SawMill Chat Test

[Keith Outten]

Anyone interseted in helping us test our chat board click on the link below

<a href="http://www.sawmillcreek.org/chat"target=_new">SawMill Chat</a>

When you try our chat software consider the following;

• Aaron selected "Open Source" software so that we can customise the code and integrate our chat with the board
• We did not select high end chat software, a very simple to use program was our goal
• The chat board will be available full-time for members only, it picks up your username from the board database automatically
• Special moderated sessions will be planned in the future and captured for downloading if you miss a session
• New channels will be added and keyed to each forum
• Our chat software is only 5K in file size, this makes it very fast for everyone even modem users

Our goal of adding features to SawMill Creek is geared toward integrating each service with the board. This approach will enhance our community not break it into sections of special interests.

[Ted Shrader]

Originally posted by Keith Outten
Anyone interseted in helping us test our chat board click on the link below

<a href="http://www.sawmillcreek.org/chat"target=_new">SawMill Chat</a>

Would like to, but Big Brother is watching. Chat is one of those excluded sites.

Ted

[Jason Roehl]

That ROCKED!!

Jason

[Dave Hammelef]

I tried it, I liked it

[Jim Young]

I'm not much for chat rooms but my five minutes in it were fun. Looks like a keeper to me.

[Howard Barlow]

Got plans for a regular chat session?

[Aaron Koehl]

Our first session went really great!
We've customized and integrated this chat system
into the board, so you'll automatically log in with
your user name (members). Hopefully, this will
encourage some of you guests to register!

The chat software is a java applet, and we chose
it because it only takes 5K to download (about
as long as the 'Post Reply' button.)

We have plans for adding more channels, as well
as having special, moderated chat sessions on
specific topics.

Come experience the dynamism of the online chat
system- the conversation goes everywhere! (and much
more quickly). It is really enjoyable to be able to
converse with all of you in real time.

Hope to see more if you in there soon,

_Aaron_

[Paul Kunkel]

I think a tutorial would be in order for some of us It would improve my typing though I'm more of a reader than a talker anyways unless someone needs to know something I know something about which is subject to someone elses opinion anyways

[Tom Sweeney]

Will there be notices posted when we log on to let us know when the chats are going - or is it just that we check in anytime to see if anyone else is in the chat room?

We could have regularly scheduled chats - I know that Woodcentral does that & the one I logged onto a few weeks ago was pretty cool - if a little hard to keep up with the fast pace

Once again youse guys Rock!

[Aaron Koehl]

Tom,

You can log in any time. I may add a feature to the forums
so you can see who's chatting without logging in- but that'll
be down the road.

<b>We're open for scheduled chats-

If anyone wants to volunteer to present a specific topic,
we'll schedule and announce a time for a moderated chat.

(Just post a reply to let us know)
</b>

I believe there's a lot people would like to share their
knowledge with the rest of us- and a chat is more conducive
to mass information flow. I think it'll be a successful experience.

_Aaron_

[Keith Outten]

When we get the scheduled chat sessions going and setup special events Aaron has a plan to capture the entire session and make them available for download. This way if you miss the session you can still benefit from the discussion.

[Robert Henderson]

Very nice feature. Hope it becomes a regular item on the forum.


Robert

[Ken Salisbury]

I had the priviledge of test driving the Chat Room with Keith and Aaron yesterday while Aaron was checking/massaging/debugging the package. I believe this feature will really catch on quick. Its great to get immediate feedback to a question. After Keiths post for people to dive in there, numerous people showed up and found how easy it really was to use.

Open 24/7 --- I am logged in there this morning and checking every liitle while to see if anyone shows up


Paul -- No tutorial needed. There is only one line to type on (at the very bottom) --- whatever you type shows up when you hit enter. Then just read-baby-read.

[Mike Cutler]

I checked into the chat last nite but was not able to participate. I could see the chat in progress but could not post to it. I use a Mac that runs OS 9.1 and OS X. There must be some incompatibility between the Mac and the chat program, but to be honest I don't keep the Mac up to date with all the latest software and drivers to support cross platform compatibilty. I hope no one was offended due to my inability to post. I wasn't being rude, I just couldn't play along. LOML had the DELL last nite, maybe I can trade with her for the next chat.

[Aaron Koehl]

Originally posted by Mike Cutler
I checked into the chat last nite but was not able to participate. I could see the chat in progress but could not post to it. I use a Mac that runs OS 9.1 and OS X. There must be some incompatibility between the Mac and the chat program, but to be honest I don't keep the Mac up to date with all the latest software and drivers to support cross platform compatibilty. I hope no one was offended due to my inability to post. I wasn't being rude, I just couldn't play along. LOML had the DELL last nite, maybe I can trade with her for the next chat.

Mike,

Don't know exactly what to tell ya- it's been tested on on IE
flavors 4+, Netscape 4+, Mozilla, and Opera on Win 2000, Win XP, Mac OS X, SunOS, and Win98.

I tweaked some features out and recompiled the Java client to
support Java 1.1 (a really old version), so nobody should need to
download the new runtime environments. I also avoided the
Java Swing (graphical UI) package to prevent having to download
that plugin as well. The client is (hooray!) only 5K, which is
about how long it takes to download the 'Post Reply' button.

Did you get any error messages when trying to post, or did
it freeze? Also, after clicking on the box above the 'Type here'
message, were any characters being echoed to the screen?

_Aaron_