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| Initial D World - Discussion Board / Forums > Feedback and Support > IDW Chat |
| Posted by: Tessou Dec 13 2015, 11:48 AM |
| Hello IDW, You've probably noticed that the site now has a dedicated chat service at the bottom right of the screen. What do you like about it? What needs work? How does the mobile chat work for you? Please give your honest feedback here in this thread, so we can make it a better experience for you.  |
| Posted by: xiao Dec 13 2015, 02:08 PM |
It's pretty dang neat; especially for the chat between individual members, me thinks. It helps serve as a quick & convenient way to send messages to a fellow member w/o the need to spend so much time on the PM screen. Works great for phones especially, since IRC on phones is a tad compricated... the Mod Chat in particular cuts down the FB middleman and lets the staff exchange information realtime without the hastle of opening FB or the time consumed in typing a PM, let alone e-mail. Quite nice to be honest; a couple of thingies still need to be unkinked like the viewing images by its uploader after they're sent, and the refresh issue like when The Man Hole is on pop-up mode, so you wont have to re-pop it up again. But otherwise 100% Gif peanut butter mang~ GJ  |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 13 2015, 05:06 PM |
| Just a few things that I noted way back before Eronight. For one, I have a tendency to browse IDW tabbed when on my PC, so I will probably have between 5-10 tabs open depending on what I'm doing. The chat is a little weird about that, but understandably so. It's designed for a linear browsing experience just like Facebook is, so I'm not sure there's anything that can be done about that except to somehow have the chat be its own entity. Considering not even Facebook's chat system takes tabbed browsing into account this is more of an observation than criticism. Even in linear mode, though, it's still linked to the page itself. That is, the chat has no persistence independent of the page you are currently viewing. When you click to a new part of the forum, the chat reloads on each click. You won't notice it much with a decent connection since Perry did a good job of trying to make it look otherwise, but considering you'll notice the chat's welcome message popping constantly it's not totally invisible. The issue here, as I've already mentioned before, is that trying to 'fix' this would likely mean one of two really difficult options. One, treat the forums as the secondary inner frame of an outer frame containing the chat. This would make it trivial to bypass the chat, however, as tabbed browsing would give you a chatless IDW (unless a check was written into the page to determine if the frame was intact). The other way is to treat the entire forum interface as an applet, which is how sites like Gmail and Facebook handle the persistence issue. While elegant, this solution is insanity when it comes to writing the code and on top of that I have no concept of the impact it would have in terms of the back-end. We're pretty damn lightweight as it is, but if the entire forum experience were converted into an app what would that do? In theory assuming you could store the applet itself locally on each user's computer and just feed update packets it would remain light, possibly even lighter than the forum itself, but it would also open us up to potential DDoS conditions (you can deny local offline storage after all, forcing the site to serve up the full applet on every load). So treat those as observations, I guess. I don't mind it as it is, honestly. EDIT: In addition, personal messages interfere with the chat window. So if someone messages me directly and I try to pop the chat open, their message covers the chat rather than being separated.  |
| Posted by: xiao Dec 13 2015, 08:38 PM |
| An applet for the entire site would be quite the frowny face, though be it lighter. Maybe I'm an old geocities kind o' guy... but I highly dislike gmail's interface, at least the ajax whatchamacallit, and wikia... oh gosh; there's a reason normal wikipedias get a thousand~fold more views than wikia pages. Same goes for upgrading to a newer version of Invision, newer software kind o'sucks to be honest. I enjoy interacting through IDW's PM system waaaay more than even composing a google email. To be frank, the chat's a bit obtrusive; but I have it off most of the time to not have it interfere with my browsing. So I think the benefits, especially to the staff, outweigh the annoyances it causes the regulars... so we can just turn it on & off at our convenience. IRC chat is still pretty dandy, so having that little Rizon link up there comes in handy when you want a more traditional/simpler chat/browsing experience. I just thank god we don't use AIM anymore... oh lawd, AOL was like trying make a gao gao stegosaurus figure skate on cement. phew* I hope the site remains unchanged; though that's a bit more of a preference than a suggestion. You nuggaz are the site to me... I'd use a rotary telephone or an MGS codec to talk to y'all if that's all we had~  |
| Posted by: Tessou Dec 14 2015, 12:41 AM |
| The "issue" with IRC is that a fair amount of members didn't even know about it and thus never used it. By having an integrated chat service, some of those members are popping out of the woodwork and chatting with the regulars. This was not a feature implemented for staff functions, although a staff room does exist. We brought it up because it creates a more streamlined experience for everybody to enjoy (or ignore) at their leisure, without having to go through other websites or applications. While the Mibbit client / IRC room are great complements to IDW's communications, it's impossible to tell who is online without going through a few screens, whereas with the site chat, you can tap into the conversation in a single click without leaving the site or having to register a name with Rizon. "Ease of access" is the go-to term to describe the thought process behind integrated chat on IDW. All of the work is done for you, so long as you're logged in. The current build of the chat feature is in extreme infancy, as you can plainly tell. It's not perfect right now. It will get better and more accessible as time goes on. Perry is working very hard to make the chat code compatible with his chimera site code, so there are obvious teething issues. |
| Posted by: Spaz Dec 14 2015, 09:05 AM |
| The issue with IRC for me is extra software. I realize it's nitpicking, but integration is a way of life these days, and to have one piece of software that I only use specifically to talk with a few others willing to deal with the same vs something interconnected that everybody can use, well, the latter is no-brainer. |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 14 2015, 07:50 PM |
| Already have trillian for chat and it supports IRC so yeah. Plus Mibbit runs in a browser. [ Post made via Mobile Device ] |
| Posted by: Spaz Dec 15 2015, 09:43 AM |
| I haven't used anything other than FB messenger for years. AIM, MSN, etc are dead. Skype is good for sustained calls or group calls and that's about it. I'm just against having a million different apps (or services) to do what one can. KISS is life. |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 15 2015, 10:18 AM |
| Yikes. I'm actually somewhat glad I haven't gone that route, if only because not too long ago Facebook nearly forced me to delete my account. Thankfully that didn't happen, but if FB were my only method of contacting people it would be devastating. Thankfully there are really only a handful of people I can't contact through other means, not to mention many friends are ones I talk to regularly over Skype or on IRC. Different strokes for different folks. I 100% believe in KISS, which is why I have a single chat program handle everything. It used to do FB Messenger too until Facebook killed the API. Bastards. |
| Posted by: Kiroshino Dec 15 2015, 10:21 AM |
| I don't like chat messaging. Always been a slow thinker, and I don't like to make people wait for a response. Anyway, hope that this doesn't take away from the forum activity. It shouldn't, at least for the more lengthy discussions. |
| Posted by: Perry Dec 15 2015, 10:23 AM | ||
There isn't much to take away from anyways. So we'll see how this pans out. |
| Posted by: spinnee Dec 17 2015, 02:55 AM |
| I've tried out the function. No one is talking to me T_____T I haven't seen this on mobile though. |
| Posted by: xiao Dec 17 2015, 05:52 PM | ||||
Everybody was sleeping girl... we gotta move to California! mwuhahahahahahahaha~ 
|
| Posted by: Möbius Dec 24 2015, 04:24 PM |
| Have to try this out one of these days, looks like a good addition! |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 25 2015, 04:04 AM |
| http://i.imgur.com/ZJR8HI7.jpg Found a mobile bug. [ Post made via Mobile Device ] |
| Posted by: Perry Dec 25 2015, 07:32 PM | ||
Does reloading the page fix it? |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 25 2015, 10:26 PM |
| Well of course because then you snap back to the top. [ Post made via Mobile Device ] |
| Posted by: Perry Dec 25 2015, 10:36 PM |
| Odd.. I can't recreate what you are seeing. Do you just keep scrolling down to get to that point? |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 25 2015, 11:14 PM | ||
Yep. Just scroll and scroll and scroll. [ Post made via Mobile Device ] |
| Posted by: Perry Dec 26 2015, 11:47 AM | ||
Yeah I am baffled.. I tried on Safari on my iPhone 5S, it doesn't let me scroll past the footer. Are you using Safari on iPhone? Can anyone or any other device recreate the same scenario? |
| Posted by: Nomake Wan Dec 26 2015, 09:44 PM |
| Safari on iPhone 6S+, iOS 9.0.2. Maybe it's limited to the large phone? |
| Posted by: The Sixth Element Dec 27 2015, 01:10 AM |
| Have you guys thought about using Discord? I'm trying it out and its pretty good. It has separate lobbies and rooms for chat and voice chat. |
| Posted by: Seri Dec 27 2015, 08:18 AM |
I'm already using Discord for like 3 other groups.  I recommend it. The issue with Discord however is getting the link out there for it. Unless we make it a supersecret club where members only can see the link the group itself will not be a super secret members club. |
| Posted by: kyonpalm Dec 27 2015, 10:23 PM |
| Discord recently replaced a steam group I frequent and I hate it. Phones aren't suited for fast-paced convos, and to use chat in a dedicated tab/window in my browser just feels weird. Back to the days of mibbit though... |
| Posted by: Seri Dec 27 2015, 10:57 PM |
| Really? That's interesting to hear because I've never had an issue on my phone with it. |
| Posted by: Spaz Dec 28 2015, 06:52 AM |
| I can't stand trying to type an actual conversation on my phone. |
| Posted by: Falbere Dec 28 2015, 08:46 AM |
| Discord have a client version for windows, and I found it superior when compared to Steam chat, Skype, TeamSpeak and Whatsapp. When using the Windows client, it works fine. It is lightweight and fast. Would recommend. |
| Posted by: Tessou Dec 31 2015, 01:40 AM |
| A fair amount of money was spent to put this on IDW (thanks Xiao!). Perry spent an insane amount of time working with the chat code to mate it to the existing labyrinthine framework of the site code. I don't think we're gonna switch to something else any time soon after putting so much work into it. |
| Posted by: xiao Dec 31 2015, 08:08 PM | ||
Yeahhh!! Go Perry, he's the AZN Morpheus of the Initial D World!!~ ...Tessou's Neo, Kyon is Agent Smith, Nomake's the guy with the keys, SgtXDNX is the Jamaican pilot, and I'm the Oracle...... ......because Aunt Jemima Cookie? Also, Spaz is Trinity.  |
