We need a Boards.ie instant messager

Dudess

Oops, sorry. Just didn't mention Vexorg because he's not on Boards any more - nothing against him whatsoever, never had any dealings with him.

Fair enough re the other points.

The_B_Man

i reckon if there was an IM built into boards, people would discuss potential threads in there instead of on the main site, and there'd be a drop in the number of new topics.

people would then get bored, and sure after the initial novelty of the IM people would stop using it and then feel awkward any time a friend comes online coz they feel obligated to chat to them. its why im not that big a fan of the facebook chat. admittedly it can be handy, but if you stay talking on that, u never post a comment on their page, which leads to an impression of inactivity.

i would have guessed encouraging activity on boards is a priority.

OutlawPete

star-pants wrote: »

Look at FB chat -- it's sh*t tbh, AND if someone IMs you on it, it stops you writing text on any other tab you have open, and if you hit backspace, it goes back a page on the tab you have open. VERY annoying.

I agree 100% with this. Spot on and if you have written out a long peice of text it too will be lost. I've been close to throwing laptop out window on a few occasions

I do have one suggestion that might be acceptable and may even satisfy those wanting IM. It may or may not be practical with the web team, not sure - but sure I'll throw it out there anyway.

What I feel would be really handy is that if say when your on a thread reading, replying etc and you select the dropdown menu on someones name and you choose 'Send a private message to X' , instead of it moving away from the Boards.ie page that your on it instead opens a new window / tab.

That way you could send off your PM and still carry on with what you were doing previously. Then if you got a reply to that PM that window will be still be there for you to PM back and forth without moving away from what your doing.

It's not IM but it's very close and it uses the current PM system.

Of course you can still do this the long way round by just open Boards.ie in two seperate windows but it would just be far handier if it were implemented into the system so that the new tab / window could be generated from the dropdown box and each user's username.

Nevyn

There already is the option in the drop down menu when you click on someones name to send them a private message all you have to do it right click it to have the write new message page appear in a new tab on your browser.

OutlawPete

Thaedydal wrote: »

There already is the option in the drop down menu when you click on someones name to send them a private message all you have to do it right click it to have the write new message page appear in a new tab on your browser.

My apologies, I really shouldn't be allowed out on my own

Nevyn

No bother, it happens, sure every week I learn something new about the functionality of the site

Kinetic^

Thaedydal wrote: »

No bother, it happens, sure every week I learn something new about the functionality of the site

If you press the "log out" button you get a treat, try it! :pac:

Nevyn

oh really I must try that, did you ever see what happens when you press alt + F4 ?

Splinter

a few years ago we tried this on a forum i was on. it was a fairly busy forum as it was, obviously nothing like boards but still you get the idea. they implemented a chat feature along the way and it pretty much just killed a fair chunk of chat on the forum. It took the random chit chat out all right but people were just hanging out there in the evening instead of posting in random topics.

tbh I don't believe boards needs to implement it and Thaed has a good point about work firewalls blocking it with the chat feature, I'm 100% sure I'd lose access anyway