This forum chat could be a great thing. No more installing flash player, no more fiddling with Adobe Air, no more different chat programs for Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone, no more messing with any of that because the chat is (finally) right here in the browser! The new chat system could be the best thing that has happened to this forum in six years...
...but some of the implementation is currently annoying. The user interface is intrusive and I just had to leave a group so I could type this post without the chat window bouncing up like a Jack Russell terrier every five seconds.
Yeah. I had to LEAVE THE GROUP to get the window to stop popping up, just so I could make a flipping post on the forum.
There is also no good way to scroll back in the forum window. All I got is the last two statements people made, no dependable way to go back and get context for the conversation or see if somebody said something I missed. Page up/down scrolls up and down in the forum window behind the chat box. Grabbing the scrollbar at the right is a dodgy prospect because you can't scroll up and down slow enough to read and sometimes the scrollbar just vanishes and refuses to return.
I can't even resize the window to see more of the conversation at once. >.>
Robo, I think this new chat has potential. Mostly because it is right here in the forum where people don't have to go install something else to use it, so I think it has potential to get used by a lot more people a lot more frequently. Right now it's not really very usable, but you just installed it and I'm assuming you're still tinkering. I'm trying to wait and see where it goes before I decide whether I ultimately like it or hate it. Here's hoping the bugs get worked out before too many people write it off and ignore it as a bad thing.