Category: Zone BBS Suggestions and Feedback
Hiya. I was just thinking how useful it would be if I could hear the screen names of people signing in and out etc.
I then thought well hey! How could they do that when the pages only refresh when I perform an action, send a quick note, navigate to a new page etc.
It then occured to me, that what you could do, is have a second IE window open, a popup perhaps, which automatically refreshes whenever something changes, someone signs in for example, or you receive a private message etc. In this way, the user could remain focused on the main window, and the auto-refreshing window would just sit behind the main one quietly chugging away to itself.
Anything connected with quick notes, logins and outs, new private messages, game statuses, could be parsed to the popup window, leaving the user free to move around the main window no problem.
If the user hears a quick note sound for example, all they would need to do is alt tab in to the popup window for a moment to hear the message and reply to it. Then they could just alt tab back to the main window and continue reading board posts or playing their game of choice whatever.
Likewise, if they hear a new user signed in noise, they could flick to the second window where the latest logins would be displayed. The complete list of who's online would remain in the main window as it is now.
You would probably also need to introduce a delay system in to the popup window, preventing it from refreshing too quickly. For example, if user a signs in, then user b signs in 3 seconds later, the poor user sitting there trying to alt tab over to hear who just signed in won't know what's going on because by the time they get to the second window, it would have refreshed again! If you set it to automatically refresh every 10 or 15 seconds, I'm sure most users would have more than enough time to get over there and hear what they need to hear. Remember, we're just talking about a very very simple window with latest quick notes and who they're from, latest status of private messages received and from who, last sign in and out. Everything else would be in the main window as usual.
Also, if you split the popup window in to 2 frames, the status frame which would display the text of user activities, quick notes and so on, and an input frame where a user could input quick note texts etc, a user would be able to reply to quick notes or private messages without being automatically bounced to the top of the page every time the status frame refreshes.
This method would also allow users to receive private messages, quick notes, info about who's online right now and so forth, without having to browse away from whatever they're doing in the main window.
Obviously I'm no Web designer, and i'm sure you would be able to come up with a much more detailed plan of how this might work, but basically, that's my suggestion.
Regards,
Matt
I like that idea, but here's the issue. it may ahppen that someone has to get up and walk off to go to the bathroom, or feed the dog, or what ever. so. there will be a bunch of stuff they miss with an auto-refreshing window. I like the idea of having somethign that would show things in realtime, but considering most of the users on this site are blind, I don't know how easily that would be done.
I like the idea though.
that would get very very confusing when the quick notes start really flying around as they often do, you'd pretty much have to stick with that, soem times you have so many quick notes it takes a logn time to read them all, 20, 25, 30 seconds and then it's impossible to keep switching back anf forth, I like it the way it is now, think hard about it and you'll see why or try keeping up with quick notes when it's very very active.
Hmm..... I see what you're saying Matt, but that'd piss me off. but I'm just me, not the whole world, hehehe
make it optional, and use an iframe instead of a popup.
yeah, it could be optional...also delay the refresh a little longer, say...forty-five seconds or so. because those qn's go really fast sometimes.
I think that if there is a pop up it would be to hard to keep switching over to it and then back to the main web page. I know what u mean though that the qn's can get in the way but i don't think it would be very accessible with jaws or other screen readers.
How hard is it, chaps and chapesses, to alt tab over to a pop-up window and then back again? It isn't that difficult honestly. Try it, you might like it.
I prefer the way it is now.
well if it was optional you could perhaps turn the feature on and off as you saw fit. and ... too hard to switch? so none of you have been on zone and msn at the same time then?
Hi,my computer wont let me have mor ethan one ie window at a time msaa nmode malfunctions I don't know why i have to restart my system when it does it
hmm, that is freaky. Well I like th idea but i prefer the way it is now
I like the popup idea...At least it could/should be an option for those who want it. And alt-tabbing isn't too hard. I mean look at people who can IM, check E-Mail, zone and eat all at once? Lol.
Hmmmm, now that's multi tasking. Let me guess, your one of them?
I think this would complicate things vastly for most users. As it is now, we know who has signed in and what quicknotes have been received since we last checked. That is good enough. Also, with automatic refreshing, we all know some of the funny things JAWS does. Odds are most of would miss about 50 percent of the quicknotes we are trying to see.
I say like all things, make it an option if implamented. However, this computer is sloooooow, and I have no ctrl whent they put new puters in here, alt-tabing make jaws gto sloer, and stuff. John.