Experienced a few twitches with the chat room - keeps bumping you off for no reason randomly. Not sure if its set to disconnect you after a couple of minutes idle? Probably just a java/XP twitch.

Also, Faust and I were having a chat earlier and while I was waiting for him in the chat room, someone called BOBEFA (capital letters) popped up out of nowhere (they were not logged into this site) are started taking to me in some tribal language/babble and as soon as Faust arrived in the chat lobby they disappeared.

Couple of issues to think about anyway

Hopefully Cypher will figure out where the bug is

Sounds like a scene out of "A Scanner Darkly"

M'kay - just a few twitches I think. Here's more info on that GReMLin who popped up... snipped the initial part of the chat conversation cos I thought it was funny:


Googled some of the terms and is appears google doesn't understand the dialect either!
Got some good new Cajun cooking recipies though

Hi Episteme, thanks for the feedback on this - you've raised 3 very good points, which I will need to address in the help section later. Is it definitely an "idle" issue when the chat room times out, or were you using your PC at the time? The reason I ask is:
I haven't experienced any problems like that (IE 6 & 7 Beta), unless I've closed the parent window / navigated away from the site (this can most easily happen if you "float" the chat window - then, the parent window mustn't navigate away from its page or else the chat applet will unload). These days I always open a chat session in a new browser window (rather than a new tab - keeps it all seperate - & haven't had any further problems with this). Might this be the source of your problem?

As for the other couple of points you mentioned - these are actually by design, due to the permissions settings for the chat room & this particular forum:
This FAQ/Help is the only forum where non-members can post, therefore I set the permissions differently, in order that non-members CAN post if they have trouble with sign-up, but also so that trolls etc CAN'T post junk in here. Even members' posts need to be approved before hitting the board, since otherwise it would likely be a SPAM magnet (as evidenced on other forums). My priority at the moment is to re-assess CR.org admins & ensure that they are active & effective, so that members' posts don't languish "unapproved" for too long. I do realise that this is a problem at the moment, & can only apologise that you had to wait so long - unfortunately, I was driving up from London yesterday evening, & so had no way of doing this earlier (& I was catching up on sleep for much of today too, or else I would have finished this post sooner - sorry J).

Since the chat room keeps no permemnant record, I didn't see any reason to restrict anyone - member or not - from using it, therefore you might well see non-members in there. However, if at a later date we start to get a number of disruptive / unconstructive non-members in there, causing any sort of problems whatsoever for members, then I will remove non-members' privilage to use the chatroom. I don't expect that this will be a problem for some time, however, but I would appreciate it if members could please let me know of any disruption / weirdness, in order that I can effectively assess any threat before it becomes a problem.

Thanks for your resonse - this wasn't really a complaint - just passing on information

I was using Firefox and had the Chat console within a Tab, experienced problem both in attached and floating mode - will try to always open a chat console in a new window and leave attached.

Ok, am now aware that guests can enter chat and give themselves any username. Will report any other weird activity

Hey hey no worries, am well aware you are a busy lady and there has been a hell of a lot of other "stuff" going on too recently. We'll done on doing what you can on getting the CC forums back up (several times) mercy

...tried with chat in a new window... still get bumped off now and again (even updated java yesterday) - what is the idle logout time - 2mins? Could we bump this up a bit? Here's what it was like to me earlier today - LOL

(I spend a lot of time taking to myself lol to stop idling out.)

Just for info - feel free to cut this post if it doesn't bring much to the discussion

I've been checking this out, & I believe I know the cause of your problems - Firefox.

Chris Carota and Majik had problems staying in the chatroom last night, I know Chris uses FF, & Majik used to - I suspect that he still does.

On the other hand, I managed to remain in the chatroom overnight without being disconnected - I got your message this morning Ognir, but wasn't at my PC at the time, & you were away again before I could reply. Sorry about that. There's no timeout set on the chatroom itself, so I'm afraid there's nothing I can tweak at this end.

I use I.E.7 Beta - which, after wrestling with it for a couple of weeks to iron out all the twits, really does work well, security in it is very good, & I like the interface a lot. However, it can be very buggy at first, until tweaked. Worryingly, system restore doesn't remove it properly if you have trouble, & therefore I.E.7 beta isn't something I'd recommend to anyone non-technical, due to the amount of troubleshooting / fixing that can need done on *some* systems.

So, I don't really have a fix for this problem, I'm afraid, other than to suggest that FireFox users with this problem may want to submit a bug report to FireFox, since it does seem to affect only this browser & not I.E (although this is based on a very small sample of users, so I may be wrong).

If anyone else has problems remaining signed into chat, please post in this thread what problems you're experiencing, & what browser you're using, including the version, & I'll continue to look at the issue & see if there's anything else I can suggest.

As the chatroom is becomming more popular, I've been considering upgrading it to the new, fully encrypted version. However, this costs a little more each month, so I'd want to know that everyone can use the existing chatroom without any problems before I'd consider the upgrade to be a viable option.

Hey Cypher, meant to respond to this a while back - it's great to see that we now have a fully encrypted chat room (Great thanks) and I hope it will be worth the extra expense now that we are using it a bit more. As you have said before it is quite useful for new members too, to help get to know us and for them to ask us initial questions if they have any problems.

Firefox users may still experience the odd twitch with the chat room and this just seems to be an occurace due to the combination of using XP/Java/Firefox together. Here's how I have found it works best in that scenario:

- Always open chat in a new window rather than a new tab
- It always seems to run smoother if you talk in a separate (personal) chat window other than the default chat room Lobby.
- If you are using a P2P program like bittorrent on the same PC you are chatting on, you may find that if the up/download is currently on the point of maxing-out you may find that this effects your web browsing in general and can cause you to loose connection with the chat room requiring you to reconnect.
- I've also found that while using Firefox it is best not to use the 'floating' chat mode (button with 4 arrows) and that it is best to leave the chat Lobby embedded in your new window.

To be honest I think the reason I am experiencing most problems is just down to me being a chronic multi-tasker!

Anyway, I think it's a great feature, hopefully see some of you in there at some point for a chin-wag.