Hi,

The Shout Box has launched (in case you missed it).

Would welcome feedback. My initial thoughts - should it be in a pop-up window instead?

Fire away...

Nice one Glen, only time will tell...........I imagine once Dara and Silly get together it will be used a lot..

Perhaps there could be a "hide" option, and a way to make it open a new window? So people could choose?

Think it's easier if I just list all mine briefly and add the last one I see, then delete the above posts.

-Agree that a hide option is more desirable than a popup.

-Would like to see word wrap in the area we read rather than horizontal scroll, for those of us with bigger fonts set in our browser... larger screens, bad eyes, etc.

-Would like to see a longer charactor limit as per how much we can type.  word wrap will solve the current limitation of this as well.

-For Trolls, suggest that its better to implement that the shoutbox isn't visible to people not logged in, or that if it is, they can't read it and must create an account... and thus have their IP logged.

-Would like to see time stamps on messages so we don't reply to what was there yesterday.

Bugs noticed:

BB tag buttons do not work.  It creates the tag and immediately posts the tags empty.  If something is highlighted, then a button is pushed the tag is put at the end, instead of around something, and the message is then immediatly posted, so tag buttons are not working.
The tags themselves do work as long as they are typed out manually.
This does not apply to smileys... they work just fine when clicking.

Hitting enter more than once on accident creates a double post in the shoutbox, and even a triple post on one occasion.  Maybe a 1/4 second sleep between the ability to post by a given user would solve this...?

Nice Glen!!

Like it as is and not so keen on a pop-up  

Maybe if we can get rid of this text below the buttons:
"Hover over selected items to see their description."
since its not really needed for most people anymore, and would create an extra line of readable space... for when more than 2 people use it.

Yeah  

I cannot seem to make the colour of the text changeit works here ok

LB make sure you type in between the tags.

I agree with everything MD said!

Can we move the smilies to the top? I keep thinking they're a message.

Is this SB auto refresh?

I reckon it's because of current work being done, but I just logged in and can only see the shoutbox, this section (prior to a refresh it was another one) and the logo and new posts at the top of the front page.

Good luck with the hacking and debugging  

Mines all good  

Yeah mine's fixed now.

Could the Shout button be put at other end(right hand side) as its to easy to activate it when changing text etc

You can just type enter as well LB.
EDIT: OIC, when changing stuff.

I say it's grossly impractical. Not to mention bug ridden.

Good job on the timestamp hoverover feature.  I haven't played with the rest yet.  I do like a shoutbox though, even if it takes a long time to be used, or is silent often.  I did find that the timestamps are an hour behind my forum settings, and that the server clock has also drifted by around 15 minutes.

The shoutbox does not refresh itself.  it does when you type something and hit enter, when you hit the reset button in the shoutbox, or of course refreshing the front page.  I think the ideal behaviour would be for it to refresh itself every ...one second or more.  I say that because ideally It could be used as a chatbox, otherwise its just there for grafitti, which is boring.  If it's meant to refresh itself, then perhaps this isn't the best box for it, because it refreshes the entire thing including the typing feild and smileys, and periodically refreshing the typing field just wouln't work as it would kill what you're trying to type.

I don't like it, yes it should be a popup especially when people use profanity and that's all I can see on the home page for hours. Also, I will never use it.

Sorry about that Suzi.  It was a bit of trial gone too far, with testing the black color tags in relation to fooling the word filter.  The word filter works fine btw, just not when you tag [color] around one of the letters, or using spaces the way other people do when posting in the public forums.

I think it would be better as a popup box aswell but I don't mind how it is I guess. Good job!, keep it up.

What's wrong with having the option to hide it like any other forum category?  Making it a pop-up defeats the purpose entirely.

Can I hide the shout box completely and if so... how?

No ...and how would you know if we were shouting at you???

Yeah why won't you use it Suzi?

It refreshes now I think

I have the HOME page up all the time and seeing the shout box annoys me... plus I don't like being shouted at

But we'll only shout nice things  

Quoted from SuziH

Can I hide the shout box completely and if so... how?

No, If it was put up like a section of the forum that could be collapsed, is what had been suggested before as an alternative to a popup, however it may be beyond the scope of what's worthwhile to implement.

We could rename it the chatbox.

Call it a chatbox then Suzi

Edit- Lol MD yes!

Brilliant minds  

BAhahha obviously

We already had a chatroom...

Tank, much?

If it has to be there, why not have it is a column on the side of the front page? Wouldn't have so long to word wrap and you could move the start of the forums from where it's pushed down.