How can I tell who is online when looking at their avatar?

[Dean]

When viewing a thread, I see no difference between people online vs offline.

Clicking on the avatar does not seem to indicate that either.

What am I over looking?

?

 

[Mert]

This one looks way better Shelley

 

[Sami]

I expect someone will come up with something that is clean, simple and effective.
Here's another option for example.

I kind of like this approach. It doesn't catch your eye but you can see it if you look.

 

[Paul B]

The only problem with having the icon appended to the end of the name is it will move depending on the length of the name.

Far better IMO to have it in a fixed place so people know where to look all the time.

 

[Green Cat]

I would prefer the username below on its original spot but a dot image like that will surely work. However i hope to see online offline indicators as an option because i don't plan to keep them on my site.

You can always remove it from the template

Looking at it more I have to agree, it does look better below the avatar. Another mockup with the (icon/pip) re-sized to 8px by 8px which I feel is a very acceptable size.

Looks very nice. I only hope there will be only the green for online, no red for offline (lack of green should be understandable enough), no purple for staff etc.

 

[Brandon_R]

I agree with not destroying the sleek postbit you guys have managed to create and the user name definitely does look better below the avatar. i think the perfect place to put it is on the member card.

The Current Activity could reflect the online status of a user removing the need for a green/red images to indicate so.

 

[Lawrence]

The green dot looks good. I would like to see added a mouseover that pops-up: Last Activity x mins ago. This bit of info would give a clearer indication if the member is still online, or about to go offline (because of the 15min time span).

 

[Grover]

Is it really that generally useful? I never really thought it was important even to want to be able to glance at it, plus it tends to be inaccurate for at least 15 minutes.

Being able to see who (especially your friends) is online on a social platform is IMHO an essential aspect of the whole social networking concept. You know (ofcourse you do) the bottom status bar in Facebook where you can see which friends of you are online? You can even chat with them! It is vital functionality on any social platform and I have been wishing vBulletin to implement that for years. I hope xenForo can become the first product that actually gives us this functionality.

In this light, I also hope some kind of Friends functionality is 'coming back' in xenForo. My audience is really familiar with the friends concept, because they use it everyday on Facebook and the biggest social network in The Netherlands. Most will not know or really need to get used to the 'Followers'-functionailty. (Nobody uses Twitter on my site) The friends concept is widely known and really attracts and keeps visitors to your site. Especially when this Friends functionality is expanded to IM, online indicators (in an always visible bottom status bar), etc, etc, etc.

 

[Grover]

Clicking on the avatar where it goes overlay popup, it could say $title (and online) [when the user is online]. Example: (click avatar > popup

I think different . Having to click on something to see who of my Friends (Followers?) is online, is not good. On a social network I need to see immediately who of them (or my team) is online. Again... facebook does an excellent job on this by showing your online friends on the bottom status bar. Ready for you to chat/contact them. And this is how it is supposed to work, in my view.

 

[Brandon_R]

I don't think instantaneously/instantly contacting some like MSN or a chatbox is a goal here. Rather like twitter or facebook wall posts is where you can get in contact with someone/ a group of people in a short amount of time say 5 mins.

 

[Nix]

You just got to hope people do not have a long user name for that

 

[Mert]

Being able to see who (especially your friends) is online on a social platform is IMHO an essential aspect of the whole social networking concept. You know (ofcourse you do) the bottom status bar in Facebook where you can see which friends of you are online? You can even chat with them! It is vital functionality on any social platform and I have been wishing vBulletin to implement that for years. I hope xenForo can become the first product that actually gives us this functionality.

In this light, I also hope some kind of Friends functionality is 'coming back' in xenForo. My audience is really familiar with the friends concept, because they use it everyday on Facebook and the biggest social network in The Netherlands. Most will not know or really need to get used to the 'Followers'-functionailty. (Nobody uses Twitter on my site) The friends concept is widely known and really attracts and keeps visitors to your site. Especially when this Friends functionality is expanded to IM, online indicators (in an always visible bottom status bar), etc, etc, etc.

I will have to again post the same thing , i did to your requests on vb.com. You are always only thinking onlu about your site. Even XenForo is an improved version of vbulletin , it is still a forum script not a social networking script. Additionally there are tons of scripts that does what you request. Why should IB or XenForo spend time on scripts that will be usefull only on handfull of sites.

I don't think instantaneously/instantly contacting some like MSN or a chatbox is a goal here. Rather like twitter or facebook wall posts is where you can get in contact with someone/ a group of people in a short amount of time say 5 mins.

I fully agree with this , i would rather see these kind of improvement compared to a chat system.

 

[Grover]

I don't think instantaneously/instantly contacting some like MSN or a chatbox is a goal here. Rather like twitter or facebook wall posts is where you can get in contact with someone/ a group of people in a short amount of time say 5 mins.

I dearly hope it actually will be a goal of xenForo. How would you know which of your Friends are online if you do not get an instant 'notification' of that? Yes, one can obviously look at the user's online box, but this is the whole point: as an enduser to a social networking platform I do not want to look at a who's online list full of people I might not be interested in. I want to see which of my Friends are online. This is how IM clients like Windows Live Messenger work: you have a list of people that you want to talk to, not a list of everybody in the world who is logged into Windows LM. My vision of state-of-the-art 'forum' software would be like that: we need an area/functionality that shows us which of our Friends (or Moderators, because I also want to be able in xenForo in the future to divide my Friends into different groups, because that will make contacting them much easier) are online. Immediately.

I love the way WLM pops up a notification in the bottom right corner telling me that Friend X is online. I love the way Facebook does it (as explained above). Now I need a forumpackage that can resemble that essential functionality. vBulletin doesn't. Invision (as far as I know) doesn't? Will xenForo be the first?

 

[Grover]

You are always only thinking onlu about your site.

. Funny! How different the reality is...

 

[Mert]

. Funny! How different the reality is...

When i request a feature , i am not thinking about my site only , i am considering how to improve the overall quality of the script.

 

[moojiolu]

I think a great way to integrate this is by having the borders glow green for someone who's online and red/gey for someone who's off.

 

[Grover]

When i request a feature , i am not thinking about my site only , i am considering how to improve the overall quality of the script.

I applaud you do this Mert. Trust me, when I say to you I do the same. Let's shake hands!

 

[pablo escobar]

I like the suggestion of transparency, or better yet, converting the image to greyscale to indicated offline. Frequent users will figure out pretty quickly what that means. It matters not, really, what the content of an avatar is, as the brain just immediately translates the picture into the username after the first few associations anyway.

For those few users who will use grey scale avatars by default, who cares? They'll switch fast enough when they figure out they want people to know they are on line. In addition, for those who don't want users to know they are on line, they can self choose by uploadiing their own grey scale.

Works for all. Subtle, but very effective. Doesn't break the clean design.

 

[Derek Ivey]

I think a small overlay in the corner of the avatar would be cool or the green dot works...

 

[Dean]

I'm not terribly sure what the best method would be, but someway of seeing who is online besides digging through the who's online list would be fantastic, and hopefully keep the uber clean look that exists now.

Clicking on the avatar works for me, that might even encourage people to use the visitor messages and PMs a bit more. The suggestion to show when they last clicked on the forum (x minutes ago) really would make things easier too. On the IPS company forum when viewing who's online, there is a mouseover that shows '21 minutes ago' for instance, which really does help in knowing who might still return a message.

I don't think the concept is to turn this into a chat at all, but knowing something about other peoples recent activity really does foster communication on our forum.

 

[Nix]

I'm not terribly sure what the best method would be, but someway of seeing who is online besides digging through the who's online list would be fantastic, and hopefully keep the uber clean look that exists now.

This is the bit that concerns me, as I like the "clean look" as you put it, that we have now.