Open Source Chat Software

[mrdhood]

I'm working on some open source chat software, www.osphpchat.com.

The website is just xenforo with a portal installed and made some custom pages (I'm going to be getting rid of the portal and making a home page through the custom pages, still getting used to xenforo).

I'm mostly wanting some feedback on the chat itself, www.osphpchat.com/chat/.

Please keep in mind this is still in the early stages of development.

 

You can view the files at http://osphpchat.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/osphpchat/

 

login: demo/demo

[The Little Guy]

Ouch AJAX is NOT the way to go with a chat system, this eats away WAY too much bandwidth, is slow, and you make too many requests to the server.

 

What you will want is to do a socket server, and flash will be your friend for this.

 

You will have 1000's of less server requests which will allow for more members to access the chat at one time.

 

But... Their are some some downsides to this:

 

1. This requires you to make a php socket server.

2. Not all hosts allow people to run endless processes on their servers (which this requires).

[ignace]

What you will want is to do a socket server, and flash will be your friend for this.

 

Using pull technique is a bad idea but I see no harm for smallish websites. JS also support push techniques: APE. Their is also Node.js among others. Your script should account for these different techniques and allow the end-user to select the appropriate technique.

 

More information:

HTTP Streaming

[Dragosvr92]

Dude, your Demo account has admin rights,remove them.

[gizmola]

Ouch AJAX is NOT the way to go with a chat system, this eats away WAY too much bandwidth, is slow, and you make too many requests to the server.

 

What you will want is to do a socket server, and flash will be your friend for this.

 

You will have 1000's of less server requests which will allow for more members to access the chat at one time.

 

But... Their are some some downsides to this:

 

1. This requires you to make a php socket server.

2. Not all hosts allow people to run endless processes on their servers (which this requires).

 

I think that's one opinion, but I see no problem with an ajax chat system. 

[Sogo7]

Have used simple AJAX chat scripts and even X7chat on free hosting providers with good results.

[mikesta707]

Seems pretty cool. A tiny bit slow, but thats because you are using AJAX requests I would assume. Quite nice and simplistic for a small chat room. May have some problems scaling though. THe color scheme is also a little meh but I'm assuming its just a mockup to make sure the functionality is correct

[WebStyles]

1. a little timestamp next to the messages would be nice.

 

2. the 'edit profile' popup window is a bit too small for the contents (I'm using Firefox 4+ on Mac Os X)

 

3. resizing the browser stretches the side area and not the text area.

 

4. in 'settings', when I change the option to show avatars to YES, chat window jumps to the top instead of staying at the bottom. Also, the settings layer could close automatically when we click on 'save' since there are so few options in there. the extra click seems pointless.

 

5. it's a bit annoying that some popups are css and others are new browser windows.

 

6. the text input area (at the bottom) could be the same width as the main text area, just to keep things nice and aligned.

 

7. I clicked on 'lobby' and suddenly I found myself talking to myself, with no way to go back into the main chat room. LOST.

 

hope this helps