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Using Stand Alone Echat for Auto Posting, Page-PM-Profile Buttons, PM Across Rooms, Choosing Size of Text Refresh, URL List, Copy Text, User Profile, Erase Transcript, Admin Acceptance, QnA |
March 15 , 2006
16:32 Ensign HA: Welcome to today's training class with Ensign
16:32 Ensign HA: There have been several features added and improved on in the new EChat since last week. The servers and chat program have proved to be very stable for the past week and I think we have been on-line quite continuously for the past week. Again, I express my appreciation and admiration to Mike for his excellent work, and his willingness to drop what he might be doing to respond to suggested changes to the chat server even when the request might be made on a weekend or odd hour of the day. Thanks Mike.... you did a great job with the server side of the implementation.
16:34 Ensign Mike: Welcome. Very glad to help.
16:34 Ensign HA: Ok, on to some of the improvements in the program since a week ago.
Stand Alone Echat will Auto Post if on Same Machine as Ensign.
16:35 Ensign HA: One of the biggest changes involved Ensign Windows..... In the past users often would upload chart images using CTRL-J keys. That part has not changed. In order for the URL link to this upload to post in a chat room transcript, the chat room inside of Ensign Windows would need to be open at the time. If the chat room was not open, the upload would still happen, and the user would have to browse to the upload site, find the URL and manually post it in a chat room if they were using the stand alone EChat program. The change in Ensign Windows was to scan for the presence of the stand alone EChat running when the built in chat room is not open. IF the stand alone EChat is found, then the URL link is now auto posted in that program's room.
16:38 Ensign HA: So, if you want the chat room inside of Ensign, then use the chat button in Ensign to open the chat room. The room will be a child window that stays inside of the desktop space of the Ensign Windows program.
16:38 Ensign HA: Or if you want a chat room that is separate from Ensign desktop coverage, then run the EChat program. Either way, the CTRL-J keys will be able to auto post the link for the uploaded URL. On the chat form, is a check labeled POST and this box needs to be checked to have your upload URL auto show in the room's transcript.
16:40 Ensign HA: You can uncheck the POST box when you want to do an upload with CTRL-J and not have the link posted to the chat room transcript. There will be times when you have a need to upload but the upload is not intended for the room to see.
16:41 Ensign HA: Now there is a companion SHOW check box by the Post checkbox. This box needs to be checked if you want the arriving URLs to auto show in the web viewer. You would uncheck the SHOW box when you want to view something for a longer time and not have it replaced by someone posting another link to the room. Recheck the SHOW box to enable arriving links to show automatically in the web viewer.
16:43 Ensign HA: Now, the links that are to show need to pass a filter which means the link root is on an approved list of URLs. The posts to the ensignsoftware and ensignsupport and dacharts web sites are pre-approved.
16:44 Ensign HA: Many private rooms have private sites they upload charts to, and to have these URLs auto show, the room administrator needs to put the URL root for their uploads on the room's list of Approved URLs. I have worked with many of the room admins over the past week to get their private sites working in their rooms, and the most common problem is they did not realize the URL root needed to be added to the Approved URLs list box on the setup form for their chat room. So, the filter seems to be working very well, and once the root is on the list then the URLs begin to show.
URLs Auto Posting
16:46 Ensign HA: Today's version also tries to fix another related issue and this is some URLs though on the approved list were not auto showing when received. The cause of the problem is that the program was only auto showing when the URL was the last line received. It happened now and then that the traffic packet received from the server has the URL followed by another line of text which happened to be received at the same time as the URL was received. So the packet of traffic had the URL and more text, which kept the URL from showing because it was not the last line received. The reason for the last line received test is so that when you do a transcript refresh, the embedded URLS by the dozens do not auto show as they flow into the room from the refresh. We just wanted to show the last one received.
16:49 Ensign HA: The fix in the 03-15 version was to tolerate the URL link being followed by another line, and still auto show. Even if the url does not auto show, you can still click on the link manually to see it in the viewer. The fix should pretty well solve the reason it was not showing when it should have shown.
16:50 Ensign HA: Buffy, do you want to comment on your experience with EW posting links in the stand alone EChat.
16:50 @Biffy: hi - yes I have ran the stand alone all day on same machine as Ensign it all day. It is great to just click on the taskbar icon and have large echat window come up and go back to Ensign same way. Used to have to bring six charts to the front. Great time saver!
16:52 Ensign HA: excellent, thanks buffy....
Addition of Page, PM and Profile Buttons
16:52 Ensign HA: Another improvement in chat is the addition of a Page, PM and Profile button set at the bottom of the members list.
16:52 Ensign HA: This set will show when you click on a nickname in the list. So if you wanted to Page me, on the member list click my nick with the left mouse button. Then click on the Page button on the bottom of the list or you can still right mouse click and use the pop-up menu to page the selected user. When the button is used, the set of 3 buttons then auto hide so you can see the Swap button if 2nd room watch is enabled and see the number of users in the room. I find it is much easier to click the Page button than to navigate to the Page pop-up menu.
16:54 Ensign HA: So there are three ways to do a private message.
16:54 Ensign HA: You can double click on the nickname on the member list. You must be in echat with them.
16:55 Ensign HA: You can click once and then click the PM button.
16:55 Ensign HA: You can click once and right mouse click to use Private Message pop-up menu.
PMs Between Rooms
16:55 Ensign HA: Now in the 03-15 versions, we added a 4th way to do a Private Message as follows:
16:56 Ensign HA: Say you know the nick of a friend, and the friend is currently in a locked room that you cannot access. In the past you could not contact that friend. In the 03-15 version, we added a pop-up menu over the transcript with a Private Message menu
16:58 Ensign HA: When you use this pop-up menu from the transcript, the Private Message menu will prompt you for the nickname of the user you want to contact. We will then try to contact them, and put up a message the user is not on-line if they are not found. Otherwise a PM will be started.
16:59 Ensign HA: The user might have PMs blocked and if that is the case you will get the the reply that the user is not accepting PMs because they are busy. Using this new menu will permit you to PM someone that is in a different room than you are in.
17:01 Ensign HA: You can use the Where Is User menu and enter the nickname of the person you seek to find which room they are in. I have used this feature often in that some one may post a question here, and I read it later but they are no longer in the Support room. I can then find if they are still on-line, and if so, which room they are in, and then go to the same room to answer their question or issue.
17:02 kj: Thats a great idea
17:02 Ensign HA: thx kj
Refreshing More Text
17:02 Ensign HA: Now another change resulted from a suggestion last week. When you join a room we will auto refresh 50 lines of text so you can see what the conversation is in the room you joined.
17:03 Ensign HA: This is down from the 100 lines of text we used to refresh.
17:03 Ensign HA: However, in lieu of that reduction, we now offer on the pop-up menu for the transcript the ability to request a bigger refresh if you find you need to read it.
17:04 Ensign HA: So you can ask for 125 lines, or 250 lines, or 500 lines or all that the server has for the room which could be up to 1000 lines. The 1000 line refresh might be back into prior day's discussion if the room does not have much traffic. Anyway, the menus are in response to last week's class to be able to refresh more than 100 lines.
Arrows Colored
17:06 Ensign HA: A small change was to color some of the big arrows that before were white in color Now the up arrow will be green, down red, and right arrow blue.
17:08 Ensign HA: One of the room admins requested the colored arrows because they use the arrows to indicate the direction of the trades they were in and it is easier to see who in the room is long by seeing green arrows, and who is short by seeing red arrows, and show is flat by seeing a blue arrow.
17:09 Ensign HA: These arrows are on the hot keys for quick selection by pressing ctrl-U, ctrl-D or ctrl-r keys
Users URL List
17:10 Ensign HA: Another feature not covered much in prior classes is the ability to create a list of favorite URLs for the web browser. The favorites list is the box on the top right side of the viewer. You can select an entry on your list and the viewer will change to it. You an type a new URL in the edit box on the top of the list and press enter to add to the list. If youwant to remove an entry from the list you will have to use the Setup form which offers a delete button to delete the url you select on the Favorites list.
17:12 Ensign HA: One of the URLs the list may have been pre-populated with is the tradingtips74 page on the Ensign web site. This is the February Trading Tips newsletter which documents how to use the chat program. If you have a question about using the chat or setting up a room, select that url and read the documentation.
17:14 Ensign HA: You can see what I have on my favorites list, one of which is google site for doing internet searches from within the web viewer part of the chat program.
17:14 Ensign HA: Any questions about creating or using the favorites list?
Copy Text
17:16 Ensign HA: The program allows you to copy text, possibly a URL, from the transcript by clicking down and dragging the mouse across the desired text....... when you release the mouse it will AUTO COPY to the clipboard.
17:17 Ensign HA: This SAVES you the step of then doing a CTRL-C key to copy to the clipboard. The copy was automatic. Otherwise why were you dragging across the transcript text in the first place.
17:18 Ensign HA: With the material on the clipboard, you can then go to another application and do a CTRL-V operation to paste the clipboard into the other app.
17:18 Ensign HA: So simply drag across the text and the clipboard has it captured.
Room Setup
17:18 Ensign HA: On the Setup form there is a tab for your private information and a tab for setting up the room.
17:19 Ensign HA: Available rooms will be listed with the name Vacant on the drop down list
17:20 Ensign HA: You can then go to the Setup form for the room and enter an admin password and fill in the rest of the form too. This captures the room slot for your use and others will not be able to edit your room's setup information. Now, I browse through the rooms occasionally to see if the room is indeed in use, or if someone was just playing with the form and has no intention of having a room.
17:21 Ensign HA: One of the things I use to decide if they were playing around or serious, is where the room has any transcript, whether the room has a new name, caption and welcome information. Those just playing around rarely put in the effort to set up the room's information as completely as it should be. When a room looks abandoned to me, I will reset it back to being Vacant with not information on the set up form.
17:23 Ensign HA: I strongly encourage room admins to set up the room with the appropriate information for caption, icon, welcome messages, etc. and then USE the room by chatting with your patrons and friends. Unused rooms will be return to the Vacant status and if I return a room for lack of use, and you really do want it, then my apology for misreading your intentions.
17:22 @Biffy: it is important also if room locked to state who to contact and how or private use only
17:24 Ensign HA: Yes, please follow buffy's suggestion to provide contact information in the Access Denied Message part of the room's setup.
User Profile
17:25 Ensign HA: Part of the personal setup is the ability to provide a profile about yourself.
17:25 Ensign HA: This feature could be great or it could be a dud..... all depends on whether you all make use of it by contributing a profile about yourself. I hope it takes off... and it becomes common practice to provide information about who you are.
17:26 Ensign HA: You can click on my profile to see my mug shot and my bio. You click on my nick and then click the profile button or profile on the pop-up menu. So, please set up a profile for yourself on the setup form and then others can get to know you better.
17:35 al_gorithm: After entering text in user profile you have to close and reopen echat to get it to "stick".
Member List Jumping
17:29 tt2: quick Q on the members list. why doesn't it stay where I set it? ie. at the top?
17:31 Ensign HA: tt2, I do not know what causes the slider to jump. Sometimes it sticks for me, and other times it jumps higher or jumps lower. I have not found the sequence that makes it stick but am looking
17:31 tt2: clue is it seems to jump to last clicked user name... work around is to click the top user
17:32 Ensign HA: good clue and that might be the way to stick it
20:10 Ensign Howard: This is what I learned by testing -- when you come into room member list has no one selected and will stay put when you move slider to. Once you click on the list, it has a selected nick and after that when you move slider, and list changes it tries to reposition so the selected is in the view. This is the cause of the jump -- sometimes higher or sometimes lower
20:12 Ensign Howard: Solution --- after moving slider is to reclick on the list so it has a new selected that is in the view and then slider will stay in this position
20:12 @Buffy2: ok thanks for the tip
User Name Copy to Typing Area (Old Echat)
17:36 Qs: Howard, in old echat you can click a post to auto insert its poster's name for quick reply.. it really helps especially when the name is long… don't see that in new echat?
17:37 Ensign HA: True qs, took it out as part of our effort to improve on the scrolling behavior. When the transcript gets focus by your clicking in the transcript, the form wants to auto scroll to the bottom which at times is behavior that is not wanted. So the auto copy of the user nick to the text entry area was eliminated and I really doubt it had widespread use anyway.
17:38 Qs: so I have to type in the full name then :(
17:39 al_gorithm: copy/paste Qs - almost as quick
Room Admin Acceptance by Echat
17:38 @Costas: Howard, the "Erase Transcript" feature isn't available to me in my room. According to the documentation it is available to admins? am I doing something wrong?
17:39 Ensign HA: costas, you are correct in expecting it to be available, and I will have to visit you in your room to see what you are doing. You might have to enable your admin status one time costas by going to your room setup form and typing in again the admin password, and then make an edit somewhere on the form
17:39 @Costas: ok.. let me try that.. brb
17:40 Ensign HA: even if it is to add a space and delete a space on the caption line, then close form. From then on you should be know as an admin. The admin field is just an information field for me and it tells me who last edited the form. And that last person was you costas However that is not the trigger we use to know if you have admin privileges
17:41 @Costas: thanks Howard.. that did the trick
17:41 Ensign HA: ok excellent. I think it was just a one time conversion form initial design to current design in the program costas
17:42 @Costas: I see.. I just changed the room icon and saved, exited and re-entered and that did it
17:42 Ensign HA: OK, that wraps up the items I wanted to cover.
17:42 @Costas: thanks Howard
17:42 Ensign HA: you can click the bulletin button in this support room to see the changes made to the program each day. However, my list of items to work on for the chat is finished. So the program is finished (knock on wood).The old chat has been abandoned.
17:42 Nick: VN job on the new echat
17:43 Qs: lol Howard.. thank you
17:45 Ensign HA: Mike tells me the server load with 290 is 1.5% of CPU processing so we have lots of capacity to go. It has worked better and more reliably than the old chat, so many of our redesign objectives have been achieved. And I am loving all the praise that is coming back from the users, most old chatters, and some new ones.
17:46 @Buffy2: It is an excellant well thought out redesign resulting in a much improved verson
17:46 Ensign HA: thx buffy. Could use a few comments via e-mail to put in next trading tips issue. So, if you are inclined to offer an insight to the new chat for publication, please drop me an e-mail with your comments.
17:46 @Buffy2: :-)
17:48 al_gorithm: Outstanding work Howard. Congrats...
17:47 virt: Howard, where is the "clipboard" .... where highlighted text is saved?
17:47 Ensign HA: virt, the windows operating system has a clipboard for the computer. It is in memory. Any application can access the clipboard for copying text or images to it and from it.
17:48 virt: thanks...
17:54 merlin: Is there a way to make the type bold?
17:54 kj: Click on your setup form. In the center there is a section for My Font and you can select Bold
17:54 merlin: tks
18:05 zbullzbear: Where are the other rooms
18:05 kj: zbull-- right click and select Show 2nd Room. Then above the list of users, it will show a second window of room names. Click on the drop down arrow to see the full list of other rooms
Thanks Howard and Mike for a great job! Nice class.