Improvements over ChatBox v3.0.2
- Almost completely rewritten.
- Added support for simultaneous multiple rooms, including password-protected rooms and membership-only rooms. Admins can create and modify permanent rooms (via a provided room management screen) and users can create their own temporary rooms.
- The display of messages and online users has been completely redone to allow a smooth, flicker-free update of new messages; the annoying 'click' sound in Internet Explorer has also been suppressed during automatic refreshes.
- Bandwidth is now conserved with phpBBChatSpot because only new messages are sent to the clients, whereas ChatBox used to send all messages over-and-over.
- The online user display list now only updates itself every 5 minutes (like phpBB's) or after a user joins or leaves; this saves bandwidth as well (and prevents repeated-flickering in Mozilla Firefox); chat messages are updated every 5 seconds by default.
- Private messaging now exists.
- Session management has been completely redone. If enabled, phpBBChatSpot will compare its online list with the forum's to ensure all displayed sessions are active. Expired sessions are hidden and only purged upon joining a room, to reduce unnecessary database queries.
- Expired sessions are no longer deleted via users who are browsing the forum; this saves queries and prevents delays.
- The colour selection mechanism is now graphical.
- Flood control was added.
- BBCode support was added.
- URLs and email addresses are now automatically parsed.
- The following commands were added: away, invite, join, kill, leave, mass, me, names, password, pm, purge, refresh.
- The following commands were rewritten: clear, kick.
- Moderators now have permission to perform some tasks that only Administrators could do before.
- Some data is now stored in cookies to reduce database queries; if the user has cookies disabled phpBBChatSpot will compensate for this transparently.
- Security precautions have been added.
- Some synchronization issues addressed, including having user's own messages immediately displayed upon being sent to prevent collision during refresh.
- Now completely supports users with pop-up blockers (via the [CLOSE] link, the leave command, and a link that will be displayed upon attempting to join rooms).
- Now has the capability to use multiple database user accounts to ensure that query quotas are not exceeded (and are separate from the forum).
- Should now be completely compatible with Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera; it is very likely to be compatible with other new browsers as well, but so far it has only been officially tested in those four.
- Additional minor changes made throughout, including HTML tag errors corrected.
