Welcome to Tripod's new Personal Chat service!
Welcome to Tripod's new Personal Chat service!
|
This function is only for members who have bought a premium membership (and the beta testers, until December 31). If you haven't paid yet, you can't start your own room, but you can always chat in someone else's!
Click here to go to the public Tripod Chat, open and staffed by Tripod employees from 6-8 PM (EST), every Tuesday and Thursday.
Basics of Chat | Fancy Chat Features
Troubleshooting/Problems | Command
Line Interface
Welcome to Tripod Chat! Here's a basic description of how to get started with Tripod Chat. The steps are simple -- log in, choose a Chat room, enter the room and start "Chatting" or listening.
- Entering Someone Else's Personal Chat Room
- ..is as simple as clicking on the room of your choice. Once you've chosen a room, you'll be asked to enter your Tripod username and password. If you aren't yet a Tripod member, you can sign up here.
Once you've successfully logged in, you'll notice a screen change. You'll see a complete list of all Chat room users, including yourself. You are now free to read, send and receive messages.
- Creating Your Own Chat Room
- You can only create a Personal Chat room if you are on the list of beta testers (you can sign up here). After December 15, we will be offering Personal Chat as a part of our premium service package.
If you are allowed a Personal Chat room, you can start it by clicking on the "Start a personal chat" link above, or by bookmarking http://www.tripod.com/service/chat/start and using that
URL -- both methods do the same thing. You will have to give your member name and password twice... this is an unavoidable consequence of having the start script and the chat room on different servers and ports.Please note that your room exists only when you're in the room! If you leave the room, the room goes away, and its port becomes available to anybody wishing to start their own Personal Chat.
- ..is easy. Simply type in your message and click on the "send" button. Everybody will see what you have to say.
- Sending a Private Message
- ...requires you to select a user in the pull-down menu above the text box. "Write to..." whomever you wish. Only that person will hear you.
Another way to select a person to whom you wish to speak privately is to click on that person's name. You will see a short description of that person, and you will be all set to talk to that person privately.
- Emotes
- ...are a fairly standard way of sending something you do, rather than something you say. If the first character of your message is a colon (":"), then everything after that is presented as something you are doing. For example, if my name is snorkelbob and I type :falls asleep. then everybody else would see snorkelbob falls asleep.
- ...is necessary to see new messages if you're not using Netscape (more precisely, if your push time is set to 0, and only Netscape currently supports non-0 push times).
Simply click on the "refresh" button. Or, you can also click on the "Tripod Personal Chat:" graphic, which does the same thing.
Your text box will be cleared of anything you've been typing, you will be set to talk to everybody (and not a private person), and all but the most recent messages will be cleared. (You can still see old messages by clicking on the "review" button.)
- If you want to find out a little bit about the person you're talking to, click on the person's name. You will see a short description of the person, gleaned from their member profile. If you don't have a member profile, you should really make one.
You will also be given an option to ignore that person, if they are being obnoxious or irritating or whatever.
- To get here again, click the "help" button on the top of the Chat page. Or, you can use the /help command, which does the same thing.
- Catching Up on the Conversation
- ...is simply a matter of clicking on the "review" button at the top of the chat room page. You will be presented with all the back messages that the room still remembers (about 10 minutes worth). Or, you can use the /review command, which does the same thing.
- ...is done by clicking the "exit" button at the top of each chat room page. You return to the list of rooms, from which you can go anywhere. Or, you can use the /exit command, which does the same thing.
If that doesn't work, the most probable cause is that the room owner went away, causing the room server to go away and leaving no program to handle your request. In that case, just click on the "help" button, which is a straight link, and you will come back to this page.
FANCY CHAT FEATURES
Are you ready for something a bit more advanced - those fancy cybersurfing chat tricks availible on TripodChat? Look no further... you've found the spot. If you're just starting out, you really want to read the basics section before you try these.
- Creating a Permanent Link to Your Personal Chat Room
- Because the port number (and therefore the URL) of your Personal Chat room changes, a direct link to a particular port will probably fail to find your room. Instead, to make a link from your homepage to your Personal Chat room (or anybody's, for that matter) use this HTML:
<A HREF="http://www.tripod.com/bin/chat/search?snorkelbob">Go to Snorkelbob's Personal Chat Room!</A>Note that this script only finds snorkelbob's Chat room... if you want to find somebody else's room (perhaps even your own), substitute the relevant Tripod membername for snorkelbob in the HTML above.
Further note that the "/bin/search" script only finds existing Chat rooms. If you're not currently running your own Personal Chat, don't be surprised if the script gives up and redirects people to the error page...
- Blocking Messages From A User (The Bozo Filter)
- This is the famous Chat Bozo Filter (tm). You can /bozo or /ignore a user and you'll never hear from that person again (at least during that chat session). If you have a change of heart, you can /unbozo the bozo to hear from him again.
Please note that even if you ignore what the bozo is saying, unless you speak privately to somebody the bozo can still hear what you are saying.
You can also access the Bozo Filter from the inline bios.
The Command Line Interface allows you to customize much of the chat room's behavior. Because every Web browser works differently, and everybody has an opinion on how Chat should look, you can give Chat the information to make it work even better for you.
The syntax for a command is pretty simple. If the first character of your message is a forward slash ("/"), then Chat assumes you are typing a command, and not something to be said. The command is usually one word, followed by an optional argument.
N.B. All commands are case-insensitive.
For your browsing convenience, we've grouped the commands into three sections: Appearance (altering what your screen displays), Function (altering what your chatroom does), and Owner-only Commands (room administration commands only available to the room's owner).
Just so you know: "x" indicates an unspecified time value that you would set: "x" seconds could be 2 seconds or 20 seconds, depending on the user.
Function
- /push x
or /timeout x- Sets your "push" time, in seconds. Chat attempts to "push" new messages to your browser for a short time equal to your "push" time. Some browsers, like Netscape, display as much of a Web page as possible as soon as possible, which means that people's statements will appear on your browser as soon as they are said and "pushed" to it.
Other browsers, like Lynx, refuse or have difficulty with this, and may not display anything until Chat stops pushing. For these browsers, you should set /push to 0. Unfortunately, you will have to manually refresh the screen every time you want to see new messages.
If you type /push without a number, Chat tells you what your push time is currently set to.
- This command is yet another way to control how much chatting fits on one page. It sets the size of almost all of the text on the page, via the <basefont> HTML tag. 1 is tiny text, 7 is huge, 3 is normal.
If you type /size or /textsize without a number, Chat tells you the current size setting.
- /space 0 1 2 small medium large
- This command controls how much space is printed between each message, so you can control how much chatting can fit on one page.
For "0" or "small," messages are printed immediately after each other. small is the default.
For "1" or "medium," a little spacer graphic is printed between each message (so if you have images turned off, you might want to splurge and download the few bytes in this one).
For "2" or "large," a horizontal rule is printed between messages.
If you type /space without a number, Chat tells you what kind of space is currently being printed between messages.
- This command changes the text input area from a two-line box to a one-line field, or back again if entered twice. Why should you care about such a silly little thing like that? Well, if you use the one-line field, you don't have to pick up your mouse to click on the "send" button; you send whatever you're typing when you hit return.
This feature doesn't do anything on Lynx: you always have the one-line field. It's easier and looks better on graphically-challenged screens.
- This command changes the color of the help, review, exit, send, and refresh buttons from a colorful array of brightness to dull white and grey and back again. Have fun.
- These two commands put your text-submit form on the top or the bottom of the page, respectively. Because having the form on the bottom doesn't work with server push, this is more useful for non-Netscape browsers. It could also come in handy if you're having scrollbar problems with Netscape for Macintosh.
/bottom will set the text window to the bottom of the page, and set the push time to 0. (Manually setting the push time to something else with the /push command is not recommended: your browser probably won't display anything until the push time runs out.)
/top will return the text window to the top of the screen, and if you're running Netscape, will reset your push time to the default of 60 seconds.
Owner-Only Commands
- /help
- The /help command does the same thing as the "help" button: it brings you back to this helpful reference guide.
- Prints a list of every command Chat understands, linked to the command's description on this page.
- The /archive or /review command does the same thing as the "review" button: it prints all the messages Chat still has in its memory (about 10 minutes worth), so you can catch the thread of a conversation you're joining in progress.
- /bozo username
or /ignore username- /unbozo username
- This is the famous Chat Bozo Filter (tm). If you /bozo or /ignore somebody, you will not receive messages from that person again (at least during that chat session). The bozo will not be notified of your action.
The bozo's name still appears (in parenthesis) in the list of people in the room, to warn you that they can still listen to you.
If you have a change of heart, you will be able to /unbozo the bozo to hear from him again.
- Sets your "lookback" time, in seconds. When you refresh the screen or say something, Chat clears the screen, and displays only the old messages that are less than x seconds old.
If you type /lookback without a number, Chat tells you your current lookback time setting.
- You will never see more than x old messages, when you refresh the screen or say something.
If you type /messages without a number, Chat tells you your current messages setting.
- You will never see more than x messages older than your most recent message. If you don't like this feature, set /overlap to a very large number; the smaller values for /messages and /lookback will limit the old messages before the overlap limit comes into play.
If you type /overlap without a number, Chat tells you your current overlap setting.
- The /quit or /exit command does the same thing as the "exit" button: it brings you back to the list of available rooms.
- This resets all of your preferences to your browser's default values. You can use this command to start over if you've been messing around with your preferences and become stuck.
- /who username
or /about username- This does the same thing as clicking on a person's name in the chat room: it displays a small bio of the user. The information is taken from the Tripod Member Profiles. If you don't have a member profile, Tripod strongly encourages you to make one.
- If you are not the owner of the room, Personal Chat will disavow any knowledge of these commands.
- Use this to prevent an annoying or unwanted user from speaking or executing commands (unless you /pardon the user). The user will still be able to listen in, however. This is for warning an annoying user before resorting to the draconian /boot command.
- /boot username
or /toad username- Use this to eject an annoying or unwanted user from the room. The user will not be able to reconnect under the same username (unless you /pardon the user). This is the weapon of last resort, to be used sparingly.
- Use this to revoke a previous /gag or /boot command. The pardoned soul will regain the same status as a normal user.
- Use this to make a user a guest. The guest can only hear other guests, and you, but can speak to everybody. This is for moderated chats with a special guest speaker, so that you can relay only relevant questions to the guest.
- Use this to turn a guest back into a normal user again.
- Use this to change the room title. Everything after /title becomes the new room title.
- /topic new room topic
or /subject new room topic- Use this to change the room topic. Everything after /topic becomes the new room topic.
The topic of your room appears in the room, and also by the room's name in the "list of available rooms" section of the chat lobby page.
- ,
/bgcolor color /background imageURL, /text color, /link color, /vlink color, /alink color, /profilecolor color, and/privatecolor color - Use this to change the background, text, link, visited-link, active-link, in-line profile, and private text colors of the room.
color is a six-digit RGB color code, the same type you would use in a <BODY> HTML tag (FFFFFF is white, 000000 is black, FF0000 is pure red, 00FF00 is pure green, 0000FF is pure blue, etcetera).
/background is used to specify a background image, as opposed to a solid color. Instead of typing an RGB color code, you would specify the URL of an image.
- This command will turn on or off HTML filtering in your room. By default, all HTML tags are disabled in the Personal Chat rooms, but you can re-enable HTML if you wish, with this command.
- This command clears all previous messages from memory. This is useful if someone said something nasty, or did an evil thing with HTML (if you had HTML enabled), and you want to pretend it never happened...
- This command saves the room title, topic, color scheme, and html permission to a database, allowing you to reset those preferences the next time you create a Personal Chat room, with the /load command.
- This command loads the previously /save'd title, topic, color scheme, and html permission.
TROUBLESHOOTING/PROBLEMS
We don't want 'em, we don't ask for 'em, but chances are, we'll all deal with Chat problems at one time or another. Peruse this list of possible gaffes and goofs to see if the glitch you're looking at is something we expected.
- The Back Button Doesn't Work!
- ...because the back button is completely local to your browser. Chat doesn't get any signal when you hit the back button, so it can't react correctly. You will get out-of-date pages, or perhaps a note saying that the page has expired.
The solution is simple. Don't use the back button. Leave a chat room by using the "exit" button, or by typing /exit or /quit.
- My Browser Keeps Sending the Error Message: "broken pipe".
- If the owner of your room is idle for too long (5 minutes or so) or leaves, the room shuts down. This means that the program is not available to handle any commands or button-presses you may send. All the "broken pipe" error says (in typically cryptic UNIX-speak) is that the Chat server isn't responding to your commands (in this case, because the room has shut down).
One of the few ways you can leave the chat room is to click on the help button, which will return you to this page. Or, you can always type in a location URL manually.
- Resizing the Screen
- ...is generally a two-step process in Chat. First, change the window size, as you would normally. Then, be sure to hit the "refresh" button so that the page redisplays properly.
- Page Loading
- Depending on the type of browser you use, Chat displays information in different ways.
For Netscape users, Chat works by fooling your browser. Netscape "thinks" that the Chat room page just takes a very long time to load, and that new messages are just the next parts of the page. So if you're using Netscape, the long download time is a good thing, because people's statements appear at the bottom of the chat room page as they are being said.
Unfortunately, not all browsers support such a long "push" time. ("Push" time meaning the time it takes for a page to load from the Web to you.) Lynx, in particular, refuses to display a page until it has received all of it. For these browsers, Chat presets the push time to 0, which means that Chat will send the current messages and then immediately stop, so the browser understands that it can display the page. You can set how long Chat will push messages to your browser by typing /push "x", where "x" is the time in seconds. For more commands you can enter to customize Chat, see the Command-Line Interface section.
- If You're Having Scroll Bar Problems...
- ...you're probably on a Macintosh. :) Whichever platform you're on, you have several options:
In any case, check out the Command-Line Interface section for explanations of all these commands.
- Set your push time to 0. (Type /push 0). The page will load at once, and the scroll bar will then appear. The downside to this is that you will have to refresh the screen manually whenever you want to see new messages.
- Type /bottom to set the push time to 0 and to put the text input box at the bottom of the page. This seems nicer on many platforms because despite having to manually refresh, the latest messages and your text box are right next to each other.
- If you're just lurking, hit refresh often to prevent Chat from assuming you've lost interest, and to prevent the list of other people's messages from scrolling off the screen.
- Make the text size smaller, so more text fits on your screen. (Use the /textsize command. Also, check out the /space command to make sure Chat isn't printing blank space between messages.)
- Limit the number of old messages that appear on your screen when you refresh or say something. (You would use the /lookback, /messages, and /overlap commands for this.)
- If You Stop Receiving Messages
- ...and you're running Netscape, it's probably because you have been idle for a while, and the chat room thinks you've lost interest or gone away. Say something! This is Chat, after all, not TV. Or, if you're feeling quiet, you can just click "refresh."
On non-Netscape browsers, unfortunately, by default you never receive new messages automatically. You will have to manually click "refresh" to see new messages.
If you're the owner of the Personal Chat room, your room has probably withered and died in your absence. If you get "broken pipe" errors when you come back to the room, this is a sure-fire indication that the room is no more. You will need to restart the room.
Map | Search | Help | Send Us Comments