Finding a solution to our chatbox

As most of you know, we have been searching for a chatbox for HSP Dimension that better meets our needs. Unfortunately, we have yet to find what we are looking for. Here's where things stand now:

Forumotion's chatbox is not fixed and probably won't be for a very long time to come. Apparently, they consider the problems of the chatbox to be minor and so it is low priority. This is in spite of board owner after board owner stating the chatbox isn't usable and pleading with forumotion to fix it.

Chatroll, the box we installed to replace it is having problems and is frequently offline. In addition, it freezes fairly frequently now, requiring members to refresh the page. It is also not private.

All the other free chatboxes we found are even less private and have other limitations.

So, here are our options at the moment:

Continue to use Gaia. Plus: it is private. Minus: it is on another site and 3 of our members can't access it due to technology limitations. Keep Chatroll as a backup.

Try MSN IM. Plus: it is private has emoticons and will allow a group chat. Minus, it requires that you register and add all other chat members as friends and contacts on it. This means all chat participants will have your email address. It is also not on our site.

Continue to use chatroll with its limitations; in any case continue to use it as a backup.

We are asking members to let us know if you find any options for us to explore too; we haven't given up.

Also, I am asking all of you for your opinions and preferences given the current limitations.

Would you be willing to try msn? I found out last night that it has colors for text and emotions. Apparently there is also a way to import your own.

Or would you prefer to use chatroll even with its limitations?

Let us know.

Some advantages to using MSN Messenger:
-it is already on your computer if you use Windows (as Windows Messenger)
-can run in background as you do other things on your computer
-a Mac version is available for download
-is private/secure and reliable
-can accommodate group chats
-once set up is easy to use
-you have complete control of the Messenger program (online/offline, who you allow to chat with you, etc).

If you are not already familiar with it, it takes a little bit of work to set it up with the contacts you want to chat with. We can help with that part.

This might be at least a reliable interim solution unless/until something better is found.

MSN sounds like a great solution to me. I hope people are willing to give it a try, it's very easy to download and set up. And it is by far more secure and reliable than any chatbox we will ever have.

I like MSN and Yahoo as yell...i have both...

MSN would probably work for me, even though I have a rather old version of OS X. The best IM client I've heard of for OS X is Adium, for which I already have the version for my older OS:

http://adium.im/

I don't object to the people at Dimensions having my email, but do have some concern over software "bugs" in the chatrooms revealing my email to the outside world. I'll therefore pick a free email address from one of the following links:

http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_web.htm

Others can choose if they wish to get a new email address specifically for IM use or not as they prefer.

Waterdragon7... is adium 1.3.6 ok with Mac OS 10.4.11? Doesn't really say.... just that 1.1 or newer is ok. Don't want to load it into my system and find out it's for 10.5. Thanks!

BlueEyes wrote:Waterdragon7... is adium 1.3.6 ok with Mac OS 10.4.11? Doesn't really say.... just that 1.1 or newer is ok. Don't want to load it into my system and find out it's for 10.5. Thanks!

BE, The one page I've found indicates Adium 1.3.6 requires OS X 10.4.0 or newer, so it should work on your system.

However, it is a "package" as noted by its icon. Packages mess with the internal "plumbing" of OS X, iirc - doesn't mean it harms anything, but if you'd prefer, consider "Fire," which is a straight application, but it is no longer in development, and still has bugs. In fact, a few of the "Fire" developers have moved to the "Adium" team. Fire website is here:

http://fire.sourceforge.net/

Hope this helps!

A question, will signing up for these other IMs allow you to join in with msn IM chats?

melodiccolor wrote:A question, will signing up for these other IMs allow you to join in with msn IM chats?

MC, not sure if you're referring to "Adium" and "Fire" here or not - the easiest explanation is to quote a sentence from the "Adium" website:

"Note: We do not host any IM services ourselves. Adium is a third-party client for connecting to services run by other people (mostly companies)."

The same is true of "Fire" as well, so both are Instant Messaging client software for Mac OS X. Neither provides chat services, but they support AIM, MSN, Jabber, IRC, and a few other formats I can't recall at the moment.

There is another chat service which might be worth looking into:

http://www.jabber.org/

Jabber uses the open-source protocol, XMPP, so this protocol is non-commercial, unlike AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc.

There also appear to be a number of open-source clients which work with both Jabber and a number of the proprietary protocols, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Do they have a plug in for our board? What are their privacy policies?

One of us admin will look into it.

Thanks for the suggestion.

melodiccolor wrote:Do they have a plug in for our board? What are their privacy policies?

One of us admin will look into it.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Not sure about the plug-in, but this is the link for their FAQ page:

http://www.jabber.org/index.php/faq/

I used to use mIRC a fair bit, going on a chat server for an online game I used to play. You could set up a room on a server, the only thing is that everyone would need to use the mIRC software program, unless you set up a web-based java chat applet... meaning that users could either connect through the software or use web-based. It worked quite well back then (several years ago).

There should be a good, easy to use open source solution out there!

melodiccolor wrote:As most of you know, we have been searching for a chatbox for HSP Dimension that better meets our needs. Unfortunately, we have yet to find what we are looking for. Here's where things stand now:

Forumotion's chatbox is not fixed and probably won't be for a very long time to come. Apparently, they consider the problems of the chatbox to be minor and so it is low priority. This is in spite of board owner after board owner stating the chatbox isn't usable and pleading with forumotion to fix it.

Chatroll, the box we installed to replace it is having problems and is frequently offline. In addition, it freezes fairly frequently now, requiring members to refresh the page. It is also not private.

All the other free chatboxes we found are even less private and have other limitations.

So, here are our options at the moment:

Continue to use Gaia. Plus: it is private. Minus: it is on another site and 3 of our members can't access it due to technology limitations. Keep Chatroll as a backup.

Try MSN IM. Plus: it is private has emoticons and will allow a group chat. Minus, it requires that you register and add all other chat members as friends and contacts on it. This means all chat participants will have your email address. It is also not on our site.

Continue to use chatroll with its limitations; in any case continue to use it as a backup.

We are asking members to let us know if you find any options for us to explore too; we haven't given up.

We found a solution! Edie had a chatbox she wasn't using and it could be plugged in. We tested it and found it to be a good one. It is not private, like chatroll isn't, but it doesn't stick, has some colors, fonts and emoticons. It offers more, but not for free. We are just using the free parts.

We will still use Gaia, but about 2 weeks ago, it started to have server problems so chats there right now don't work too well. As soon as it is back working, we can play there once again and it is private.

Okay, so how does it work? Do we need to sign up? Do we just log on? Directions please.

You have the option of signing up which allows you access to font colors, sizes and emoticons or you can just start typing; either with a username or annyonimously. On the bottom right is a sign in/set name box, just click on it and choose your option.

I registered so I can play with all the free stuff. I did read their privacy policy; they promise name, email, user name and password remains private info.

We ran into a problem with chatango tonight and it suddenly locked all internet explorer users out of Dimension. So until we can figure out what happened, we are back with chatroll and it's sticky refresh again.

Hope the problem is solved soon. I am registered in both: Chatroll and Chatango.

OK, we reinstalled Chatango but we have to insist on some rules with it to prevent what happened before. We linked with something and it froze all IE8 users out of both Dimension and Chatango, including me and edie. So, to prevent that from happening again, we have to insist on no linking in Chatango.

That means no importing youtube, graphics or emoticons. We are limited to stock plus our vivid imaginations. Hopefully it will be quirk free that way.

Also, the chatbox is totally public, anyone on Chatango can see our chats as well as any lurkers on Dimension. So we have to keep that in mind.

So I'm guessing things are all fixed up and stuff.

Yep, and I'm in the box now if you want to chat.

Welcome, Dance Expression! I used to express myself very freely in dance clubs back in the day. I looked like a damn fool to a lot of people, but I was having a great time and didn't care! lol!

Hey it's all good. Expression through any dance is fun even if it's just random flailing of the arms. ha ha.

I guess I need to update this thread. We have our original chatbox back; after waiting a year, our host finally repaired it. There are still some glitches causing the chatbox to freeze, but when that happens, just wait a few seconds. If it continues or script errors appear, close the forum window and open and re-enter everything. At worst, it may take a min. or two to get back on the forum.

Still, all the other chat boxes we have tried had far worse problems than our original one as it functions now. Plus we have access to all our emoticons in this box.

Sorry folks, but I'm throwing in the towel and I'm getting rid of my MSN. I use a Mac, and the number of compatibility issues between the latest Mac version and the latest PC version are growing by the month. There are way too many compatibility issues between the Mac version and the PC version now, which makes it pretty much unusable for Mac users unless they are chatting exclusively with other Mac users.

The chaos that it caused me tonight was the last straw for me. Sorry.