Talraen, November 1, 2009 10:12 PM
Chat Sounds and Archive
Mood: Stiff
Tags: Development
Site Version: 3.4
There are a number of enhancements in this update, mostly to the chat interface. First and foremost, network sites now support sound. Web sites that play sound are notoriously obnoxious, so even though sounds are enabled by default (you can change this in your preferences page), the only sound implemented thus far has to be turned on. This sound, which will play whenever another user chats, is useful if you want to keep up with the chat without constantly viewing the page, perhaps on a slow day.
The second big change is the addition of a chat archive. There is an implicit promise that the chat across the 4LN sites would not be archived, so in the future if the archiving is turned on, users will only be able to search back to the time when the option is set. Users also won't be able to view archives from before they joined. Currently, no active site has the archive enabled, but admins can turn it on if they wish.
That's not all, though. The "active users" count has been replaced by a new count, "users viewing," which includes users that aren't logged in as well as any that are anonymous. Bots are not well-filtered at this point, and I will be tweaking this option in the future. There have also been a few enhancements for use in maintenance and new feature development, but those aren't very interesting from a user's perspective.
The second big change is the addition of a chat archive. There is an implicit promise that the chat across the 4LN sites would not be archived, so in the future if the archiving is turned on, users will only be able to search back to the time when the option is set. Users also won't be able to view archives from before they joined. Currently, no active site has the archive enabled, but admins can turn it on if they wish.
That's not all, though. The "active users" count has been replaced by a new count, "users viewing," which includes users that aren't logged in as well as any that are anonymous. Bots are not well-filtered at this point, and I will be tweaking this option in the future. There have also been a few enhancements for use in maintenance and new feature development, but those aren't very interesting from a user's perspective.