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Various issues/questions with Chat plugin

I'm having a lot of issues with the chat plugin and am hoping you can help:

* On mobiles, the minimised chat bar itself, the minimise and maximize buttons are literally impossible to tap as they are so small. Surely the mobile version should have a different design?!
* On mobiles, it's impossible to minimise the chat and return to the web page because the minimise button, settings button etc. is to small to tap.
* On mobiles, the left edge of the chat window disappears off the left hand side of the screen for a few seconds until the page loads properly, and then it sizes itself properly a bit later - but this doesn't look very professional while it's loading.
* I have changed the poll rate to 0.5 seconds and it still takes 1-2 seconds for my new messages to appear in the chat, what else is causing the delay as other online chats I have used are instant?
* Is there a way to clear the main chat window and remove all the previous chats?

Many thanks

  • aristath

    Hello there @Katie, I hope you're well today!

    * On mobiles, the minimised chat bar itself, the minimise and maximize buttons are literally impossible to tap as they are so small. Surely the mobile version should have a different design?!
    * On mobiles, it's impossible to minimise the chat and return to the web page because the minimise button, settings button etc. is to small to tap.
    * On mobiles, the left edge of the chat window disappears off the left hand side of the screen for a few seconds until the page loads properly, and then it sizes itself properly a bit later - but this doesn't look very professional while it's loading.

    Could you please post a link to your website so that we may see this in action? This could be related to the theme you're using, we'll have to check if any additional CSS is needed.

    * I have changed the poll rate to 0.5 seconds and it still takes 1-2 seconds for my new messages to appear in the chat, what else is causing the delay as other online chats I have used are instant?

    The chat intervals also depend on your server and its resources... What hosting are you using? Is this on a shared host? A VPS?

    Please advise,
    Ari.

  • Paul

    On mobiles, the minimised chat bar itself, the minimise and maximize buttons are literally impossible to tap as they are so small. Surely the mobile version should have a different design?!

    Two things. You don't need to click/touch the minimize button you can click/touch the bar itself. The design is really up to you. We have provide the base functionality. You can apply the custom design for your site needs. It would be quite impossible to provide a design for a plugin which will work across the many thousands of themes not to mention custom themes.

    As Ari mentioned please provide a link where we can observe the chat within your site. This may be something with your theme overriding the chat CSS.

    I have changed the poll rate to 0.5 seconds and it still takes 1-2 seconds for my new messages to appear in the chat, what else is causing the delay as other online chats I have used are instant?

    Well it depends on the other chats you are using. Most chats which functions a stand alone plugins will not be instant. Nothing much else to suggest. 1-2 second is not a big delay.

  • Katie

    Hi Paul, thanks for your reply. The chat bar itself is also too small for me to tap on, not just the minimise/maximise buttons. It needs to be bigger on mobiles and I would expect the default styling to be at least usable on different devices, even if I need to do some custom CSS to make it match the theme perfectly.

    How can I securely send you my login details, as the chat is only visible when you are logged in?

  • Paul

    @Katie,

    Ok. I've taken a look at your site and chat. Here are my comments for each of your points.

    On mobiles, the minimised chat bar itself, the minimise and maximize buttons are literally impossible to tap as they are so small

    Yes, agreed/probably. The height of the bar is 20px as well as the line-height. Again the target we are going for with the bottom corner chat is not to take over the page. So it needs to be as small as possible otherwise it starts to obstruct other elements on the page. We can probably do something better like allowing you to set the height of the bar with some settings. But for now you will need to do this yourself. It is a simple bit of CSS added to your theme. Just set the height to whatever you want. 

    div.wpmudev-chat-box div.wpmudev-chat-module-header {
    font-weight: normal;
    height: 20px;
    line-height: 20px;
}

    On mobiles, the left edge of the chat window disappears off the left hand side of the screen for a few seconds until the page loads properly, and then it sizes itself properly a bit later - but this doesn't look very professional while it's loading.

    This one is a puzzle. Something within your theme or some other plugin is effecting the calculated width of the chat. Here is a video I captured showing the window sized 320 X 480. About every second the left edge goes over. Then is reset.

    Your site: http://screencast.com/t/zin7MqEf

    I thought this must be something with Chat. But then I checked my own site running only the Chat plugin and the default WP theme. It does not happen there. Try it yourself http://site5.media-tags.com/

    Still trying to help figure out what is happening on the site. But as far as I can tell this is not something with Chat.

    I have changed the poll rate to 0.5 seconds and it still takes 1-2 seconds for my new messages to appear in the chat, what else is causing the delay as other online chats I have used are instant?

    This appears to be something with your host server. When you set the polling interval to half a second within the chat settings. This simply controls the JavaScript polling interval. But if the round trip polling takes longer than that interval then it cannot be made to go faster.

    In looking at the Firefox console I'm seeing the polling roundtrip times to be very long sometime 2-3 seconds. And this is just for polling for new message. See image. Typically you want the round trip time less then half a second.

  • Paul

    @Katie,

    but nothing happened. What am I doing wrong?

    I've logged in and see what I think was your override CSS. Please see image and confirm.

    Forgot to mention you need to add !important on the end of each CSS line. Otherwise the Chat plugin CSS which loads last will be in effect. Like the following:

    div.wpmudev-chat-box div.wpmudev-chat-module-header {
    height: 50px !important;
    line-height: 50px !important;
}

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