Ok folks, you asked for it, and we're delivering it. The chat feature is in beta testing. Head to the main page, find active users, move your mouse over their name, and voila.
At the moment the blocking feature is not in play - well, you can try and start a session with someone, but if they have the "block all" option checked in their profile, you shouldn't be able to make contact. It will be setup so that they are invisible if they don't want to be contacted in future.
Please set up your contact preferences in your profile area. I know a lot of people will wish to opt out entirely from the off.
It's still in beta, so please feel free to have a go with it and post any feedback.
I've put myself out of the loop for now, too busy this afternoon with real world work!
Quote by ghostwriter Somebody tried it on me last night. Worked quite well but I can't initiate any chats myself. Are there any prequisites for this beta?
How do you mean you can't initiate any? If you just put your mouse over someone's name after clicking the "Active Visitors" box on the main page, a box should appear with a drop down option of "Start conversation". If they have chosen to "Block All" in their profile it will not work, nor if they are offline. The system has been set up so that those people shouldn't even appear in the "Active Visitors" area, so I'm not sure what you are doing there.
After reading in the official announcement of this service I got answered one of my questions, however, I had noticed that when someone tried to contact me today (I stupidly used Internet Explorer 7) and the pop-up blocker was on so of course the chat window didn't appear. Yes, the black box appeared but I refreshed the page in an attempt for the pop-up chat window to try popping up again, unfortunatly this didn't have the desired affect and I lost the convo' completely.
Anyway, nice addition.
CuriousJayUK - CuriousJay means that I have a few things, some concerning certain taboos, I am curious about. Not that I am bi-curious.
You're kidding? I was going to post there in the first place, and then saw the link to here so I decided here. Pft! Another fine example of: go with ya instincts. :P
CuriousJayUK - CuriousJay means that I have a few things, some concerning certain taboos, I am curious about. Not that I am bi-curious.
I have used it with no problems so far. Only drawback I see is that if you are chatting with someone and another person messages you then you lose the chat box you had.
When using this chat feature tonight I have noticed (and the person I was chatting with) that 'Add to Friends' <not sure if that's what it says but you know what I mean> button creates an error on page and does nothing in Internet Explorer 7 [I haven't tried other browsers].
CuriousJayUK - CuriousJay means that I have a few things, some concerning certain taboos, I am curious about. Not that I am bi-curious.
@ghostwriter
any hyperlinked author name on the story site has a context menu where you can initiate a chat. i was thinking of brining this into the forums at some point too.
@fireman, @OrionTat
there should be no reason you can have more than one chat window open at once, is it still an issue for people?