Locking the Chat Window ?

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Corvus
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Locking the Chat Window ?

Post by Corvus »

Hiya,

First off, thanks for a great tool. I found it this afternoon, and already love it.

The one gripe one of my players has had so far is that the chat window keeps coming and going (V1.0M9) - Would it be possible to include an option (possibly in the View menu) to lock the Chat window open ?

Thanks,

Chris

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rkathey
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Post by rkathey »

I believe Trevor is going to allow you to pin it in place post 1.0
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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Yeah, I've been finding the same thing myself. I'll add a "push-pin" to the panel for build 94 (which will be like Tuesday or Wednesday)
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

rkathey wrote:I believe Trevor is going to allow you to pin it in place post 1.0
That was the original thought, but I find even myself getting annoyed with it, and that means it's time to change :)
Dreaming of a 1.3 release

Corvus
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Post by Corvus »

trevor wrote:
rkathey wrote:I believe Trevor is going to allow you to pin it in place post 1.0
That was the original thought, but I find even myself getting annoyed with it, and that means it's time to change :)
Awesome !

Thanks, and thanks from my players :)

-Chris

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rkathey
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Post by rkathey »

At one time there was discussion of a separate window for chat. Any thoughts of revisiting that?

You could still have the word balloon blink on the arrival of a new message, maybe even pop up the chat window on the first message. That way you could alt-tab between the chat and the map and not have to worry about which key strokes to capture for map and which ones for chat. <cntrl>-something could pop up the chat window and it could be accessible via the Tools menu.

In addition, you could put hooks in to send messages from dicetool.

my 2 cents
rAk
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Post by Emryys »

trevor wrote:That was the original thought, but I find even myself getting annoyed with it, and that means it's time to change :)
The secret! All we have to do is find out what aspects annoy Mr Trevor and they'll get done right away ;)
Game On!
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rkathey
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Post by rkathey »

Emryys wrote: The secret! All we have to do is find out what aspects annoy Mr Trevor and they'll get done right away ;)
LOL

I had another thought. I use firefox as my web browser. You can open new pages in tabs verses having to open another window to view two or more web pages at the same time. It’s a big desk top saver. It struck me that the chat and map window could be tabbed with both windows taking up the entire space of map frame.

You could have tabs for other functions as well. One tab has the map, one the chat, one the custom fields associated with the tokens (once that is implemented). Other tabs could hold private chats, the dice tool, character sheets etc.

The advantage is you don't eat up much map space, just enough for the tabs at the top of the map frame. The disadvantage is that you can't look at the map and chat at the same time. I don’t normally look at the map while chatting so this isn’t a big deal to me. It might be to others.

Sorry for the ramble. Feel free to shoot it down (flames are preferable to just smoke and make sure there is a big explosion at the end. People like that)
Last edited by rkathey on Mon Feb 27, 2006 11:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the RPTrolls are readying another attack of proposed functionality on the developers.

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Post by Emryys »

Grip has tabs and this is both great and a hindrance depending on how it is done. All major functions are contained on there own tab, like character sheet, Map, adventure journal, etc. This is good as you say in that you can have the entire screen to look at that aspect but... If you do need to see 2 things at once, make it so you can have a tab open in a seperate window, with a "key" shortcut, like ctrl + M for map.

In the players app this can be done, but for some reason they didn't get around to it in the GM's app (although it says you can, but the shortcuts don't work, grrr). This has created incessant "flipping" of the tabs during game sessions which can slow everything down considerably :(

As a GM, looking at 2 (even 3) things at once is sometimes necessary, so having the seperate window option would make tabs very useful indeed :)
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trevor
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Post by trevor »

I'll let others respond to preferences
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Post by Killydd »

Another option would be to have options for both the way it is now, or to have tabbed access to the chat/other tools. Some people might prefer a chat box that only holds a few lines at the bottom and being able to look at a longer transcript in a separate tab also. I think that's how I might prefer it actually.

Corvus
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Post by Corvus »

Put my vote in the "Few lines at the bottom of the main window" camp ...

-Chris

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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Emryys wrote:
trevor wrote:That was the original thought, but I find even myself getting annoyed with it, and that means it's time to change :)
The secret! All we have to do is find out what aspects annoy Mr Trevor and they'll get done right away ;)
Oh crap ! They're on to me !

/me throws down a smoke screen
/me sneaks away in all the confusion
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trevor
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Post by trevor »

Well, I don't know if it is immediately obvious, but you can change the size of the chat window by just clicking the gray area between the panel and the map and dragging. That way, if you want a ton of chat window, drag it waaaaaaay up, then you can show/hide it the same way it works now. As an added improvement there could be a keystroke that toggles the visibility of the chat panel.

So if you make the chat window take up nearly the whole space, and use keystrokes (or the mouse) to switch between the modes, you've got nearly the tabbed solution.
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Post by Emryys »

So if you make the chat window take up nearly the whole space, and use keystrokes (or the mouse) to switch between the modes, you've got nearly the tabbed solution
The only problem is it still takes up at least the bottom of the screen. You could adjust the map so the action is in the top half, but even just a floating window that is resizable would be good as I could place it anywhere and adjust it depending on the action :)
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