A Chatroom I'm working on

[R_P]

I've been working on chat related technology as part of my job and am releasing a version I personally developed on my website soon. Unfortunately to really stress-test a chat room, you need lots of people using it at once.

This is a browser chat that works with current Gecko, Trident, KHTML and WebCore based browsers. I've not tested or checked for compliance with Opera or the Presto layout engine.

I've done my best to emulate IRC technology, meaning there is no page flickering and little latency (low response time) between your chat and my server. The chat includes a message window and user list. You will see your text immediately after you send it. You are automatically logged in when you enter the chat and logged out when you close the chat window. A chat-bot monitors room activity and returns critical messages. The load on my server is relatively low per-user.

The link below will take you to my website were you will see another "open chat" link. Clicking "open chat" will open a pop-up which will prompt you for a username. You can choose any username you like. When you're done chatting, just close the chatroom window and you will be automatically logged out. The logout button doesn't work yet.

Make sure you tell me how it went. What kind of response times you got and if the chat lagged (stuttered) and how I can improve. Feel free to email or message me with questions. If you see username roddzilla, it probably means I'm in the room working on it. Without further ado:

[url=http://www.roddzilla.com?page=chat]Chat Room Alpha Release[/url]

Edit: I just saw the Beta Testing Forum (I swear that's new) and am thinking that would be a better home for this post. If one of you mods or admins would like to move this, I wouldn't hold it against you. Thanks.

[R_P]

[quote][b]testing[/b]: don't like the focus bit
[b]testing[/b]: makes it hard to multi task[/quote]

Good point. I've removed the repeating window.focus as it was becoming a pain for IE users.

[JasonLewis]

really nice R_P. keep it up, i am loving it all.

[Carterhost]

There's one problem I had: when the chat window was not minimized, it kept bringing itself to the front every time it refreshed. Probably handy if you want to keep on top of the conversation, but I wanted it in the background, to check when I was ready.

Other than that, it's really, really nice. Love the look of it.

[AXiSS]

I found that:

-Two users can have the same username
-If you have a username with a character like ü in it, or your message has a character like ü in it, it will accept the message when you hit "talk", but wont display it

Other than that it seems pretty cool

[emehrkay]

it crashes my ff 2.0 install

[redbullmarky]

just tried it myself. i had exact same problem as emehrkay (thank god for 'restore session' ;) )

[R_P]

I saw you guys try to log in while I was working on it earlier. Sorry! It won't do that again! Yes, and I also thank god for "restore session" in FF.. :) i can't tell you how many times I've had to use it just coding this app.

Also new IRC commands include:

/auth {password}    - makes you a moderator
/op {username}      - makes username a mod (mods only)
/deop {username}    - takes mod priveleges away from username (mods only)
/kick {username}    - kicks username out of the chatroom (mods only)
/authstate              - returns 1 if your a mod, 0 if not (mods also have gavel next to their username)
/nick {new}            - changes your username to {new} value (NOT WORKING YET)

If you're serious about testing it, message me and I'll give you the /auth password. Although its not really fun until there are others in the chat with you just asking for a good swift kick. :D Also, tell me what other functions you think are essential to IRC so I can include them. Thanks for all the help so far!