Chat Room added

Despite some (well, quite a few) initial reservations I have gone ahead and added a chat room facility, activated by clicking the button labelled 'Chat' which can be found near the end of the second row of site menu buttons.

There should hopefully be little in the way of technical consequences for us as the actual chat host is not being run on our server. It's fairly basic in terms of features but should do the job it's intended for. Originally I had it opening on top of the rest of the site but decided that it's better to have it launch in a separate browser tab which then allows you to do other stuff on the site while popping back and forth to chat. If you're in the chat room but viewing another browser tab and someone is talking in the chat room you should hear a "beep" to let you know there's been activity.

Those in the chat room should also be shown in the site stats panel just underneath the 'Users Online' info.

At present the chat facility is just available to authors but if someone who isn't an author would like access then send us a popup and, all things being equal, we'll enable access for you.


Menu button
Allows a handful of options to be set including:

1. font size for the chat text.
2. whether to have an audible alert if someone types your nick in the chat room.
3. whether you want to see timestamps in front of each message.
4. which chat room users you are ignoring.


R button
Allows you to choose foreground and/or background colours for your chat text and whether it should be bold or underlined.


Smiley button
Allows you to select from a small number of smileys to embellish your text.


User list
To the right of the actual chat room is the list of users that are currently in it. If you click on a name with the right mouse button you can then choose to either ignore that person or initiate a private chat with them. Ignoring them means you won't subsequently see what they type in the room. To un-ignore them you can just right mouse click on their name again and select Unignore.

Once you initiate a private chat with someone you will notice that an additional button is displayed at the top of the chat room. To move between the main chat room and a private chat just click on the appropriate button. The main chat room button is labelled #lsf.


Leaving the chat room
To leave the chat room just close the browser tab down.


Hopefully, things in the chat room will be cordial but if anyone abuses the facility they'll have their access to it blocked.

I think that's about it but if I've forgotten something and there are questions, here is where to seek answers (or via popup if you prefer).

Happy chatting.

It's pretty easy. If I can learn how to do it ... anyone can!! I was on it last night. Thanks Februs!! You've done it again!!!

Katie B

Unfortynately every time I've opened it there was no-one else there.
Perhaps we could agree on a trans-national time and day to give everyone a chance to get to know each other.
Alex Birch used to run a weekly chat room on Sunday evenings (GMT)to chat to his US friends.

I think one way to do it, is just to fire up the chat room and then if there's no-one around just go back to the main library site but leave the chat room tab open. Then, if you have your speakers on, if someone goes in and says something you'll hear a beep.

Having said that, a meet up at a pre-arranged time sounds like a good idea (as long as it isn't before noon UK-time as I will be sleeping)

Or after 9pm UK time or I will be sleeping

An angel needs her beauty sleep

Alas, all the angels of my acquaintance are getting lots and lots of ordinary sleep, but nary a wink of beauty sleep.

Perhaps we should all meet in the chat room to discuss possible remedies...

Well I am there and as always have some good ideas but you ran away... said something about not being able to cope I believe

This is an extraordinarily generous service to offer to people here and thank you seems inadequate. I hope administering it doesn't cause too much additional hassle for you, Februs.

I'll try to stop in some time when I'm not being attacked by the Inexplicable Shys.

Will it show on the activity page when a member is in the chat room? That would be the best way to know if anyone is around, before even entering the chat room.

The Activity page will show when someone enters the Chat Room unless they then subsequently carry out some other activity on the main site. We can't use the Activity screen though because after 15 mins of inactivity on the main site they will disappear off the page. However, if you check my original post:


So, that's the best place to look