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Hooray for RSS

September 11, 2008 – 1:53 pm by billy

I just enabled RSS feeds for site owners (or anyone else) to track the chats that happen on specific websites.

Also, on the front page, the RSS feed lists chats that are happening on every site.

You can get to the RSS feed via the meta link, or if you want to do it manually, just put in:

http://firef.ly/rss/?url=your_website or http://firef.ly/rss/ for the main feed


New firefly updates!

August 27, 2008 – 1:58 pm by billy

Like I promised, a new version of firefly is now live.

Here are the changes:

  • When you enter firefly, you will see the last 25 chats that people have left.
  • New chats don’t disappear, but instead fade into the background. Chats disappearing was our number one complaint!
  • You can now move chat bubbles around — just drag them anywhere

Any feedback is always welcome :)

Below is a screenshot of the changes:


Tweaked switches live

August 25, 2008 – 4:00 pm by billy

I tweaked the switches a bit to make them more appealing to users.  They also are sporting 2 different states, informing users that are currently alone on a page.

Below are screenshots of the changes.  You can grab the code to actually install them at firefly’s install page


New stuff next week

August 23, 2008 – 10:35 pm by billy

Some new features are coming out next week — I’ll keep you posted — we just need to finish testing them.


Clicking on links workaround

August 11, 2008 – 1:39 pm by billy

I just updated the faq regarding a workaround I created for clicking links when you’re in firefly.

Right now, there is a limitation with flash that does not allow people to click through to the page below.  This is probably the biggest complaint with firefly.

I’ve spent a lot of time researching the problem and have found some ways to figure out what link you are trying to click on.  The good part is that most links can now be clicked on when you’re in firefly.  The bad part is that some links still don’t work.

I’m continuing to look into the problem and hopefully can find a more thorough solution soon.


Nice post … thks

August 6, 2008 – 10:55 am by john
WOW, is all I can say about how easy it was to install and use this new overlay chat program.  Go ahead and click on the ‘on slider’ above to test it out.  I’ve been using this for only a few minutes and I can’t believe how many different applications this will be GREAT for.  Have fun!

Ephemeral chats

August 5, 2008 – 3:44 pm by billy

Many people have been saying the chat bubbles disappear too quickly.  I agree, so I bumped up the time a chat displays to 10 seconds.  Any longer and it may get in the way of the conversation — but we’ll see.  I’ll make it longer if people think it’s still too short.

If you think it’s too short or too long, please tell me.


Language support

August 5, 2008 – 12:47 am by billy

Lots and lots of people are coming from all over the world — which is great.  I just wasn’t prepared for it.

I’m going to be working on getting in some language support.  Firefly should accept unicode characters already, but there may be a few problems.

It’s on my list!


Admin tips

August 4, 2008 – 11:16 am by billy

Most of the support emails I’m getting are coming in regarding the admin verification functionality.

Here are some tips to remember to make it go smoother:

  • Make sure to put your password in quotes.
  • The admin functionality is only available to TLDs and not sub-domains.  This will get tweaked later on.
  • If your domain redirects to another domain, your password will not work at the redirected domain.

If you are still having problems, feel free to contact us and we’ll try to walk you through it.


Welcome

August 4, 2008 – 9:36 am by billy

Since releasing the public beta version of firefly, we’ve had some fantastic growth.  And as a result, we’ve also been getting a ton of great feedback and bug reports.

So we’ve started this blog to keep track of not only our changes to the product, but as a general area for discussion to occur so that we can further improve on firefly.

Don’t be shy to comment.  We’ll be monitoring your comments very closely as we progress.