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Ajax chat

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
I would really like to see a decent Ajax chat add-on coded.
This would be a chat and not shoutbox; I understand there's a difference (although I'm still not clear on what the difference is).

It would need to be real-time with a refresh of no more than 5 seconds.

I currently use one created by these guys for phpBB: http://www.startrekguide.com/

This is what it looks like when logged in.

chat.webp

It is fully integrated into the forum so once logged in to the forum you can use chat.
All smilies and BB Code are available and most importantly, it uses the forum style so looks like part of the site.

As I am an Administrator then I also have the ability to delete messages.

A minimum set of requirements are:
  • It needs to be fully integrated into the forum so once logged in you can use the chat page without waiting for a 3rd party app' such as irc to load
  • Admins and Mods should be able to delete messages
  • Smilies and BB Code should be available, so people can post images, etc.
  • Refresh time for active and idle should be configurable in the ACP
  • There should be settings in the ACP to set the number of messages shown in the history and also be able to prune the table on a cron job
 
Two of my forum users requested live chat just this week and I told them I'd look into it.

A nice seamless chat would be great.
 
xD A good shoutbox is the exact same as a good chatbox. The only difference usually is the placement, but a decent shoutbox should allow you to place it whever you like (or even have several different boxes in different areas if you wish).

Not sure why some people maintain there is a difference tbh xD. Every feature you mentioned up there is in any decent shout *or* chatbox ^^
 
Hi Brogan,

I am currently developing an add-on called "EzIRC." This product uses the Mibbit Widget (AJAX), provided by Mibbit.com. I am expecting to release my product (as a Beta) within the next week.
If you wish to use a IRC based AJAX chat, this would be the best way to go, in my opinion. And you're always welcome to use (irc.)vbirc.com / (irc.)xenfans.com as your IRC host, we don't bite, haha.

:)
 
As far as I know, shoutboxes tend to have a refresh rate of a few seconds, while chats have to be in realtime. Also, chats don't usually keep showing all older messages when logging in to the chat, while shoutboxes do.

It's really all about settings though nowadays.
 
xD A good shoutbox is the exact same as a good chatbox. The only difference usually is the placement, but a decent shoutbox should allow you to place it whever you like (or even have several different boxes in different areas if you wish).

Not sure why some people maintain there is a difference tbh xD. Every feature you mentioned up there is in any decent shout *or* chatbox ^^
You know I though the same but a lot of people here kept insisting there was a difference.

Hence why I made a separate thread to the shoutbox request.
 
Hi Brogan,

I am currently developing an add-on called "EzIRC." This product uses the Mibbit Widget (AJAX), provided by Mibbit.com. I am expecting to release my product (as a Beta) within the next week.
Thanks, I'll look out for it.
IRC as a standalone solution is no good as my members wouldn't have a clue how to use it.

As far as I know, shoutboxes tend to have a refresh rate of a few seconds, while chats have to be in realtime. Also, chats don't usually keep showing all older messages when logging in to the chat, while shoutboxes do.
The chat I currently use is configurable in that you can decide how many older messages are displayed.
I currently have it set to 50 or so and every few days I empty the table to stop if getting too big.
I did have an automatic function set up to auto-delete the oldest message after 50 but that introduced too much overhead so now I do it manually.
 
I always perceived a chat box as free floating, meaning not integrally placed on the site whereas a shout box is a fixture located within the forum. People on my forum seem to love the shout box and dislike the chat box. Had both for a while.
 
I use cometchat on my site. This is a facebook style chat which makes use of jQuery. I prefer this to the other chat systems since it retains its status during page loads. The downside is that this is not free. I hope that this gets ported to xenForo soon.
 
How many users do you have chatting during the race? We find that www.CoverItLive.com does a fantastic job with ~300 readers and around 50 leaving comments for the rugby. You can replay a recent event here if you like (note the main game starts about 01:00)

The ability to embed twitter feeds is great when we've got people at the grounds, or for official feeds showing score updates etc. Instant polls are also very cool and engaging.
 
I've seen it CoverItLive and Cometchat.

I'm not looking for any solutions like that.
 
I use cometchat on my site. This is a facebook style chat which makes use of jQuery. I prefer this to the other chat systems since it retains its status during page loads. The downside is that this is not free. I hope that this gets ported to xenForo soon.
Looks great, if they port this I'll buy it for sure.
 
I've finished (For the majority) ezirc, just testing it now in a live environment. Public test demo: www.ezirc.org/ezirc

If you have any suggestions for it, let me know and I can try to implement it before releasing the version here on xenforo.com :)
 
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