VRIMv2
 

Note: The following page is severely out of date. It will be updated soon never.

Introduction
The Victory Road Instant Messenger, or VRIM for short, is a complete rewrite of the VRC codebase to better suit more users, custom rooms, and more. The backend and web interface is being written by FreezeWarp, while the Windows version is being written by Cat333Pokémon [as soon as he stops being lazy].

As VRIM is a complete rewrite of the code base, many of the features are being started from scratch.

Previews & Screenshots

Action	Windows® Interface	LiteTheIronMode	jQueryUI Interface (v3)
Logging In	Attachment 1651	Attachment 1746
Room List	Attachment 1765	Attachment 1747
Creating a Room		Attachment 1750
Posting Image		Attachment 1749
Posting YouTube Video		Attachment 1748

Features

Release Date	Backend	Browser Applet	Downloadable Program
February 2011	v1 Message Posting & Retrieval 3DES Encryption Active Users Rooms & Room Settings Custom Moderators Custom Allowed Users Custom Allowed Groups Custom BBCode Settings Mature Room (Disables Language Censor) Moderator Actions Delete Posts Ban Users Post Formatting Default Formatting Smilies BBCode (Youtube, Image, Link, Font, Colour, B/U/I)	v1 Main Interface Direct Image Upload Image Drag & Drop (Buggy; Firefox-Only) Youtube Search & Embed Interface Retrieve Messages Every 2.5 Seconds Receive Audio Bing When New Posts are received And You Aren't in the Tab Room Creation/Editing Private IM (1-on-1) Room Creation Change Privacy Settings Change Allowed BBCode Change Mature Status Archive Viewer Change Number of Shown Posts Change Room Show Only Certain Users Delete Posts Ban Users Room List Change Room Title Favourite Rooms User Settings Default Formatting Reverse Post Order Parental Controls View All Online Users AdminCP Disable VRIM Ban & Unban Delete Uploaded Images v2 AdminCP Censor View Room Stats View Uploads v3 AdminCP Modify Templates User Permissions Admin Permissions	Alpha 10.0 Logging in Welcome message Splash screen Running with Windows startup Room list List of rooms, grouped by permissions and official status Ability to refresh the room list Room viewer New window for each room Flashing taskbar on new posts for all open windows Ability to pause refreshing Retrieving newest posts (only newest) every two seconds Prevents excessive error messages from refreshing with bad data Date/time formatting all local, including time zone, usage of AM/PM, and order of numbers (MM/DD/YY for US, DD/MM/YYYY for UK, YYYY/MM/DD for Japan, etc.) Date displayed on posts from yesterday (before midnight of that day) Clicking usernames to be presented with options Tray icon, currently used to summon the room list New design and icons

Further Reading

• FreezeMessenger Source

I LIKES THIS ALOT, thanks Cat for the great work you are doing.

EDIT:
And thank you FreezeWarp, for the hard work you are doing.

Wow Cat~! That looks amazing so far! Good job and I can't wait until it's released.

Wow, Cat and FreezeWarp, I'm pretty impressed here! And even support for private chats! You two are doing great here!

Oh and Cat please download the rest of those parts so I can get you with a functional OS X install because as nice as this is for Windows users it'd be even better for us OS X users

Looks nice Cat, still goign to call it VRC 10 mind you, wish you teh best on getting the project finished and up and running.

Here is a first iteration of the room viewing. It does away completely with the browser frame and uses a "data grid," which allows much better manipulation with the posts.

(Oh, and I didn't misspell "/b/uizel." As it gets the rooms from the database, that was Freeze. :p)

yeah made it in two rooms, looks like its coming together and looks good keep up the work, if not I'll have to keep reminding you too

Nice program, I like it.

Would you be able to post on the program?

That looks pretty cool, I like the new "title" screen. But do all the chat rooms open in different windows? I prefer the single-window-ness of VRC 9.

Yes. I probably will keep it that way so you can monitor several rooms at once instead of switching back and forth. If you want, I could add a "merge windows" button that does it the classic way if it isn't too hard.

I guess the multi-windowness could come in handy, but if it's not much hassle a single-window option that would be much appreciated! I'm the kind of guy who likes to keep his start bar clean. :I

And Cat, thanks for a ll the work you're putting in to this.

This looks cool, Cat. Can't wait to see it. :3

Got a new screenshot!

It now loads your avatar from the forum (including support for animated avatars). The box on the right is where the online users are placed, which is not yet implemented. If I get it working right, that will also show avatars.

In the room viewer (not shown), dates appear for any posts loaded that are from the day before or earlier. It also keeps the local formatting of dates, so members in the US will see today as 1/16/2011, UK members will see 16/1/2011, and members in Japan will see 2011/1/16. AM/PM appears on the time if your region uses that; otherwise, you'll see the 24-hour time.

http://www.victoryroad.net/attachmen...achmentid=1725

isbragg, have you tried re-downloading it or different versions?

It's nice to have your avatar there, but it feels a bit useless to me, a waste of space... Then again, I can't think of anything else to go there.

Maybe I could make it a tad smaller (50x50 instead of the standard 100x100). I intend to make clicking on it link to the page to change your avatar.

I think that box should also show chat posts as well. I think going all the way to chat archives and stuff is a waste of mah precious time.

Double post but this one is big!

http://www.victoryroad.net/attachmen...achmentid=1730

That's the second most-requested feature. If a new post comes in and the window isn't active, it flashes the taskbar. It works with multiple rooms, so if you're in one room and a new post comes in another room, that window flashes instead. It also only applies to windows you have open, so you can easily ignore /b/uizel. Also added is favorite rooms. The program will likely have the ability to save your session when closing it, where it will re-open the same rooms you had open from last time the next time you use it.

In addition, private messaging (most-requested feature) is in the works. Unlike rooms, private messages will likely pop up even if you aren't in a talk with someone. Ignoring and favorite contacts, as well as an "away" mode, will likely be added.

interesting

The Flashing feature is nice actually.

Awesome, now I know when dead chat isn't dead again! I can see that coming in useful. Keep it up, Cat!

Not that I have the slightest clue how to code this...

(He's gotta give me more heads up xD)

/me cannot wait for VRIM

I was able to keep 28 rooms open without it crashing. I think that is a very good sign.

New stuff (many thanks, Freeze):
- Private rooms: private to everyone except the admins, and they receive a warning before entering.
- Private IMs: completely private.
- Retains styles and formatting from browser applet.

Features (excluding bug-fixes, given stuff, and boring things) coming soon:
- Automatic saving of messages to your hard drive.
- Ability to export selected mesages in a forum-ready table.
Example:

Time	Username	Message
1/22/2011 10:54:47 PM	Cat333Pokémon	Then don't give it to him. If he gets bored, he will just ask me.
1/22/2011 10:54:49 PM	GreenMan	you have control now so I can blame you
1/22/2011 10:55:07 PM	GreenMan	@freeze
1/22/2011 10:58:37 PM	FreezeWarp	Hm...
1/22/2011 11:00:02 PM	GreenMan	I enjoy blaming you http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif scape goats are fun
1/22/2011 11:10:02 PM	GreenMan	...

*makes note to add those to the online applet*

The more you post about VRIM's features, the more I anticipate it.
Keep up the good work, guys. (y)

VRIM10
 

[Placeholder Post]

You're talking about the program or the web applet here?

At the moment, I was talking about the program (due to the easy of saving files to one's hard drive automatically).

Looks great guys.

Arceus, this is gonna be awesome!!

Pretty much this! Can't WAIT!

I hope we'll be able to turn off the censors in private rooms and IMing.

You will :P

Due to some odd planning, the first public version will likely be 11.0. That way, I can reserve a whole number (10.x) for private, unstable alpha/beta releases.

Hm, guess that means it's about to time to start documenting features in the first post. (Freeze, I'd like to ask you to do so, as well, if you don't mind.)

Is the "chat posts next to your name" thing implanted yet?

Why are we at 11.0? If it isn't called VRC anymore, shouldn't we start back at 1.0?

Its just a name change really (the idea, at least for me, is that people know what it is when they hear it). That said, since it is a complete rewrite... eh, I'll leave that up to Cat ;P

Starting the numbers over would just confuse everyone. "So, is this that old VRC 2.0? VRIM Alpha 2? Or VRIM Version 2?" Instead, I'll just keep them going.

Great Job, guys!

Can't wait for release. Looks great!

It wouldn't be that confusing. :/

Whoa, this looks awesome! Nice job, Cat. Looking forward to the release.

New screenshot time, but not much of an improvement in the image (lots of backend stuff).

You can easily see the five room categories and a multitude of rooms in each. The last category (Private IM) allows you to see everyone you have had contact with, which will likely be condensed to only show the username and may be sorted alphabetically. The blue box on the right will be for seeing all users who are online.

http://www.victoryroad.net/attachmen...achmentid=1765

Looking good.

Just out of curiosity, does it have to refresh every 5 seconds like VRC?

Actually it refreshes every three seconds on VRIM

(For Dial-up users)

It checks for new posts every two seconds, but it doesn't purge what's already there and load the last 30 every time.

Sounds awesome ! You and me could chat one on one if we wanted to Cat !

At present its 2.5 seconds for the online application and 2 seconds for the program. Both are subject to change.

A lot of folks are going to appreciate this one. It presents error messages now when it has issues and halts the refreshing. If the errors persist, you can opt to stop it refreshing altogether (for that room).

http://www.victoryroad.net/attachmen...achmentid=1770

Awesome!

All we need is for the error messages to display differently for users, based on a checkbox in the ToolStrip.

What language is the program made in?

Also, can't wait until Februa-- uh... can we have it now?

VRIM will not be relaeased until we have ironed out most of the bugs, it is apreciated that you be paitient as we want to make sure that VRIM is as good as it can be on release

Backend and Web Interface (my stuff): PHP, MySQL, and Apache
Frontend (Cat's stuff): VisualBasic.NET

Few tips:

a) That entire statement was made for emphasis. It wasn't meant literally; don't take it that way.
b) The customer is always right. Avoid offending them (trust me, that statement could be offensive because it seems so forceful).

Oh, a web interface?

I'm sticking with the site chat then. :D

VRC will be gone when this hits, right? Time for auto-updates!

Yes, VRC is gonna be dropped.

It would be nice if Cat could fashion auto-updates eventually, since they make things so much easier.

I did implement auto-updates in a previous program of mine (well, it would tell you when an update is available and then download the new version's installer). Not sure how easy it would be with this. I could suggest that when it sends that version number at login, the server checks if it's the newest version and returns that with the login data.

Wouldn't be hard, though it probably be best as an error code; returning either "force_upgrade" and no login or "optional_upgrade" and login.

Alright. That sounds like a good idea.

Anyway, added something "shiny."

http://www.victoryroad.net/attachmen...achmentid=1784

Good ol' Easter eggs. :p

I'm confus

Yeah, me too...

Just adding a few Easter eggs to the program. :p

I'd worry more about getting the program out and functioning than putting in unneeded easter eggs with old and dead memes but okay

It literally took me seven minutes to add that. I'll play with it more after it functions better.

So, You aren't really thinking about making the file as small as you can, though, while trying to preserve the multi-room feature.

This.

I know, I just had the idea in my mind last night and wanted to get it down before forgetting it.

The above egg didn't really add anything to the compiled size. If anything, it'd probably add 4 KB when I play with it more later on. Current size of the program is 114 KB with debug mode disabled.

Hopefully by later on you mean when v10 is out and you work on v10.1/2/3/4/etc.

Fixed it for you. He said that v10 is for debugging purposes only.

Keep in mind we're still in beta anyway. There hasn't even been a v1 yet :P

*facepalm* You know what I mean...

At this point, we might start the numbering over with the first public release as 1.

So the private/personal releases are going to be basically v0.1/2/3/4/etc?

Correct

Can we rename the page to which the chat connects to to something other that the word "chat"? My school has access-denied on the program if it is connecting to the word chat, so... vrim.victoryroad.net would be great, as an example.

We've got one other URL planned, but I haven't purchased the domain yet, so I'm not at liberty to state what it is. vrim.victoryroad.net will be the (sub-)domain for now.

This is looking awesome so far!

Uh... Is /is/ (and has been for several weeks) vrim.victoryroad.net xD

vrc.victoryroad.net is also transitional, and VRC runs on... chat. **** school censors.

YOU HAVE TO MAKE A CODE NAME FOR THE RELEASE. Like firefox 4 is Minefield. :lol::lol:

Someone posted a banned phrase on VRIM, so I can't get on it now.

>:I

Yeah. If it was web browsing, I could bypass that- no problem! But VRC doesn't have what Firefox has, so... waiting until VRIM magically falls into my hands.

http://www.victoryroad.net/picture.p...pictureid=3777

With quite a bit of help from Freeze changing stuff around, the foreground and background colors work, as well as the text fonts.

Ideas freez encrypt chat and decrypt in javascript should bypass those kinda filters. Also would add some basic privacy.(From script kiddies) session+username would be a decent key.

I was thinking about that last night, too. Some kind of really basic (and easy to implement) encryption could be used on the whole CSV things, which could be all decrypted in the program.

*sighs very, very loudly*

A demo of basic (and already implemented) forum table export:

Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:26:33pm	I used the cute Buizel pic :3
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:25:55pm	Hehe that's a good one.
Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:24:29pm	Another voice chat yields another voice comparison :3
Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:24:10pm	Hi everyone
Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:24:03pm	<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ySrU0kRpY" target="_BLANK">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0ySrU0kRpY</a>
Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:23:53pm	Wow, that's the first triple illusion
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:23:52pm	Hi AF.
Shade	02/11/11 11:23:47pm	Hey Floatzel
Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:23:37pm	<w<
Armed Floatzel	02/11/11 11:23:37pm	>w>
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:21:10pm	That's good.
Cyrus	02/11/11 11:20:49pm	I'm ok
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:19:19pm	(Sorry for the late reply, I was emptying the dishwasher)
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:18:53pm	I'm doing good, you?
Shade	02/11/11 11:12:15pm	Hey Cyrus buddeh~
Cyrus	02/11/11 11:12:15pm	hai SEP, how are you?
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:11:51pm	Hi Cyrus.
Cyrus	02/11/11 11:11:31pm	hello
Shade	02/11/11 11:02:22pm	Hey Frozen one, Greenie, JC~ and Yosh too
Shade	02/11/11 11:01:57pm	Hey SEP *hugs back*
Yoshi648	02/11/11 11:01:50pm	Hey Shade
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 11:01:33pm	Hi Shade. *Hugs*
Shade	02/11/11 11:01:15pm	*pokes in*
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:58:37pm	And when ISN'T it a strange day with you Green?
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:58:24pm	Yes Freeze
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:58:08pm	<a href="http://vrim.victoryroad.net/index.php?roomid=1&numresults=500&userids=&search=&action=archive" target="_BLANK">http://vrim.victoryroad.net/index.php?roomid=1&numresults=500&userids=&search=&action=archive</a>
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:58:08pm	Does the archive look better this way?:
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:58:05pm	Or make everything worse, whichever comes first
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:58:05pm	NO IT WON"T ALL BE ALRIGHT I HAD A STRANGE DAY
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:57:38pm	Calm down, take some <a href="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/Fuzzy.gif" target="_BLANK"><img src="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/Fuzzy.gif" alt=":fuzzy:" class="embedImage" /></a> and everything will be better
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:56:59pm	You darn well know what I speak of young mister
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:56:50pm	Oh look, its a firefly!
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:56:39pm	I don't know what you're talking about.
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:56:33pm	What feature?
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:56:20pm	Freeze will go boom, since he added that feature
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:56:14pm	<a href="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/trollfaec1.png" target="_BLANK"><img src="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/trollfaec1.png" alt=":trollfaec:" class="embedImage" /></a>
SpikyEaredPichu96	02/11/11 10:55:59pm	What Green said.
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:55:47pm	Freeze!
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:55:46pm	Very well <a href="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/faec3.png" target="_BLANK"><img src="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/faec3.png" alt=":faec:" class="embedImage" /></a>
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:55:35pm	You wanted a boom. Now you be happy.
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:55:33pm	0_o
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:55:25pm	"Yoshi says Boom." What is this?
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:54:48pm	^block o black
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:54:32pm	I like trains.
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:54:27pm	That's better
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:54:23pm	I
Yoshi648	02/11/11 10:54:17pm	Chat didn't go boom YET
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:54:06pm	I didn't think so <a href="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/tongue.gif" target="_BLANK"><img src="http://www.victoryroad.net/images/smilies/tongue.gif" alt=":P" class="embedImage" /></a>
GreenMan	02/11/11 10:54:03pm	Freeze doesnt'liek that color choice don't think i would either, readablity should be important
FreezeWarp	02/11/11 10:54:00pm	Did chat go boom?

Not without its issues, but its working well enough. Other export formats to come.

^ It's backwards. The oldest post should be at the top, not the bottom. Hope you fix that.

...Its a user setting changable when you generate the table; personally, I don't think there's anything to fix with doing it the way you like.



Anywho, a quick preview of the current chat for those interested:

Also, if you look in Victory Road's site chat's recent archive it's backwards too, so I have no complaints.

and actually I prefer it as such because it makes it easier on us Moderators.

I'm going to start a poll if you don't fix it so the default is oldest at the top. No offense meant, but I can nearly guarantee a monopoly of people want it that way due to the old chat and nearly every other chat I've been to as well as instant messengers having the oldest posts first.

I already told you to; why would I take offense?

(not that this is at all relevant to the topic at hand)

Have you got the post count thing done yet?

Waiting for the next version right now.

I have an idea... how about if an icon appears next to someone in the Online Users thing when they are typing. Then we can expect messages.

Too complicated at present; moreover, it'd kill the server.

(I do plan to add it in the next version, though.)

The first Beta was released Saturday, and the second last night. Among the changes in the more recent:

- Support for IE9 Pinned Sites
- Default to Reverse Post Mode
- Room Stats Page
- New Menu Layout
- Drastically Improved Mobile Speeds (Removed a lot of crud)
- The ability to disable YouTube videos for the user.
- Slight usability improvements to a variety of pages, mainly Edit Page, Manage Kicked Users, and so-on.
- A large variety of bug fixes ranging from minor to critical.

Work will start on the third Beta today, which will first include "/topic" to change the topic (as much as I hate IRC), Bold/Italics defaults, and improvements to manual bold/italics/underline/strikethrough.

=w=
 

Good.
At it's current state, VRIM makes it impossible to make Konata face. D:

Hold up a second.. Will there be any version of Chat where you don't have to download something, again..? I can't download things on my computer, thanks to the rather useless parental controls..

Yay!
Is it going to be so that messages can have multiple types of formatting in them or so that the entire message must be uniform? (I'm hoping for the former.)

That's how it is now.

PMs are cool, bro.


So you brag about kicking powers and want to be able to not be kicked even though you, like 5 others, and room owners are the only ones with kicking powers(in their own room)? Nice.


Also, like Lite said last night, all staff should be given chat moderation powers(or at least all Admins...I still don't get why you haven't given me or Yoshi powers yet...), not just chat mods. Oh, and might as well say it here, Cat make that VRIM mod group seperate from Content Staff already. :V