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Hello again, Firstly it's active in my website now and i must mention that it's brought a wave of excitement to the members :)
Here are the notes i've written down. The first one is the most important, and could be counted as a bug... the others are more likely ideas:
(I'm using Xoops 2.5)
1-This story below happened twice with two seperate members and me, one of them was online and the other was busy:
I'd written to a member and (s)he replied. We had a short conversation. Then i closed the dialogue box. A few minutes later, while browsing the website, the dialogue box appeared again, with just the first message, like it was never replied.
To make it clearer, here is an example with just an imaginary conversation:
First person: Hello, the time is 17:30 here, what's the time there? (1st message)
Second person: Hello it is 19.30 here? (2)
First person: Ok thank you (3)
Second person: Your welcome
--Second person closes the dialogue box
--A few minutes later, the dialogue box appears on the second person's screen, like it was never replied:
First person: Hello, the time is 17:30 here, what's the time there?
--And it appears in the first person's screen, like he sent the first message to himself. I mean, the title of this dialogue box is not the second person's name, it's first person's.
Probably there is a problem with the control system of the message's receiving status. I didn't check the database if it was recorded as "received" or not. I can do it next time, if needed.
2- The options area doesn't close when you update it (in the tiny mode). This is not very important but i think it should close itself after update.
3- Let's say i set my status as online. Then i quit the website and come back. My status comes as "away" again. I think it should be what i set latest.
4- When i click the middle icon at the right top of the dialogue box, in the middle of the minimize and close icons; it makes the dialogue box non-closable. Is this its aim? If it is, i think the box should be closable again when you re-click it. And when i refresh the page, that property is reset. Well, may be, I really didn't get the idea of that icon.
5- Another idea is, the administrator could add a custom icon with custom link to the footer bar.
6- When the connection is slow, the border images of the dialogue box is shown late. I think there should be an option of not using them.
7- The idea of movable dialogue boxes is very nice and it works alright. Besides, some members are used to have them all attached to the footer bar, because of facebook chat. I think this could be an option for them.
8- Sometimes, the online people list comes late because of internal connection slowness or some other reasons. I think the online list should be cached, and brought to the friends list from that cache. This would make it faster. And in the background, the system can check if the friends list is up to date or not and refresh it if needed. This would make users not wait for the list in every refresh of the page.
9- I think there is no need for status icons for the online friends. The icons should be seen just for busy and away friends. (I suppose the offline friends are not seen in the list) This would strain the eyes less.
10- The user's status light should be seen as a colored dot next to the "Friends" text.
11- Deafult status should be set by the administrator.
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Of course these are just ideas and according to me most of them are not obligatory for 1.0 release either.
I appreciate your hard work, the system works nice without these also and that's why i've started to use it in my website :) The ideas are just for constructive criticism.
Kind regards,