I vote for...

[Lil Stinkpot]

Hey, who ever said anything about being addicted or "lost without it"?!? There have been times, waiting at the doctors office for example, when I want to chat. Is that illegal?

Who cares if the chat doesn't work? Me! When I'm out by myself, and I'm bored silly, it's my choice on how I entertain myself. Sometimes people around me DON'T want to hear a harmonica, or listen to me yammer away about sailing, snuggling with bearded dragons, or, heaven forbid, carnivorous plants. . I am not online 24-7. I simply made a statement about something I discovered while trying to chat duri g one of those "bored silly" moments.

Don't be so harsh, it'll give you wrinkles!

[adnedarn]

Don't be so harsh, it'll give you wrinkles!

hahahahaha



I know the whole phone compatible thing has been asked to the coder... and his response was "Give me an Iphone or another smart phone and I'll be happy to work on it." That said, he also mentioned yesterday to all of us that have it that he and his girl broke up a few months ago and so they've been dealing with splitting everything up-etc. I'm not sure what his plans are for the next version, but it seems he'll be starting on it soon.

Andrew

[lizasaur]

Exactly what Katie said
I have an hour break between each of my classes, and during which time all my friends (I only have 3 ;P) are in their classes. I guess I could do something constructive like read a book...but I'd rather feed my addiction to CPs!
Or those rides to the restaurant with the family *gags*
I'm certainly not sneaking onto the forum at work, or AT dinner, or in the movies, or at redlights
And as for my phone itself....more than half the time I don't even know where it is. I'm certainly not addicted to it, itself.

Ah, I'm sorry for the coder, but it's not a huge deal, just if it's possible, I wanna know about it, LOL. I have to do what Katie does (refreshing the archives and responding then). I'm certainly quite happy and love the forum as it is though

[Kyle]

Wow, this took a drastic turn, LOL. Maybe got a little blown out of proportion along the way. Just for the record, I wasn't trying to "get members behind [me]," I was just looking to see if anyone else shared my preference. This wasn't intended to be some TerraForums Chat Revolution, LOL.

That said, yes, some of us are addicted to the hobby. Myself, I was up at 4am last night (Friday night) as a young male in a college, partying town. I was in my plant room repotting some plants. Sad? Perhaps, but I had fun doing it! For me, personally, carnivores are my number 1 hobby. It's what I do the most with my free time. If I like to check up on the forums and/or chat between classes or when otherwise wasting time, so be it! That was the main reason I proposed the IRC thing. Not really to make any difference in the site (because, aesthetically speaking, it wouldn't), just for the option of having an IRC client on my phone to chat it up. And the reason I like the idea of IRC over the JAVA one is because of just that. You could have a dedicated app on your phone -just- for IRC, no finagling around with your browser, figuring out how to to make it work with various workarounds (the refreshing the archives thing). But it's obviously not that big a deal.

I do know, however, that there are various software that can be installed on the boards and then a client on a cell phone to give you a much better mobile forum experience, but that is, again, totally up to Andy. And I have no experience with those, so I have no idea how well they work, though they do typically get pretty good reviews. These little addon/app combos, as far as I know, do not address any JAVA chat sort of thing, just the discussion boards themselves. I'm not advocating the use of such software, just stating that it is a possibility. I don't know, though, my phone's browser tends to handle the forums pretty well on its own, though I know different phones and different mobile OSs have varying degrees of success with forums. The chat I can say doesn't work at all, even connected to a WiFi network. That's just the standard browser, though, haven't bothered to try any other ones. They may or may not work better. In fact, I'm going to test some out and I'll get back with my results, in case anyone is interested.

Andy, question for you: What is the name of the chat application? Just so I can look into what people do and do not have success with as a mobile option for it.

[adnedarn]

The general consensus for running it on a phone is it does not work... As I mentioned above people have asked for it, so maybe he'll work on it. I also mentioned it is not java and that is probably why it DOESN'T work on phones, it is... uhm... ajax So probably not much worth trying to work if it doesn't load, chances are you phone doesn't support that programming. The other people can load the application, it just doesn't self update, that's why they have to reload the archives.
Andrew

[Kyle]

I also mentioned it is not java and that is probably why it DOESN'T work on phones, it is... uhm... ajax So probably not much worth trying to work if it doesn't load, chances are you phone doesn't support that programming.

Ooooohhhhhh, I thought you meant the phone probably doesn't run JAVA. That makes sense, then, LOL. I don't know how common it is for phones to be able to process AJAX, so that definitely answers that question.

Just for curiosity's sake, what phones are you guys that have some success with the chat using?


EDIT: For anyone interested, the chat doesn't work at all with the Blackberry default browser, but it does work on Blackberries with the BOLT browser.

Also, Andy, Tapatalk (one of those addon/mobile client things) seems it may have support for MGC Chatbox Evo. I'd only seen vague references, though, so I don't know. Could be something to look into, not just for the chat, but for the mobile optimizations.

[adnedarn]

I believe tapatalk has a fee for you guys to get it. I glanced at it once. I've not seen any reference that it works for the chatbox anywhere either.

I've been working on the full page version of the chatbox (far right button in the bottom right of the chatbox) and I think it's pretty phone friendly (if your phone loads the chatbox) you can then just reload that page (still doesn't refresh, duh) to see what's going on instead of having a different page reloading the archives... Since that page is not having to reload the whole forum.

Andrew

[Kyle]

Yeah, unfortunately, it does. It's free (at least for now) for Blackberry and (I think) Nokia phones, but that'll eventually change I imagine. It comes down to how badly you want that little "extra" experience, I guess. I think it was only like $3, though, so it's not terrible. A free option would always be best, obviously. I'd probably pay for it, just because I visit a lot of forums and I know a lot do use it.

But the full page version! That's a great idea, definitely better than having two pages open, like you said. Auto-reloading would obviously be ideal, but that has nothing to do with you or the chat plug in thing. It's definitely a good option, though, for the mobile chat. Just bookmark the full-page thing and you've essentially got it on hand all the time.

Also, I think (from the very limited research I've done on it) that most smartphones nowadays should be supporting AJAX, it just comes down to the browser. Like I said, on my Blackberry, the Blackberry browser doesn't even load the chat, but the BOLT browser has no problem with it. So, for those of you that want the chat on the move but it doesn't work, make sure you're trying other browser options.