We hope you're liking the new chat! As we mentioned in our most recent announcement about chat, your feedback around this project has been incredibly useful. Based on your requests, we've added two more things to chat. They're relatively small changes in the grand scheme of things, but we expect those of you who want them will be pretty happy to see them.
First, we have added the ability to clear the chat of prior conversation. We asked you how you wanted to use this type of clear chat functionality, and we got a lot of different responses. So, we've made this available in two ways, which we think will cover most of the needs we heard expressed:
- The ability to "Clear chat history" in the Main Room will let Network Creators and admins zero out the public chat. Everyone participating in the public chat will start with a clean slate. Members won't see this link.
- All members will have the ability to "Clear chat history" in private conversations. This will remove all of the messages that are in their own view, while the member they are chatting with will continue to see the messages.
It's important to note that this link will appear at the top of the chat window so you will need to scroll to the top of the conversation to clear chat.
The second thing we added is a volume control for alert notifications. The default sound levels for everyone out there on the Internet can be pretty varied, so it makes sense to add this straightforward volume control. Too loud? Turn it down.
These two updates will wrap up the major work on our chat upgrade. The old Flash-based chat will stick around for a bit longer, but we will ultimately be turning off the old Flash-based chat. If you haven't tried out the new chat yet, now's a great time to get acquainted with it!
Replies
Clear chat history is not available on my network. Is anyone else having this problem?
As Soaringeagle mentioned (thanks!) the clear chat functionality will appear at the top of the window. You'll need to scroll all the way to the top to find it.
u scrolled all the way to the top?
I started using the new chat on my network. It has great functionality. The issue I had was that the new chat has to be a bar on the bottom every page. I love the popout chat. I don't like the chat bar on every page of my network, as it obscures the content. I would like to place a button on my main page that links to the popout chat and not use the chat in the footer. Is there anyway to do this? I think about 5% of my members use chat, the rest don't.
Thank you
We've been having a couple problems in our chat. Some of our members say they notice that lines they type often do not show up in chat to them though most of the time other folks in the chat will see and respond to them. Other times, lines seem to just disappear completely. I have seen both of these behaviors myself, though not very often; others seem to see it a lot. Once, it froze up completely and I stopped getting anything more and thought folks had stopped talking until one of them alerted me to it via yahoo messenger.
Overall, there are enough problems that chat is much quieter -- and that's not good for our site. The member that's having the most trouble with this has an older computer; is there a system or software requirement to avoid these problems? Is there something else going on?
Thanks!
- Liz
We've been encountering the same problems and it seems to be limited to Internet Explorer, not Chrome or Firefox. If you close down chat and re-launch, it functions for a while b4 happening once again. I've been sending screenshots to the Help Desk so I know they're aware of the problem. Fingers crossed to come to a solution soon.
Eric
It happened again just yesterday so I took a screenshot. Not in compability mode. Pulled up Processes to see if anything strange was running.
Three of my posts did not appear. Small pane did not seem to be updating as well. Popped out chat and there they were others posts [but not mine]......but not in small chat pane. Had to close chat and re-open.
I'm running Safari on a Mac; no compatibility mode. I don't know about the user that's having so much trouble; I'll check with her.
Thanks!
Glad to hear they're aware of it and thanks for the info. I've let the member know that seems to be having the most trouble with this -- hopefully, that will help.
It is disconcerting; you really don't know when it just stops, why it might be happening.