Tell HN: Check out my little app

[jmonegro]

http://chatifier.heroku.com/

[oscardelben]

<a href="javascript:alert('vulnerability found')">click here</a>

This is working, but I suppose it shouldn't

[oscardelben]

It was hard for me to notice the open chat button.

[mikeyur → oscardelben]

Same - and it only seems to work on certain sites. I can't get it to open up on HN.

[oscardelben → mikeyur]

It appears to run only in websites with jquery

[jmonegro → oscardelben]

The bookmarklet loads jQuery, so the websites don't need to have it on.

[arch_hunter → oscardelben]

To get into a chat you have to drag the little bar at the bottum of the page up to expose a window that you can chat in.

[bensummers]

I'm afraid I didn't read the front page carefully enough, then got very confused after creating a chat room and clicking the Chatify button.

Eventually I noticed the bar at the bottom of the screen, expanded it and saw the chat, but it was only after returning to the home page and reading the description again that I realised why it was working the way it did.

Works nicely with a lovely clean look.

[dbz → bensummers]

I agree in the aspect that the creator should create an arrow or something after clicking "Chatify" button which points down to the chat and says something like "Pull Up".

Also it would be nice for instead of "Guest182" I could see "You" by default. (I understand I could edit it; however, I'm guessing everyone would then see 'You'.) Also maybe an option to view time/date stamps- and not to view them. Possibly a feature to print chats? Also when you open it you don't have to click in the chat box before typing. (You could just start typing and then hit enter.)

Also you may want to consider a membership service to keep chatrooms longer than a week even if people don't use them. Just a thought.

Well that's my two cents as of now. However, for the review: The App seems nice. Elegant in design, but doesn't seem to work. So overall- it'd be nice in my opinion- if it worked.

[jmonegro → dbz]

I will definitely take those into consideration. I'll adding message explaining how to use the chat window. I'll also extend the duration of the chatroom to a month.

[dbz → jmonegro]

You should also keep the deletion after a week if it isn't used in the first week. (That way if people make a bunch they don't steal resources from you.)

[ryandvm → bensummers]

I had the same problem. I thought I should be in a chat room but couldn't figure out what was going on until I saw the light gray on white stuff at the bottom of the screen.

I like the idea though. It's basically a chat version of Google's SideWiki.

Disclaimer: I wrote a simple group chat myself (http://www.yakeze.com/chat/hackernews/) before I found TinyChat (http://tinychat.com/).

[Kilimanjaro]

Good idea, but it would be better if we could just create chatrooms on they fly for every conceivable web page we visit.

Say I am on google.com and I click on the chat bookmarklet (or jetpack, or extension), it should be able to create a public chat for that url (or any) and start chatting right away.

[Kilimanjaro → Kilimanjaro]

If drop.io has an API you could try this:

- shorten any url with goo.gl and get only the uri.path

- create the chatroom in your bookmarklet as:

  http://drop.io/chat_{shorten}/remote_chat_bar.js

- profit?

[jmonegro → Kilimanjaro]

There are already other services that do this.

[Kilimanjaro]

Bookmarklet explained:

  if not jquery: load jquery
  body prepend(drop_io_script_tag)

[scorpion032]

I like it. Its a good idea.

I like to know about the technical details of it as well.

[jmonegro → scorpion032]

It's using standard XMPP, but, really, I just built a wrapper around drop.io's real-time API.

[jrnkntl → jmonegro]

I find this more interesting than the idea itself :)

So everytime someone 'creates' a chatroom it actually creates a drop.io and uses the chatroom associated with that drop.io?

FYI: I have asked the above to jmonegro in the chat: "yes, it's built around their streaming api. but the drops are password protected by a hashed function, so they aren't publicly available"

[niyazpk]

HN chat room: http://chatifier.heroku.com/hackernews

I think there should be an option to chat without installing the bookmarklet.

[MrMatt → niyazpk]

Just click on the bookmarklet.

[sucuri2]

Very good idea and app, but I keep getting internal server error every other click.

You might want to check your server settings and logs for 503's...

[jmonegro → sucuri2]

That usually means that the room does not exist. I haven't quite worked on the error pages.

[jmonegro]

By the way, what I built was a simple wrapper for the chat and real-time services offered by drop.io

[Raphael]

Add padding to the bottom of the page so that it is not obscured by the floating chat portion.

[uggedal]

Reminds me of _why's hoodwink.d.

[jmonegro]

I fixed many bugs - it should work on HN and most other sites as well.

[oscardelben]

I think that it only works in websites with jquery?

[jmonegro → oscardelben]

The bookmarklet loads jQuery from Google.

[ErrantX → jmonegro]

I get this behavior too (tested on about 20 varied sites)

[niyazpk]

Is there some way to password protect chat rooms?

[jroes]

Bookmarklet doesn't work for me in Chrome.

[jmonegro → jroes]

I _built_ it on chrome. You might be using an old version, I pushed a new version that should fix many of the bugs.

[jroes → jmonegro]

Oh, drop.io is blocked by my work ISP. Sorry for the false report.