anita wrote:chat, apps, farmville... all things that will contribute to the dumbing down of SP
what's next? flashing, singing, lame myspace/dating website profiles?

frapping! bring back the pOrn.

Matt: I don't care if chat exists for those that want to use it. What I do care about is that I, as a user of this website, cannot choose to disable it completely, and that includes the light-gray box in the lower right-hand corner.

So I opened my work laptop to see how this app bar is on it. My laptop is XP running IE 6.0 and Mozilla 3.6.12.

While logged in in IE, the app doesn't show up at all. This might be due to my company blocking it or my IE settings blocking it.

While logged in in M, the app appears. When I first log in the full app bar stretches across the bottom. Once selected to be hidden, it remains hidden (except for the gray box at lower right) even when I open up a new M window.

So it appears you have fixed the annoying chat window problem of it always opening up as a default whereby users have to keep manually minimizing it.

By the way, SoCalHiker mentioned the gray box ("arrow") being annoying and you said it rarely covers anything. Well, I can say that's not true for me. For example, when viewing the home page, the "Featured Pages" images and captions at far right get obscured in the lower right-corner. Example: When viewing submitted pages, the text at far right edge of a line is obscured by the gray arrow box. It may not seem like much to the person who created in the first place, but to me it's just another thing cluttering the visual appeal of the site.

The games are just dumb and not at all germane to the intent of this site. Just because you could implement them, it doesn't mean you had to. Not all sites have to be like Zuckerbook.

I haven't read ALL the posts here, maybe this has been covered. A bit annoying, down on the chat bar you get a pop up saying when you have received a new message (PM). Problem is long after you have opened and read the message, the pop up still tells you that you have a new message.

Really--why are people complaining about having another tool to more easily communicate with other members? As was mentioned earlier, it's easy to hide the chat function.

No, this feature won't add to or improve site content. It also won't balance my checkbook, take out my garbage or bring world peace either. That doesn't mean it can't still be useful.

The chat etc. bar settings needs to be controlled via a user control panel within SP, not have these settings change depending on clicking a shortcut or cookies.
A lot of people would prefer logging into summitpost with the chat 'off', not have to click on the minimize button.
I check SP sometimes on my blackberry, the bar's data slows things down, it resizes, I have to fight to get the pointer on the minimize, the chat doesn't even work, and then I click next page and it's back.

Dear colleagues, I'm afraid I can't do other than confirm what I wrote one or two days ago as to my suspicions for the reasons of the SP site being slowed down.
Why this?
On Apple Safari, the chat and applications bar doesn't appear any more (disabled?).
Just tonight at 1:30 a.m. Central European time I went onto SP on Firefox, where all of the apps and the new version of the forums appear. Again, everything took extremely long to open. Then, immediately, I switched to Apple Safari, where, as I stated, the bar doesn't appear anymore, the one snag being that the new version of the forums doesn't work; you can read everything, but you can't post anything yourself. Everthing opened at the perfectly normal speed!! I can't be hallucinating or imagining things...
I don't know how it is for all the other users in general - I will go back now to opening the SP website on Apple Safari and will only use Firefox if I intend to post something on the forums.

I've visited this forum every few hours since about 7:15 AM PST. Some times SP was very slow to load; other times it was nearly instantaneous. I don't think the problems come from the chat, which has been hidden on my browser since SP chat was initiated.

Error console on Firefox,
clear console,
refresh page,
22 errors related to chat, that's more than 2/3rd of the errors in the list.
sp-chat-applications-chatrooms-and-notifications-t56743-75.html

not a programmer, so I can't know if this means anything at all.

The “Play Sound for New Messages” seems to live its own life. Mostly way ahead of the message.

Chat does not display in internet 7, and also seems to be not working in google chrome. Seems like there was an update to it, sure in google chrome it shows up, but when you click the person you want to chat with it does nothing.

I also tested on firefox on another computer which I get the same result! Someone wanted to chat with me which would have been my first time using this.

Matt, chat keeps popping up every time I navigate to a new page, making me disable it over and over.

No, Matt, we shouldn't have to clear browser cache to fix the problems you introduced with your new chat feature that apparently no one asked for. Our browser caches contain other information (for other websites, etc.) that we might not want cleared. You need to fix your code.

The chat feature is a script that runs and sometimes I get scripting errors. It also causes SP to load slowly (as compared to how I remember the website before you implemented the chat bar). You may say that's not the cause but what I see is I have to wait until the very end of the page load to do anything (like scroll) and what's the last thing to load (appear)? You guessed it: the chat bar.

Bob Sihler wrote about the chat feature popping up all of the time when navigating to new windows. This happens for me too, and having to clear a browser cache to fix this is idiotic.

What happened to making the chat bar a feature a member can choose to have ON or OFF in his profile settings. There are ways to be notified of someone wanting to chat with me that don't require a chat bar. Right up there on the top line next to "Sign Out" a blinking chat icon could appear. I don't know. That might be annoying too, especially if I didn't feel like chatting at that time.

You want to make an improvement to this site? How about putting in an additional "Archive Delete" line at the top of the PM list instead of at the bottom so we don't have to go to the bottom of a PM list, which is often below the bottom edge of the monitor (on a laptop, especially), to find the button to delete? I delete from the top down and so would like to check a PM or PMs for deletion at the top of the page and then immediately hit the delete button there.

Paul

The chat is now working fine for me. Also it does not pop up when in minimized mode, but when I have it "open" where I'm not chatting but can see the whole chat bar every time I go to a new page the chat room bar will pop up. I followed the instructions of clearing the cache as seen here: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/How ... he%20cache but no results. I guess I could keep it minimized when not chatting but is slightly less convenient. My proposal if a bunch of sp'ers got steamed about the idea of having a chat on every page, we could have a page dedicated to it. Assuming you integrated the chat into the site by integrating it into the forums (phpbb3) which is integrated into sp, I've seen chat apps for phpbb for an single page rather than on every page. Just an idea, not saying it should be that way.