UIC User's Guide: WebBoard Version 3.5

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8. Chatting in WebBoard

WebBoard's chat lets you create real-time virtual communities through interactive discussion with other WebBoard users. Chat lets you exchange information, questions, issues, and concerns with fellow users in conference chat rooms. You can also include images and active links in your chat messages, if the board manager has enabled this feature.

To use the Chat feature you must be using a modern JavaScript-enabled browser such as Netscape Navigator 3.0 (or higher) or MSIE 4.0 (or higher).

Each WebBoard conference can have its own chat room where you can communicate synchronously with other members of that conference. The course instructor (board manager) or any moderator of the conference has the ability to enable/disable the chat facility for that conference.

Besides the standard JavaScript-based chat facility traditionally embedded into WebBoard, version 3.5 also provides a Java-based true IRC chat facility called ConferenceRoom (from WebMaster Inc.). Only the WebBoard administrator can switch your board to use this chat server. Due to security gaps and difficult management, it is currently not enabled at UIC. This may later change. A section on this chat facility will then be added to this guide. For now, curious users may want to study the online WebBoard help. Note that for using this chat facility, your browser must also have Java enabled (besides JavaScript).

Using WebBoard's Internal Chat Facility:

To enter a chat room, follow these steps:

• From the WebBoard menubar, select Chat. The Available Chat Rooms list displays all the available chat rooms and current activity.

• To go into a specific chat room, click the hyperlinked conference name. The chat window appears as below.

• To send a message, type your message in the text box below the menubar.
• Click on the Send button.
• If your message doesn't appear right away, click on Refresh.

The Chat Window (above) is where you see all the activity and dialogue in the chat room. The Chat window has a menubar and a message field where all messages are displayed. The most recent message is shown at the top of the list of messages.

The menubar-buttons:

perform the following tasks:

Compose: opens the Compose Message window for you to type a chat message. You can choose the color, size and style of the message you send. This window can be maintained open during the chat session by moving it in such a way that it does not cover the Chat window.

Refresh: updates the Chat window. The window updates automatically every 5 seconds. You can change the settings on this by entering r=# where # ranges from 3 to 120 seconds, in the text field. The letter r can be upper or lower case.

Rooms: displays a list of available chat rooms and their current activity (within the past 15 minutes). You can enter another chat room by selecting a room in this window. The Rooms window has its own menubar, with Refresh and Close . Choose a room and click on Go To Room.

Users: displays the list of users currently logged into the chat room. It also provides a text box for sending whispers (private messages) to a user, or group of users (select multiple users with Control(PC) or Command(Mac) key held down).

The whisper message above is intended for John Samuel. Click on the Send button once you have typed in the message.

The recipient of your whisper is notified that this was a private remark by the whisper… icon in the message.

Another quick way of whispering to someone active in the chat room is by clicking on the speech bubble beside his name in a previous message he sent.

There you also find the bell icon for paging him. Paging the user will let you know if the user is currently logged on to Chat. It brings up an alert box on his screen, so if he was doing something else in the meantime and not paying attention to the chat, he is alerted that you want to talk to him there.

Close:  logs you out of Chat. Exit Chat using this button only. (Details below)

Help: opens up a new Chat Help window.

Adding Smileys

One of the easiest ways to customize your chat messages is to use smileys. Chat messages from both the Chat window textbox and the Compose Message window can contain smileys. You can enter smileys in chat messages by typing simple text codes, as shown in this table:

Code	Result
:)
:(
:o

Ending Your Chat Session

When you are finished chatting, you should close the Chat window.

To exit chat, follow these steps:

From the Chat menubar, select Close. A Confirm Window as shown below pops up.

Click OK. This ends your Chat session.

Remarks

You can be only in one chat room at a time. Thus you may miss some of the action in the meantime in another room. If you try to open another chat window from your browser, it will just switch your chat room in the chat window that's already open. You won't be able to circumvent this by opening another browser program either, as WebBoard's database keeps track of users already logged in.

Chatting requires a lot of discipline. If several people talk about different things at the same time, you'll soon be lost. And few people are professional typists. So be patient and give each other time to respond! If you are referring to a previous message, say from Winnie, begin your reply "Winnie, …" or refer to "What Winnie said…" or use similar quoting techniques to make the conversation transparent to your fellow chatters.

In WebBoard's internal chat facility, everybody is known to everyone. There are no nicknames and no anonymous chat. Its purpose is not free expression of all your world views, but cooperative discussion of class-related issues. It is an environment to enhance your productivity, not your entertainment.

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