Real time comments.

If your referring to the post comment area with the tinymce editor, i will be providing a couple of options for that.

Lots of other things can be changed with CSS edits.

 Yes, the video record was disabled on my site due to issues; it might be a nice thing.  I had members to try it out but it had issues.

This is a screenshot from the Dolphin site.  I went back to a post from 2017 and there were the comments; I could see who replied to what.  I blocked out the member's name for privacy reasons.

 Why do you have to come and burst the bubble........:)  J/K

 But wait!!!! :) is it possible to change the design of that comment block, it looks like crap?

Then like the screenshot i posted with the comment box on top.

I also looked into detecting if a video was playing. If it's in a iframe as most embeds are, then no.

Cheetah does not have the video record option for the comments at the moment as it was removed as part of my flash removal. That will be back when i develop a html5 replacement.

I disagree.  Boonex made that suggestion over on Boonex.com that they were going to change comments to a chat type structure.  Believe me, threaded replies are needed.  People like being able to reply to a comment and have it noted that they just replied to Fred's stupid comment.  You go back to the blog post and see exactly who was commenting on what.  Even with UNA they still have the comment box.    On the Dolphin site we have comments expanded by default so that replies to replies are shown.  Yes, on really intense posts the box gets a bit narrow.  A chat type solution would hurt instead of help.

What I have on the old Dolphin site works and works well, I had real members talking in basically real time on blog posts etc.  It just had some bugs which could have been due to the old version of Dolphin.

If you do want to implement a chat type comment, please don't strip out the current comments then so that I can continue on my own.  Seriously, say I left a reply to Fred's stupid comment yesterday.  Today I want to go back and see if Fred replied to my comment.  With a chat style system that is scrolling comments away, I can't do that.  Plus, it would be hard to see if Fred was replying to my comment or to someone else's comment even if I go to trying to scroll back through the comments.

I wish now that I had just kept my mouth shut and try to implement this as a code hack like I did with Dolphin.

I have ran a normal site with a lot of members and the users like being able to do rich text; change colours of text etc.  I always suggest polling your members to see what they want.

First of all, let me state that I implemented Real Time Comments on a Dolphin site and it works fairly well.  Note that it is running on an old version of Dolphin, 7.1.6.  Some of my issues may not be there in newer versions.

In my implementation, the post comment box is at the top of the comments; that is where it should be.  Also, yes, when making a new comment it does appear at the bottom of the list but when the block is refreshed, it will appear at the proper place; so while it is not quite right, it corrects in a second or two when the block refreshes.  I did try to solve that issue but didn't find a solution.  I refresh the block around one second maybe; two or three, you want it as close to real time to be usable.  Real Time Comments is not for shared hosting; in my opinion, running a social platform on shared hosting is for testing only.  Newest posts need to be at the TOP.  The reason for this is that you don't want to have to page back through a lot of old comments; perhaps from days ago, to see the newest comments.  Newest comments on anything should be at the top if you have pagination.

Speaking of pagination, on my old Dolphin 7.1.6 I did have an issue with pagination.  I stopped working on any development for the site until I could get it upgraded and now the site will be migrated to Cheetah.  I also saw an issue with playing embedded videos in comments (the site allowed that).  When the block refreshes, it restarts the video.  For that, I simply put a button "Pause Live Comments" that turned off live comments so that one could watch the video.  I meant to work on that as well to see if I could detect that the video was playing and to turn off the live comments until it had finished.

Real time comments is a feature that does drive interaction and if you don't have interaction on a social site, it will eventually die.

 Just a friendly hint, here in the NJ/NY area, everyone uses their mobile device for everything, literally. The more mobile friendly, the more excited they become. Seriously, if they lose their phone, you better run far away from them. People here in NY, cross the streets while texting or messaging, if ur driving and have the green light, don't even think of honking the horn, u will regret it...lol

 Awrsome!!!! That's what I'm talking about!! You go boyyyy!!!

Ok i think i have a much better way of doing this. A complete redesign of how the comments are displayed.

My idea is to display them as they would appear in a chat room or texting on a phone. New messages appear on the bottom and they scroll up as new posts come in and the new post input area placed at the bottom. This is the layout as i believe it should be.

To make that happen more easily, the paginate would be removed completely. Instead on first load, the 10 most recent posts would be loaded into the comments area which will be scrollable. As you scroll down, or drag down on a phone, older messages would be auto loaded into the top of the scroll area as needed.

The tinymce editor for comments would be eliminated, and instead buttons for embedding a video or adding photos would be added. Similar to facebook(only better LOL)

 Understood, I'll wait till you and GG discuss on this.

I could do a custom version of what it's like when the WYSIWYG comments option is off. In that mode it's normally just a textbox. Video embeds don't work in that mode as it does not support html.

Anyhow. A bit off topic. I wanted to discuss how the realtime comments are handled. Order, position of the post area, ect. The tool bar buttons can be dealt with later.

 The more simple it appears and easier, the better. 

 Awesome, because I think that a normal user will get intimated with the tinymce editor. People just want to make a comment, upload a photo, share a link and post a video with the url. That would be huge if it can be configured to have 3 buttons. 

 That is a custom version of the mini tinymce editor i did just for the comments, so yes. The config for that editor could be changed to have any buttons you wanted.

 This is just a curious question, those tool option on the header, can they be eliminated and just 2 buttons, one being photo and the other to embed video?

Ok. Here is a screenshot of what i think would be the best layout for the comments.

Aaargh. In oldest first mode you then have to be at the last page which is going to be messy. Now i understand why boonex defaulted it to newest first.

Ok, this is going to require some more thought.

I posted a reply here. https://www.cheetahwsb.com/m/suggestions/view/Real-Time-Comments but it's not really going to be seen there.

I have been playing with this. Almost finished. A few issues i think need to be discussed.

When comments are in the order of Newest First which is the default, it seems strange that a new post will appear at the bottom when it should appear at the top when in that order.

Also while in that order it does not make sense to have the comment entry form at the bottom when it should be at the top so you don't have to scroll up and down.

So perhaps this. Change the default order to Oldest first so they show up the same way as a chat room or texting on your phone. New messages appear at the bottom, and old ones scroll off the top which to me makes the most sense.

And if someone wants it as newest first, then perhaps the comment entry form should also move above the comment block when in that order.

As for reply's within reply's. I have skipped that for now as i am having a hard time figuring out how to handle a live time update to an existing comment.