112325 - Line marker/message activity divider

Status: NEW

(Other Applications :: ChatZilla, enhancement)

Description

[:deanis74]

This is an idea taken from mIRC.  It has an option to use a Line Marker.  When
the app loses focus and new messages appear, a line is drawn below the last
message you saw.  So if i'm on #mozilla and go eat supper, it's easy to tell
where i left off.  There's also a keyboard shortcut to jump back to it (Ctrl+L i
think).

The line only disappears once it's scrolled back to.

A potentially easier and less confusing way to implement this could be to add a
Mark or Bookmark shortcut command that would draw the line, and not worry about
the app losing focus.

Comment 1

[Brant Gurganus]

[RFE] is deprecated in favor of severity: enhancement.  They have the same meaning.

Comment 2

[Jeff Hedlund]

Another way to not worry about the app losing focus is to set the mark when the
tab becomes inactive/hidden.

It's great to see that there has been activity on inactive tabs (with the
blue/green highlighting of the tab name), but it's hard to find at what point
you started missing traffic.

Comment 3

[Robert Ginda]

as a potential workaround, you can use the /echo command to echo text to the
current view.  The text will not be sent to the channel.

/echo ---------------------------

for example.

Comment 4

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

http://czplugins.mozdev.org/utility/dogear/

Does a very similar thing. If this functionality is really wanted in Chatzilla,
it should not be hard to use this plugin as a base for a patch, I think.

Comment 5

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

Silver, I seem to remember you had a patch for this? Could you give us an update on that? I might be able to finish off work on it if you have better things to do. Will discuss some how and why on that matter on IRC.

Comment 6

[Glen Mailer]

An update on this one if anyone is interested, I've got a working XPI and XR package based on the current trunk, It could do with some testing and feedback to decide on what the exact feature set and behaviours need to be.

http://www.glenjamin.co.uk/other/chatzilla/linemarker/

Comment 8

[James Ross]

Making summary more search-friendly. :)

Comment 9

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

If my memory serves me correctly there's a bzr branch with this feature. Is it not up for review yet, and if so, what is still missing? :-)

Comment 10

[Glen Mailer]

Hrm, I could have sworn I left a redirect from the old URL in, my line marker build can still be found at http://www.glenjamin.co.uk/chatzilla/linemarker/, I keep the bazaar branch up to date, and the builds are updated periodically.

Comment 11

[:Gijs (out for now; he/him)]

At this point, what would it take to get this into trunk?

Comment 12

[Glen Mailer]

This came up again in chat today, the bzr branch is still around on launchpad, including the link here for reference http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~glenjamin/chatzilla/linemarker/files

Comment 15

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to Glen Mailer from comment #10)
> Hrm, I could have sworn I left a redirect from the old URL in, my line
> marker build can still be found at
> http://www.glenjamin.co.uk/chatzilla/linemarker/, I keep the bazaar branch
> up to date, and the builds are updated periodically.

Error 404 Not Found.

(In reply to :Gijs Kruitbosch (away 18-28 Dec.) from comment #4)
> http://czplugins.mozdev.org/utility/dogear/

That one still exists, but it is in .tar.gz format. Unlike plain /echo it is supposed (I haven't tried yet) to be easily styled (in userContent.css or in a motif) by means of a rule such as

@-moz-document url(chrome://chatzilla/content/output-window.html) {
  .msg[msg-type="DOGEAR"] {
    /* add any desired style(s) here */
  }
}

Comment 16

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

P.S. Sorry, see also comment #12 but it is not clear to me what this is (an XPI? And a replacement to cZ or something to be added? Last updated 2010-01-22.

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec] from comment #16)
> P.S. Sorry, see also comment #12 but it is not clear to me what this is (an
> XPI? And a replacement to cZ or something to be added? Last updated
> 2010-01-22.

Comment 18

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

There is a setting in the KDE Konversation IRC client to draw a horizontal red line across a tab's content at the point it last lost focus. (The line is moved when the tab loses focus again.) I prefer cZ to Konversation for other reasons, but I use the latter as a fallback.

Comment 19

[Glen Mailer]

Just spotted this, http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~glenjamin/chatzilla/linemarker/files is a source tree that was a fork of ChatZilla at the time

It looks like http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~glenjamin/chatzilla/linemarker/revision/1117 contains the majority of the changes.

The other stuff was tracking ChatZilla's trunk for a few years.

Comment 20

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to Glen Mailer from comment #19)
> Just spotted this,
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~glenjamin/chatzilla/linemarker/files is a
> source tree that was a fork of ChatZilla at the time
> 
> It looks like
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~glenjamin/chatzilla/linemarker/revision/1117
> contains the majority of the changes.
> 
> The other stuff was tracking ChatZilla's trunk for a few years.

The master ChatZilla tree has of course evolved since then. Could you produce a patch against the current "default" branch head of https://hg.mozilla.org/chatzilla/ ?

Comment 21

[Glen Mailer]

I don't really have the time to pick up this work again.

If someone is willing to finish off the work, then I'm happy to help out to answer any specific questions.

I can't exactly remember why this stayed out on a fork, there are probably parts of it unfinished, buggy, or just generally not providing a particularly great UX.