Thread: Chats

Originally Posted by azjoe

Agreed! Not only can you catch up on what went on if you had to miss the chat, but for the newbie who is a little on the shy side the logs show the nature of the chat and the camaraderie that makes our community great.

I am also interested in the logs. It is difficult at best accessing the chat software with my screen reading software. While I'd rather the real time interaction, it just doesn't work as well as with some IRC clients. If you don't want to utilize the storage space indefinately, make them available temporarily.

What about moving the chat to an IRC setup? That would make them easier to access and they are usually Java chat-compatible.

Originally Posted by Toddo

It is difficult at best accessing the chat software with my screen reading software. If you don't want to utilize the storage space indefinately, make them available temporarily.

I'm sorry your setup can't handle flash properly. It's tough deciding what technology to base a site on given the lack of common support between the various OS's and Browsers. In spite of the wonderful features of Linux, the Mac's OS, Firefox and other browsers, etc. the reality is it's a Microsoft-driven world... for something like 9 out of 10 users. BTW, logging is not a storage space issue. We kept the past month's worth of logs available when we were able to retrieve them. When we changed to a different chat program, retrieving the logs became problematic for reasons that, for simplicity, I'll call a software bug (although it's more complicated than that). The vendor hasn't changed their design to resolve it, and I haven't had time to write a process to do what we really want. This will possibly get resolved as we move forward with some site upgrades in the very near future.

Originally Posted by FireStart

What about moving the chat to an IRC setup? That would make them easier to access and they are usually Java chat-compatible.

Well that's certainly an option and investigation of it is something that's been on my to-do list for awhile... lack of time is such a cruel companion . If you have any details, feel free to PM me with how you think we could make this work.

Originally Posted by azjoe

I'm sorry your setup can't handle flash properly.

It can handle flash in some ways. Like when a site uses flash buttons to navigate flash content. It usually depends on whether or not the developer has utilized the accessibility hooks or not. Same is true for web pages. Lots of improperly written html code out there, like using tables for layout etc.. Again, developers do not utilize the hooks such as alt tags. This can make all the difference between an accessibly clickable image link and a non-descriptive graphic. In the case of the chat program here, I need to play with it more to be absolutely positive about its usability. My first couple of attempts were frustrating but not completely fruitless. However, I doubt any accessible hooks were utilized if they even exist in the chat program. Anyway, enough highjacking as they say, sorry.

flashchat requires that you have version 7 or greater of the Macromedia (aka Adobe) flash reader, but I find it works better with 8 and 9. Also, the chat system sends update to the clients every 3-seconds... so during times of high activity in chat your PC and net connection need to be able to keep up with that frequency.