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Chat-N-Time is a simple Perl real-time chat cgi for the web. It lets you hold real-time conversations on a web page. Users log in, and then can type what they'd like to say into a text box, and click a button. The chat window refreshes itself every 10 seconds or so, so that others looking at the page will be able to see the new addition to the conversation. This program requires the use of frames, though, so non-frame browsers won't be able to use it. Works with Internet Explorer v3.0 and 4 and Netscape 3.0 - 4.7 but possibly not with Internet Explorer 5 (please let me know if you use this with IE5 and it works) due to an apparent bug in how they implemented the onUnload function. While it also makes use of a META "Refresh" tag, users who can use frames but not META tags can refresh their own screens by clicking another button.
BUG FIX: 01/29/00: Almost completely rewrote all the code for this program.
Added auto-logout to get rid of stray logins, logging option to log a record
of all chatroom activity, and worked out some other bugs.
BUG FIX: 07/28/99: Fixed some problems with Logouts logging everyone
or several people out instead of just the user who is actually logging
out. There is still a bug where if you hit the "Logout" button, it will
show you logging out twice.
(Yes, I know, this would be better with Java, but hey -- what do you expect for free? :-)
There is a working version online for you to play with (on a Unix system).
This was ported to an NT server with no modifications, but if you put in the full paths to the various files, they need to look like this (double backslashes): C:\\InetPub\\wwwroot\\yourlogin or like "c:/InetPub/wwwroot/yourlogin" depending on your version of Perl.
Here's a few that I searched up on the net (these are version 1.0):
http://www.cannonball.be/chat/chatntime.html: This one is in French Thanks, Dominique!
http://rmfloris.hypermart.net/chat/chatntime.html
Ralf Floris' site. Thanks, Ralf!
RePatterning, Inc
NEV (German) This one is
an extremely nice-looking and well-designed implementation of a very
simple script. Great job!
NetFXX Web Design (Click on Chat Rooms).
This is another nice looking site.
BannerPost (Click on "Chat with us")
Emiel's ChatBox
Flummi Softwär Chatcenter.
PGA Professional Joe Keefe
You must be able to execute cgi programs on your web server. If you're not sure whether you have permission to do this, or are not sure how to configure the files, please ask your system administrator. (Usually "root@your.machine.name." For example, if your email address is 'bob@mysite.com' then you can often reach your system administrator at 'root@mysite.com'. AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy users should look for "technical support" or "member services.")
The following files are required. You may download the package in a gzipped tar file. Also, version 1.0 of this program is still available. If you have Netscape or Internet Explorer, and you want to download this, try holding down the "shift" key while you click on the link. This should give you the option to download the file.
Unix: Type "gunzip chatntime-2.5.tar.gz" then type "tar -xvf
chatntime.tar" to
uncompress and expand the package. If you are using Windows, then I suggest
you get WinZip, which will handle tar.gz files. You can find WinZip at
TuCows.Com.
The following files should be included with this distribution: