Because I know loads of people are going to ask!

What is this all about?

The new chat system - some quick tips on how to use it...

The basics

So what does the new chat system look like?

A little bit like this (note though that you can change this appearance):



Above you can see that I have the "General chat" room live - this is equivalent to "Live chat" as most users know it. You can tell it's active because of the dark indicator.

I can change "rooms" by either clicking on the name of it or using the up and down arrow keys on my keyboard.

Who am I talking to?

How can I find out if anyone's in a room before I start chatting? Simple - click "Info":



This will show me all the online users that have the room "pinned" (see below), just the same as any other list of users on DSI hovering over a username displays a summary of that user's account information:

Numbers and more...

So what does the header section tell us? Let's take a closer look:



In this shot you can see that the "New chat box" room is live for me - so any comments I type will appear there. Note that because this is also a thread on the site any comments I post in chat are added to the thread - but, and this is important there is a 512 character limit - so any really long comments that you try to make this way will be chopped off!

Also you can see that I have 1 new item in "Inbox updates" and 8 items there in total, 1 new "Buddy alerts" out of a total of 15, and so on...

Pinning and more!

Also, at the top of the last shot you can see a "More" link that will take you to this page that lists the most popular chat rooms on DSI, according to how many people have them pinned. Clicking on any of these titles will take you to the room. So with my header looking like this:



If I click on "DontStayIn Website" then my header becomes:



Note that this is a "pinned" room - it will stay in my header list of rooms while I navigate around the site.

If I go to the DontStayIn spotters group my header becomes:



See how "DontStayIn Spotters" has been added below "DontStayIn Website"?

But note - the pin on this is not pointing down - this room is not pinned and will disappear if I move away from the group page. If I click on the pin then the header becomes:



And now the room will stay in my list of rooms while I navigate around the site. Pinning also works on user profile pages so you can pin private chat with people so you no longer have to stay on their profile page while you chat with them, for example if I pin Dr Beatz:



I can go to anywhere on the site and keep talking to him:


Click for large

There is loads more to the new system - but this should get you going!

DaveB explains some even newer features: dontstayin.com

Thanks for clearing it up a bit!

Might want to add about pinning private chats?

When is it going to be on again ?!

I dont get it :(

What does pinned mean Iain?

Sorry to be thick but what does the 16 represent? Im sure u have more than 16 buddies on ur buddy list

A total of 16 alerts.

They are current alerts. Not timed out yet

ok so that will become more relevant once u are using it regularly then

It means it will stay on that board. You will see when new posts are made. They could be groups, threads or private chats. You can post to all of them from there. thread posts in the chat window are posted to the thread. If you make a comment, then go check the thread, your comment will be there. Group chat and private chat comments time out and disappear.

Ok, so now I have a nice example of a thread to use too - this one!



Note how my uppermost comment in chat (my previous comment in the thread before this one) has "(quote)" sections - comments appear in the chatbox for a (pinned) thread, but quotes do not!

Also see the "(more)" bits? Clicking on one of them will take you to that particular comment in the thread, so clicking on "(more)" after my comment will show you what I've quoted.

I guess. For me, the buddy alerts is a little redundant at the moment. If it included laughs etc, it would be useful. Basically all it tells you now is, who has logged on and off in the time before it times out

OMG Iain you're awesome. I shall give you a big sloppy kiss when I next see you.


= pinned

= un-pinned

I changed this to 500 chars. Actually - because I'm a nerd, it's 512 chars.

this is a great idea, the only thing i dont like about it is 'chatting' in threads... as you can imagine if everybody pins it and chats that way, it will be difficult to keep up on pages for others... personally i think there should be chat rooms for each and every group on dsi...leave the threads out of it?

lol - ok - I fixed that.


As long as you don't ask me to hold your "special to do list" while you do so ;o)

so whens it being switched on permantley?

When the bugs are ironed out. Daves a tease.

i hope its tonight

Iain, your buddy alerts are 1/15 not 2/16 as you have there at the moment.