AJAX Chatbox for Pascal developers?

[WILL]

Not to knock anybody's point of view, but from what I can tell the AJAX Chat box does seem to continue to be voted up as it goes along. I'm getting more and more inclined to keep it and promote it more on the site as a viable solution for members wanting to connect with other Pascal game programmers.

Now of course I don't think it'll replace posting in forum threads and I wouldn't want it to either as the PGD forums provide an important role for many many things. It does however give us new opportunities with specific regard to online gatherings. With such technology in use, we could organize talks, Q&A sessions, conferences and meets to connect the community better.

Such ideas are being discussed behind the curtain so stay tuned to see what we come up with. And please... keep testing it out! http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/chat/

[cairnswm]

I have never found browser based chat sessions much use, unless arranged for specific things (like the during race chats on GPRO.net).

I do however use skype and MSN as they run on my desktop and actually tell me that there is a new message, instead of me having to page to a specific browser page to see if anyone has said anything.

As we are a bunch on programmers should we not be creating our own chat protocal that everyone can then use in their own way?

[code_glitch]

@cairnswm: Guess what my suggestion was...

@everybody: Still, now I look at the proposition from a 3rd party standpoint - its not half bad. Even if we don't come up with a revamped IRC protocol which (wait for it) could be legend - a simple chat protocol solves everything: we have the code - pascal as we are now discussing is web capable, and cross platform so Windows, Linux, mac and web/smartphone users are satissfied. Further - its our own protocol: spam wont even know how to access it in the first place, let alone flood it... Although the AJAX chat is nice and yes ticks most of the boxes -I do find it a ruddy big pain in the... workflow (for the record I was going to say workflow) and I hate wasting my resources by having all my 300tabs in firefox open just for a chat page if you know what I mean...

[WILL]

and I hate wasting my resources by having all my 300tabs in firefox open just for a chat page if you know what I mean...

Yes and no. If you are referring to a situation like me where you abuse the amount of tabs and windows you should normally have open at a time, then yes. However a solution could be to use an alternative browser for the chat page, be better organized and not like this hippocrite and stop abusing your poor web browser or load it up on your iPad or tablet and set it beside your dev rig as a second screen.

Those are the simple immediate solutions. I would like to eventually build an actual chat client/app that allows access to PGDs login system and acts as part notification system, part IM/PM messaging and chat management software. Such spinoff ideas could be akin to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer plugins. Maybe even plugins for other popular chat clients if a PGD community API were to be made.

[SilverWarior]

I would like to eventually build an actual chat client/app that allows access to PGDs login system and acts as part notification system, part IM/PM messaging and chat management software. Such spinoff ideas could be akin to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer plugins. Maybe even plugins for other popular chat clients if a PGD community API were to be made.

I think that making a standalone chat application is great idea, and it isn't even so hard to do. All you need is special purposed web application wich runs on PGD server and Client application that runs on Clients computer. With this we also get the ability to design our own protocol and thus prevent spaming. But comnining this system with existing PGD comunity site and forum, might not be so easy. It largly depends on what technology is used for PGD site and forum.
As far as browser extensions are consirned I'm personlly aginst them. Why? Browser extensions run at the same time than your browser. This means that PGD chat will run even when you might not it to (quicly looking something on the web wich isn't related to programing or PGD comunity). Another drawback of broser pliguns is alck of space for any decen UI.
So having standalone application alows you to have full control off when you want to use it, and would alow us having much better UI.

As for notifiications why don't we just use RSS feeds. Most browsers nowadays already have RSS news reader support integrated in them. Also it is posible to get RSS reader application for just any mobile phone wich supports web browsing.

[SilverWarior]

As for the current AJAX chat box I think that to litlle pepole even know about it. Why? Whenever I'm online in chat I see that just a few different pepole ever tries finding sombody online there.
Also as I have been writing already in some posts before I found solution for constant loguts from chat. All you have to do is that when you login to PGD comunity site you check the Rembember me Checkbox. This creates permament sesion so you don't get automaticly loged out from the PGD comunity site. And since AJAX chat uses the same sesion this means that you can also be premamently loged into the chat. Offcourse if you want you can still log out from the chat itself with the logut button and still remain loged int to PGD comunity site.
About a weak ago I managed to be online for more than 14 hours without any interuptions by using this means.

So if you want this chat system to be trully tested put a permament link on the fron site and do post instructions of how should pepole login so that they won't be suffering off automatic logouts. This is the only way we can get more pepole using it.

[LP]

I would like to eventually build an actual chat client/app that allows access to PGDs login system and acts as part notification system, part IM/PM messaging and chat management software. Such spinoff ideas could be akin to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer plugins. Maybe even plugins for other popular chat clients if a PGD community API were to be made.

Actually, this would be a fantastic idea. I myself try to stay away from AJAX/JS based chat systems as they tend to slow down and even crash browsers; even though such systems are sometimes provided with forum software and/or as an add-on. A PGD notification system and chat would be interesting to try, especially if it could run on iPad.

[code_glitch]

I'd tried messing with the sql support in the FPC fcl a while back - with the values supplied by blueimp in their implementation except that the challenge then is to get it to talk with the vBulletin login information or at least be able to query the PGD database for info in order to talk with it... If anyone is up for something like that maybe it'd be worth putting together a small team and get a community app driven - something nice which involves a bit of everyone and gives the community more of a 'open source' type working together team feel thats so nice about some of those open source initiatives

[cairnswm]

vBulletin is written in php. The easiest way for a thick client app to talk to a web page is for custom php services to be created that return the info you want. For example we create a hallo world call like this (psuedo code)

helloworld.php
<?php
$name = getParam("name");
echo "Hello $name";
?>

and this can be called from a browser like http://localhost/helloworld.php?name=William
and it returns a text string contianing "Hello William\n".

This can the be included inside a Delphi/Freepascal program as an HTTP call to the server. The result comes back as text and can be loaded into a TStringList to interpret.

These services can be created as needed for example
logincheck.php?username=cairnswm&md5password=klh54 lkjh3kjndklj43
fetchlatest.php?username=cairnswm&chatroom=pgdchat &lastid=1243
addchat.php?username=cairnswm&chatroom=pgdchat&com ment=Hi guys, long time no see
etc

I currently run a software deployment and discovery system covering about 200 servers using this system. Each server every 5 minutes asks for a list of new deployments that are relvant for it. If a new deployment is identified it asks for details and then does an FTP of the required files. After that it again tells the server if it was successful or not and what the new version is.

I have also written a full website for my GPRO.net team where each persons data is loaded to the website using services like this.

My examples above are not good examples as the whole system should work on session tokens rather than usernames.