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Echat Upgrade - Setup User Profile, Opening a Room, Use of Icons, etc etc |
March 8 , 2006
16:31 Ensign Howard: WELCOME to the training class with Ensign today using the New Chat program. After an intensive month of development by Mike and Howard, we believe we are ready to roll-out the new chat program to replace the one we have used for the past 3 years.
16:32 Ensign Howard: It is almost hard to believe 3 years have passed since the introduction of the chat program in April of 2003. We have learned a lot, and gathered requests and suggestions, and hopefully have created a much better and more powerful program in the redesign. It is a new design from the ground up, and I am excited to show it to you today.
16:34 Ensign Howard: I wish to thank the many who have helped in beta testing over the past few weeks, particulary Buffy for her help on many occasions including Saturdays.
16:34 @Biffy: welcome dblue midnight and others too - we are more than happy to help
16:34 Ensign Howard: I also wish to express my appreciation and admiration for Mike Lamont, my staff person who wrote the server side of this chat service. Mike has handled all the server side issues, including computers, routers, ports, gates, remote access etc and the marriage of what I can do and what Mike can do is what brings it all together.
16:36 @Biffy: Well a big thanks from us to both you and Mike. I know a lot of effort has been put into this and it shows.
16:36 Spin: I'll second that
16:36 robbo: yes much appreciated
16:37 Ensign Howard: thanks.
16:37 Ensign Howard: To begin with, you should click on the Setup button to set personal properties for the chat. I will discuss a few of these key properties.
16:38 Ensign Howard: Users would begin by picking a nickname to be known by in the chat rooms, and I see everyone has already done that step. You can optionally select an icon which shows on the memberlist adjacent to the nickname. There are 57 to choose from, plus a couple of special icons reserved for the Ensign staff and for room administrators. Most of the properties are self-explanatory.
16:40 Ensign Howard: The Show Profile URL Links box was added as per suggestions from last weeks class. On the pop-up menu for the Members List is a menu for User Profile, and can be used to request the user profile for the user selected on the list. The profile can include a URL, and this box when checked will auto show the URL if it is also on the room's approve site list. Unchecked and the link will show in the room but not auto show in the web viewer. Some wanted to exercise greater caution about having profile URLs auto show in the viewer.
16:42 @Biffy: Dacharts is going to have a folder for pictures in archives so they will auto show safely
16:42 Ensign Howard: The box for Scroll Transcript for initial installs will be checked. When checked this is the same scroll method as used by the old chat program and seems to work for all computer platforms. However, in the redesign there is a better scroll control by our watching windows messaging, however in our testing with some computers (both new and old) their behavior for scrolling is different than intended. Thus we have the box so you can select old way (checked) or new way (unchecked).
16:44 Ensign Howard: It will be up to you to try a simple test to see if your computer works with the new improved scroll method.
16:44 Ensign Howard: Try this: Uncheck the box, close the properties form. If the transcript continues to scroll, you are all set, you can leave the box unchecked.
16:45 Ensign Howard: The beauty of the new way, is you can drag the transcript slider bar upward to read past text and the form will stop scrolling. You can also, click on a link in the back transcript and it will stay on that position. You can drag across text to do a Copy operation to the clipboard using CTRL-C keys, and the text will stay in position.
16:46 Ensign Howard: To return to the bottom of the transcript to see new data and resume scrolling, you simply click the mouse in the text entry window at the bottom.
16:47 Ensign Howard: That is how it works for me and my Scroll Transcript box is unchecked..... Hope it works that way for most of you as well.
16:47 Ensign Howard: A new feature on the Setup is a box to Block Private Messages.
16:48 Ensign Howard: When checked, all private message attempts will get back a polite message in the PM that you are not accepting PMs because you are busy. They then know you did not get their PM attempt.
16:48 Ensign Howard: On the setup form, you are invited and encourages to enter a profile URL and information. The URL can be to a picture of you on the Internet, or to your web site. The information and be anything you want it to be.....; the more we know about each other the more we feel like a big family. I have a profile entered, and you can read it by left click on my nickname on the member list, then right mouse click and select User Profile on the pop-up menu.
16:50 Ensign Howard: The program has 2 pop-up menus, one for when the mouse is over the member list and one for when the mouse is over the transcript.
16:50 Ensign Howard: On the setup form there is an entry for Buffer Size.
16:51 Ensign Howard: Some computers cannot handle a large packet size for UPD transfer...... one such computer was an old one used by Buffy. By trial and error we found it could handle a buffer size of 1400 characters. So this is what we have done. We initalize the program to start with 1400 character buffer, and then do a test to see if we get a reply when 8000 characters are send as a dummy test transmission.
16:52 Ensign Howard: If we get the packet, then we know you can handle a buffer of 8000 and auto set your parameter to the higher value. You will see the messages Buffer Size Test Performed and then the message possibly Buffer Size Successful.
16:54 Ensign Howard: After the test we will auto set your size to either 1410 or 8000, and the 1410 indicates the test was run before and failed and the 8000 means the test for 8000 was successful
16:55 Ensign Howard: if you want to try the test again, such as right now, just change the Buffer Size entry to 1400 and close the form. You do not need to exit and rerun. We will see the 1400 and redo the test when the buffers are empty. The reason for a higher buffer size is noticed when you enter a room and we have lots of data to pass such as the rooms transcript history and the room membership records. With a large buffer we can send fewer chunks that are bigger until all the data you need has been passed. With a small buffer, the data is chunked into smaller packets, and more of them get handshaked across from the server to the client
16:57 Ensign Howard: All data will be received because of the clever handshaking protocol we designed. It is faster to get the data passed in bigger chunks. Now if you have the buffer size problem, big packets cannot be received and you will perhaps not get the room membership or not get the transcript refresh. Go ahead an close the setup form
16:59 Ensign Howard: On the member list we have two columns of icons
16:59 Ensign Howard: The left side icon is showing some status information and the right side icon is the one you picked as your My Icon selection.
16:59 Ensign Howard: The left side icon can show if you are listening to the room's voice feature by having the Voice Chat box (or Listen box) checked. The Listen box is the same as Voice chat and will be renamed in the next upgrade of the Ensign Windows chat room.
17:01 Ensign Howard: Other left side icons will be the microphone to indicate you are speaking on the mic, or the moon to indicate you are Away status or the round clock to indicate you are Out but intend to return in a few hours, or the black dot to indicate you are in another room but watching this room as the 2nd room watch. Other temporary icons can be shown instead of your My Icon by using hot keys to show them
17:03 Ensign Howard: The hot keys show on the member list pop-up menu, such as CTRL-B for the coffe cup to indicate you are on a short Break.
17:03 Ensign Howard: Press CTRL-T keys to give me a thumbs up
17:04 Ensign Howard: These hot keys are alos a toggle, such that a second CTRL-T will toggle the thumbs up back to the My Icon selection or you can press CTRL-M to return to My Icon
17:04 Ensign Howard: As stated before, there is a different pop-up when the mouse is over the transcript.
17:05 Ensign Howard: The Erase Transcript menu will show on the room administrators menu but not on the patron menus. The Statistics report is also on the room admin menus. The global message menu is ONLY on the Ensign staff menus and would be used to send an announcement to every room. I would use this sparingly, but an appropriate occasion would be to announce the start of the training classes.
17:07 Ensign Howard: The bottom menu item is a new feature you can use to find out if someone is connected and which room they are in. The nick you enter in the Input box is not case sensitive and it does not have to be complete either. For example, a search for Ensign will return all the nicks containing Ensign, such as my staff, and which rooms they are all in.
17:09 Ensign Howard: You can search for buffy and get a reply she is in 0 Support or that she is not on-line. We now have 51 rooms and I need a feature like this to find a person, such as Don Henry, to know if he is connected by my knowing his nickname.
17:13 Ensign Howard: You may see the Hi icon in the first column as well, and this will display automatically for 7 seconds when a user enters the room. The Hi icon will auto disappear.
17:25 Ensign Howard: we are up to 40 listeners now and Hercy is talking and he is from England
17:28 Ensign Howard: ok, ready for EVERYONE who wants to can join the voice load test
17:29 Ensign Howard: still real good most of the time - let me count the number
17:30 Ensign Howard: I think we have 52 connected for voice - a little bit of break up but still very acceptable. It used to break up at 17.....now we can get up to 40 fine. Looks like 50+ start to break up a little.
17:33 @Biffy: amazng how many this time
17:33 gunner: perfectly usable quality here in Ottawa
17:35 Ensign Howard: ok, I will resume typing to those without sound can still be informed
17:36 Ensign Howard: You can run echat more than once on same computer or on different computers - just need to have different nickname for each instance. I have run 2 echats on same computer fine, one as Ensign and one as JimmKT
17:37 Ensign Howard: OK, to talk, you hold down the mic key you assign on the Setup form
17:37 Ensign Howard: You can have ventrilo and echat on same computer and use different mic keys for each and then which mic key you use determines which room gets your voice (Not all hardward/windows OS lets you do this.)
17:39 Ensign Howard: If you have sound or mic issues, it might be your router is blocking the ports used. See the Feb Trading Tips issue which is documentation for echat2 for the ports involved.
17:39 virt: Howard...this chatroom is on a different server than the other?
17:39 Ensign Howard: This chat is on a different server and the backbone connection is of higher capacity
17:39 trendHunter: Should we be able to hear on vent also
17:40 Ensign Howard: yes trendhunter. Ventrilo for ventrilo speakers and echat for echat speakers. The two do not send to each other and if both talk simultaneously, for me at least, the both spoke simultaneously just like 2 people in same room talking at same time.
17:41 Ensign Howard: OK, for next part of the training let me teach about being a room administrator
17:41 Ensign Howard: Click the Setup button again and on the form select the Room tab
17:43 Ensign Howard: There are 50 rooms. You can take over a room that is available by entering an Admin password. Once entered this room cannot be edited without entering the admin password so others cannot change your settings.
17:44 gunner: CONGRATS Howard,,, who do I talk to about getting a room.??.
17:44 @Biffy: just go open one gunner :-) That is the beauty of this new echat.
17:44 Ensign Howard: To lock you room so it is a private room you enter an access password. You would give this access password out to those who you want to have permission to enter your room. On the drop down list for rooms above the member list you will see the room number with a quote tick following the number. The quote mark is shown for rooms that are locked. You automatically know the room requires a password for access.
17:46 Ensign Howard: On the room setup form you can enter a caption, pick a name and icon. You can define the web url that is for the button with the 2 blue bars on the main form, enter a welcome message that displays when a person enters your room, and enter a message to be shown when the access attempt fails because they do not know the access password. (Suggest message include a contact if room is accepting members.) You can edit the bulletin content that will be shown when the bulletin button is pressed. As a room admin, you will be able to erase the transcript for your room. This deletes it from the server so it is no longer available to be refreshed or sent to new arrivals. The Clear Transcript pop up menu just blanks your transcript form, but does not erase it from the server.
17:50 Ensign Howard: As a room admin you can boot a user from your room and they cannot reenter. their nick and computer id will populate a dropdown list on the setup form and you will have to delete them from this banned list for them to reenter your room.
17:51 Ensign Howard: URLs posted to the transcript can auto show if they are from the Ensign or dacharts web site or they can auto show if you put the root of the URL on your approved url list
17:52 Ensign Howard: So if you post to your private site, add your URL root to the approved list and then they will auto show in the web viewer and not require a click on the link to show them. Close the setup form.
17:53 Ensign Howard: now, for the last feature, lets make good use of the Q&A session
17:53 Ensign Howard: if you have a question, press the CTRL-Q keys to change your icon to a question mark. I will see you move to the top of the nickname list. I will call on you for your question and you can type it in. When your question is done, press either CTRL-Q again or CTRL-M to return to the My Icon selection. This will put you back down in the list alphabetically.
17:54 Ensign Howard: I am ready to take quesitons, and I see buffy is taking a short coffee break
17:56 @Biffy: I would like to thank you for making it so much easier to copy and paste the class
17:55 Ensign Howard: your turn hercy
17:56 H: how can I keep my members list from jumping around?
17:57 Ensign Howard: The only jump is when a user is added or leaves. It is alphabetical with the exceptions that ENsing staff with the ES icon will be at the very top. Then the room admins that selected the 2 chat icon will be shown next - like JayScat is showing. Then the ? icons will sort next, and everyone else will be alphabetical
17:59 Ensign Howard: As far as the slider moving up or down, I will have to investigate.
17:59 Ensign Howard: For the time being will let the rooms be open. You go to a room selection and the one you enter is where you are at. Available rooms probably have Room as the name. Once you take over a room, change its name and put in admin password.
18:01 Spin: Will the room information be saved so that one of our members can enter the room without the administrator being there first? (Yes)
18:01 Ensign Howard: Occassionally I will scout the rooms and see if they have been abandoned and recover them if they are not used or if they are being used for the wrong purpose.
18:01 trendHunter: How do you "clear" the room when done
18:02 Ensign Howard: You can clear a room by returning the admin field back to being blank and the access to blank. I as a staff have a button that clears all the fields for me
18:03 Ensign Howard: Now, we have the same chat in Ensign Windows as the BETA version that you can download from our web site. We will have it be in Beta status for a few days to be sure there are no problems introduced by our change of the chat from the old to the new chat room. If you are stuck on an old Ensign with old chat and find yourself lonely in abandoned old room, your option for the time being is to run the stand alone echat2.exe so you can join the crowd that moves to new chat.
18:05 Ensign Howard: We had 84 user load today in class, and around 52 for the voice test.... and all went very well....this is very encouraging. I thank all of you for your patience and for your help.
18:06 @Biffy: it is great Howard and happy for you and the staff that it turned out so well
18:06 yin: THANK YOU HOWARD
18:06 Ensign Howard: this looks like the fruition of a major development project and it looks good for launch. Possibly this weekend or early next week the Trading TIps Feb issue will be sent to the readership of over 7000 on the Trading TIps mailing list. So, once that is done, there will be a surge of interest and connection to the new chat.
18:06 terryt: This is very nice. its working well ! thx.
18:06 franko: tks Howard
18:04 Red: Howard, is there any way to implement cut and paste with the mouse buttons? It's faster than ctrl c and ctrl v, and more intuitive ... thanks
18:08 Ensign Howard: sniffy, I can add it to the pop-up menu... let my write a note
18:09 Sniffy: Great thanks very much Howard .. and thanks Red
18:08 Ensign Howard: You all have first dibs on the rooms. Now, we are not charging for this service.... we consider it a good way to attract subscribers to Ensign Windows. It makes a good impression about Ensign, and you all do the salesmanship for us with your excellent use of Ensign charting and helping each other. So the business grows and that pays for this service indirectly.
18:11 Ensign Howard: Just keep it clean and professional and respectable and everyone will be happy with it. And it provides a global voice network.
18:11 Red: Keep up the good work Howard, trading is much more enjoyable with the tools you provide
18:11 @Biffy: Such an improvement
18:11 Ensign Howard: I smile as I see ads from Earthlink and NetVoice wanting to charge $25 per month for their internet phone services and you get much of the same here for free with the added benefit of it being a conferance call to all in the room with you.
18:12 @Biffy: true big difference is can't call anyone LOL
18:12 Ensign Howard: I have talked se4veral times with NewZealand and Australia using this voice feature and it is excellent in spite of their being half way around the globe. Yes buffy, and we do not charge for that benefit either...lol
18:17 Ensign Howard: ok, I think I am done with class.... and perhaps we can start a tradition of you giving the trainer a thumbs Up with the CTRL-T keys as a thank you token
18:17 Ensign Howard: Spin ask now.
18:18 Sniffy: Thanks to you and your team for a great job Howard
18:18 Spin: Here's one "can a user in a password protected room be contacted by PM from a non-password-protected room?"
18:20 Ensign Howard: Yes and no. They have to see your nick and click on it or double click on it, If you are ONLY in the locked room and they are not, then they cannot see you or PM you. However, you might also be in a 2nd watch room and they see you there. you can be PMd from the 2nd watch room
18:20 Spin: I see - that will be true even witth the nickname search feature?
18:21 Ensign Howard: The search feature will tell them you are in a locked room but unless they can get into the same room as you either as your primary or your 2nd watch they cannot PM you. They know where you are, but cannot contact you. PM originates from the Members List - look at the members list now. See RED has a black dot in first icon column. The black dot tells me his is in another room but has this support room as a 2nd watch room. So RED is not in this room but I could PM him because he is on this list as a 2nd room watcher. The black dot is the 2nd room watch indicator.
18:23 Spin: I see -- yes -- I think I understand the PM issue -- makes sense to me. So for those who would like to remain unavailable for PMs from anyone outside the room they are in, just don't keep "watch" on a second room -- should be no problem
18:25 al_gorithm: Howard, are you planning to eventually eliminate Ventrilo?
18:25 Ensign Howard: no al
18:25 al_gorithm: ok, tkx
18:25 Ensign Howard: Ventrilo servers large groups like 100 for Bline room and this voice will not do that.
18:26 Ensign Howard: Also do not yet know if there are 30 in room 1 talking and 40 in room 2 talking if this is a total of 70 that would cause a break up of the quality. 30 alone is fine. 40 alone is fine. But simultaneous is that 70 or not - do not yet know the answer
18:27 Ensign Howard: On ventrilo simultaneous talk happens all the time without loss of quality, so ventrilo has earned a permanent place in our mode of operation and we pay less than $100 per month for that service for you.
18:28 Spin: Will those rooms that are now on the Ensign room list be automatcially available?
18:28 Ensign Howard: The list shows 50 rooms and all 50 are available now. All have voice and a dozen or so have been claimed
18:28 Spin: I mean the rooms that are on the old chat server
18:29 Ensign Howard: Old chat server will probably be turned off at month end if all continues to work well for the new chat. We will draw a line in the sand of time and pull the plug on the old
18:30 Spin: So those who use rooms from the old server - someone in those rooms will have to setup a room out of the 50 on the new eChat? It won't be done automatically for all of those old rooms?
18:31 Ensign Howard: Correct spin, they wil have to come stake out a room and do so quickly. The sooner they do so, the higher up on the list they can get a room.
18:32 Spin: ok thanks Howard - that's what I was wondering
18:32 @Biffy: You going to notify them? I know many have already done it.
18:32 Ensign Howard: Yes probably in a week after we get some time on Beta Ensign Windows that has the new chat in it. If all checks out for a go, then we can be more aggressive in telling them they need to act in making a transition. Will take it slow for a couple more days
18:33 Ensign Howard: Today was the first real test with a load of 84 users and we have had no problems
18:33 @Biffy: Spin you are in support - you need to switch the room so you are in room you want to claim.
18:33 Spin: ah - thanks Buffy -- so if I switch to one of the open rooms, I can stake that one out?
18:33 Ensign Howard: yes
18:33 Spin: ok thank -- will do so now
18:39 @Brinkley: Howard, is this voice all push-to-talk, no voice activation option?
18:39 Ensign Howard: yes Brinkley. Though it could be otherwise, I think push to talk is best
18:39 @Brinkley: Ok, thanks-- and congrats on all your hard work, seems to be coming together well
18:41 @Brinkley: I think you are probably right for the majority of people. For me-- I am giving ongoing market commentary and calls all day, and need hands-free for pulling up charts, annotating, etc. But what you've accomplished is impressive-- big numbers!
18:43 Ensign Howard: thanks Diane - enjoy
18:45 Ensign Howard: Brinkley, you are highly encouraged to cut loose from old chat and as a group make the move to this new chat. If we can get everyone to move over and all goes well of course as the load increases, we intend to turn off old chat server at month end or there abouts
18:45 @Brinkley: We are on our way over, several members have already set up-- had a few in here tonight for your session
18:46 GrailTrader: Thanks Howard - all seems to be working well - have new room setup on eChat2 -- seems to be working as planned
18:47 Ensign Howard: Grailtrader, as room admin, you can select icon 63. This is the icon intended for use by admins and it will cause you to list at the top of the members list
18:47 GrailTrader: Thanks Howard - I'll try that now
18:51 @Brinkley: ok
18:51 Spin: Thanks Howard -- icon 63 worked as it should -- always at the top of the list