Suggestions for chat window

[Yakzan]

my suggestions for the chat window, which would be really neat

1) instead of having to click on the typing bar to type then click outside it to move, just have it so you press enter to type, or do / commands, and enter to take it off of course.
2) ability to resize proportions of the status text window and the chat window between each other.
3) possibly have a daoc kind of way with windows, like, one window for groups(party, chat groups, whatever), one window for guild, one window for a broad range chat, and one for the standard chat
4) of course have the ability to ignore ppl


that\'s all i can think of atm, but i think it\'s a good list

[Greatwolf]

I would also like to add an option \"snap to grid\" where the chat window when moved will automatically dock to the nearest corner or something to that effect.

Also I\'m thinking maybe just using the tab button to switch between chat mode and action mode is good enough.

[Ravette]

I like these ideas too. It is alot of work to keep moving the mouse back to the chat window and clicking, whenever someone asks a question.

[acraig]

Thanks for these ideas. I\'m trying to redo the gui a little ( mostly \'behind the scenes\' changes )  but I will try to incorporate some of these.

[babylon]

Being in the dev universe myself, I\'ll try to be as specific as possible about the things I\'d like to see in the chat interface...at the moment, since there\'s not much to do in the world yet, the chat window is a pretty gigantic component of world interaction - where I, at least, spend a lot of time.

- \"Smart\" command interface - typing a slash (/) and then a command letter or letter combination (or a word) is interpreted *before* the text after it.  I.e., typing /s would immediately focus the chat text field, whereas typing /greet would not - it would simply perform the emote.  This would eliminate the need to click in and out completely.

- Ability to customize size and font of typeface (the current typeface is a little gigantic for me)

- The OpenGL windowing engine being used appears to be a bit buggy - the bottom line of text in both panes is half-below the line, and the text also spills over into the scrollbar region.  The scrolling itself is sort of impossible as well.  Any improvements to this (my suggestion is widening the margin on the bottom and right sides of the inner pane region) would be much appreciated.

- Scrolling via page up and page down buttons that would perform as standard in GUIs

- Custom color-coding of types of messages

- Currently, if you send a tell, it disappears, and the system doesn\'t inform you that you said anything.  Would like to see it say \"you sent JoeSchmoe \"

- Tabbed chat window panes with configurable types of messages (less critical at the moment, but very helpful when populations and kinds of messages increase)

I know that\'s a lot, but that\'s my initial list  Thanks again for all the work!

babylon

[chrischoo]

Hmmm perhaps the message window should be placed somewhere near the top instead and have the icons compressed into smaller images? Would you think it could be better if a dropdown message window which looked like say a Quake3 console would do the GUI any good?

[Ravenmaster]

I think it would be nice if you could close the chat box. Maybe you can, I have only played the game once, so it\'s possible I just didn\'t notice it.  You could have a little icon of someone plugging their ears.

[krythonthegreat]

I like it espechaly the resize thing!
oh yeah and you should be able to copy and past in the text window to give people urls and quote articles form planeshift.it