

plugins.e107.org [-link-]

*****
FIXES
*****
Fixed ERROR: noerr Error (Some servers passed a space, added a trim function)
Fixed $CHATBOXSTYLE, Now wraps existing one (SEE _readme.txt FOR FIXES)
Fixed Speaker Image on dark Backgorund ugliness

Seems disabling e107 cache fixes errors on some sites as well.

BE SURE TO READ THE _readme.txt file. It includes some hacks you may want to implement (NOTE: implementing hacks to the core will cause file checking to fail on those files).

Another thing in the _readme.txt explains a possible change needed if a theme contains a $CHATBOXSTYLE. It can be modified, or if it fails, comment it out in the theme and use the ChatBox II's default.

Be sure to upgrade to v1.4.5 and the latest Java at [-link-] before posting problems.

Read this thread, before asking for help.

Thanks and Good luck!! Hope you enjoy it!!

I just noticed one more thing... actually someone on my site did...

When you are typing your message and you want to give an enter to leave a space, it's not working... all text is displayed after each other...

I hope you get what I mean... I mean here in the forum if you press enter 2 times you will get an empty space (alinea) between the two sentences...

It's not a really urgent issue... but maybe you can fix it easily...

Another thing, probably something that can't be fixed and is part of the dynamic thing... when you press emoticons and submit your message the emoticons keep there until you press on emoticons again... probably not possible if you submit a message to close the emoticons "page" again?

I thought let me post it in the forums instead of bugging you in your IM the whole day

It's probably a great Idea to have it close the emoticons after selecting one, especially with a lot of them.

On the other thing. That might be hard because of the way I am passing the HTML through js and back to the page. I will look into possibilities though.

I actually just posted you a PM. I went to the site to peek if you dared change over with all your users, and you did. And it seems to be holding up REALLY well with such a load

OK, looks like you are all going to make me work some more. Just when I thought I was done.

Here's what is possible for next release;

1. Number of posts to show rather than a dropdown (maybe)

2. Option to Allow whitespace, or remove it (set to remove it now). Will def do this.

3. Auto Close Emoticons after selection. ( Could be some work. I make it so focus moves to textarea, which old chatbox didn't do. I could hack more, but prefer not to. SO I will have to think about the simplist way).

4. Integrate GOLD System or at least post the hack to do it. (Looking into this now)

5. Integrate with ban system. (Thinking about ways to do this). Just ban the bums from the site.

6. Run away and hide.

Anything else? Ideas? Speak Now, Because #6 is definitely on the list after another revision.

I am looking forward to the next release....
To give the people an indication about what load you're talking... then since this morning we got 1500 chatbox messages. The new chatbox2 is running since early this afternoon and in the morning it was pretty quiet on our website.
So yes it's pretty heavily used on our website and it's running great.

erm thought id drop by and give you some more work since i thought up another suggestion

The ability to assign colors to certain user classes so for example the admins could automatically post in red normal users could be green and then all the other under classes that the admins may of made. and make it so the colours for the underclasses can be set in the settings

and/or

having the site auto assign a color to each user that signs up to the site or members that already exist so when they post they automatically post with a different color to other users

both of which could be changed by the user by simply selecting a color on the menu

this way everyone posts look nice and colorful as most people just post with the standard boring color of white

and also u could make it so it auto scrolls rather than the user having to scroll and then the admins can set the speed that it scrolls through the posts

hahaha, I am going too crazy as it is. I am almost finished with what people asked for before, for the most part.

I don't think I will do the assigned colors, It took a long time to make it selectable, so I am gonna leave it at that.

I don't like the auto scroll myself, but I will think of how to add that in the future. Something like a scroll delay, for how long it waits til it starts, and a scroll speed.

I asked about the GOLD system, but didn't get much info on that. I am guessing that will work as it does off the original chatbox, looking at the # of posts, so it should remain compatible.

Most of the other stuff will be done for today or tomorrow. Want to test it?

I replied to your PM on Tue Jul 29 2008, 09:29AM giving details of the api to hook into the gold system at [-link-] and said to post any problems or queries in the gold developer forum at [-link-]

Yes, Thank you for the reply.

I did go and read on the site, and read that it was going through a major overhaul so I didn't want to incorporate something that sounded like it would be changing soon.

I also looked at the wiki, and wasn't sure if it was describing the new api, the old one, or if it wasn't going to change. It's great that you have the wiki, I admit, I didn't spend a lot to time on it at this point after reading it was going through a major overhaul. But from what I read, I didn't find a version the wiki information pertained to, and couldn't personally understand how it's implemented. I will eventually discect a plugin the incorporates it to see samples in action of how it's actually implemented.

If I find it isn't too hard to actually integrate, I will either add it in the next version, or someone will just have to take over the plugin and add it in while I do #6 and run away and hide while I recover.

SO sorry, but yes you replied and told me where to get more info on the gold system, Thank you. I just didn't see anything I could do to add it quickly to the current revision I am working on, so once I finish all these current changes and additions, I will revisit adding it and hope the major overhaul is completed.

Just some suggestions;

It would be nice to see what revision the wiki information pertains to and a history.

It would also be good to see some coding samples.

And it's just my opinion, but I think with such a large plugin, it might be better to have that ONE plugin, gather it's information from the core and the plugin tables rather than have ALL the plugins (and possibly the core) have to be hacked/changed to use one plugin.

For instance, couldn't the GOLD system go out and read how many chats are stored in the tables rather than have to change whatever plugins work with chats to be modified? I was thinking, because the changes coming to the GOLD system were so secretive on your site, maybe the overhaul would do something like this. SO not every plugin had to be hacked to use it.

Most definitely not for the simple reason it would need a team of full time programmers updating the plugin everytime every plugin author made a change in their plugin! And thats assuming they tell people that they have changed something.

The whole reason for making the api is so that individual authors can easily integrate their plugin in to the system and know that there is a consistent interface that they can use. The documentation is slowly taking shape, I can either write documentation or write code but not both at the same time, much as though I try to be other wise, I'm only human.

I would hardly say that having a wiki and 3 dedicated discussion forums with public read access is secretive. Also there is a whole web site being developed just for the gold system (e107gold.com) . Plus I'm on MSN where you can get me. There are some future facilities/enhancements that haven't yet been finalised and so are not made public but are discussed with other codes and testers.

If you are unable to code your plugin to use an api then I'm more than happy to offer help, as I said in my PM to you, post any queries in the forums on my site.