Hi,
I'm very interested in your chat package for use within an online learning environment (moodle). With this in mind, I have two suggestions for features both dealing with old messages:
The first suggestion is chat session transcripts / logs. This is obviously very important for an online learning environment. If a user misses a chat session, they need to be able to see a transcript of what they missed. This could be achieved by logging each message within a chat session to a file / database.
The second thing which is very important for me is that when a user enters a chat room / session, they can see all of the previous chat. This is an issue for me because many of our users are on dial up modems and will regularly disconnect and reconnect to a session. Some chat applications will not display previous messages on entry to a chat room.
I know that these features are specific to my requirements, and I would definitely suggest these only as optional features for any chat session. In general, I would also suggest that a lot of the new features are made optional such as private messaging etc. All features are not required by all users, and if your application is kept flexible, you may find that the take up is better.
I await a response, but will be looking closer at this with a view to creating a moodle add on module with your chat application. Any suggestions on this would be appreciated.
kind regards,
Andrew Clarke (Glyde)