This extension provides a html-chatbox based on ajax. This means messages are sent and received with the use of JavaScript, so no page reload is necessary. More features are:
Views
This extension has four views. The chat room itself. It consists of one list with all connected users, one list with chat messages and one text area for entering a message. If a moderator stores at least one message during a moderated chat there will also pop up a new list with stored messages. When moving the mouse cursor over one user name in the user list, more details will be shown. When clicking on one user name, the name will be copied to the text area. Another view is an overview of all available chat rooms. There one can choose and enter a chat room (chat room view) or get into the session list view where all available session logs will be displayed. Finally there is the view where one session log is displayed. There a moderator – if logged in – can delete unwanted messages.
Chat modes
There are two chat modes: normal and expert mode. The expert chat is a moderated chat where messages from normal users are hidden at first. A moderator can unhide a message by clicking “Commit message”.
Chat rooms
You can create an unlimited number of chatrooms. Each chatroom has a title, a description, a welcome message, moderators, experts (only in expert mode), banned users and a frontend usergroup that is allowed to use the chat room. You can also define if you want to use nicknames or real names (this is experimental only), a usercount limit and what informations will be shown about one user for each group (moderator, expert, user). Since version 0.2.0 there are private chat rooms available. One user can create a new chatroom by using the command /newroom. An invitation can be sent via /invite.
Messages
One can define a welcome message that will be received by all users entering the chat room. The message have different styles for each type: user, system, moderator, expert, superuser and hidden user messages. Chat messages will be parsed and emoticons (like “:)”) will be replaced with nice images. By using the command /msg one can send a private (hidden) message to any user.
Sessions
It is possible to create a session log entry. It is defined by title, description, relation to one chatroom and two relations to chat entries (first message and last message). All messages between the two defined messages will be displayed in the session logs view.
Commands and live moderating
During the chat one can use commands to get some information about one user or to moderate the chat. By entering “/help” the user receives a list of available commands. Some commands: ban, kick, redeem, whois, who, makesession, help.
Usergroups
A chat room can contain four types of users. First the ordinary chat user. Second the so-called moderator is mostly the owner of the chat room or was explicitly defined. In an expert chat room the messages of an user will be hidden until a moderator commits the message. Messages of an expert will never be hidden. The superuser can always execute all chat commands and can even be hidden. All message have a different CSS style for each group one.
