Entering/Quiting Room

• Entering Room

  Wait until the rooms list has loaded. Move your mouse over rooms and you will see them be highlighted one by one.
  Stop when you find a room you want to join in. Click to enter.
  Every room has user limit. If a room is full for the time being, you will be told to come around later.
  When you enter a room, a default host (robot) of system may notify all that you have come in.

• Quitting Room

  When you finish chatting, or when you want to quit one room to enter another room,
  you can click the top button "exit room" to quit current room.
  If you choose closing browser, you will close this chat client for all.
  If you just click "quit", you will return to the room list to be able to enter another room.

Chatting

General >>

• Sending messages

  After selecting a room to enter, you can type a message in the input field near the bottom of the screen and hit "enter" on keyboard or the button "send" to send the message out. Your message appears on the chat screen following your nickname.
  Press ctrl+"enter" or cliking "Newline" button to start a new line.

• Idle status /typing status

  After a duration of time when a user remains silence both in public and in private window, his/her status will be automatically changed to "idle". The time length is defined by administrator.
  When idle user begin talks, the idle status disappear automatically.
  When user begins to type, whether in public or in private window, the speaker and other people in the same chatroom will see a "typing" status after his or her name, when speaker clicks "send" button, the "typing" status disappear automatically.

• Interval between two utterances.

  Please wait a while before sending another message. This pause prevents flooding on screen.
  The value is defined by administrator and the default value is one second.

• Ignore
  
  If there is any repulsive chatter in the room, simply select his username in the user-list and click "Ignore" from the popup menu. From then on, every message the chatter posts to you, whether private or public, will not appear on your screen.
  When you changed your mind, you can re-select this user and "Cancel ignore" to give this user the second chance.
  If you continued to post message to someone but got no response, you probably are ignored by him or her, that means you'd better watch out your behaviour or words.
  
• Action
  
  The "/me" command is used to describe an action. Your nickname will automatically be inserted and the text will appear differently than normal channel messages. This command is available in chat lobby and private messages.
  For example: "/me waves goodbye." then it will display on the screen:" waves goodbye."
  The "/me" command has to initiate a sentence to be effective.
  
• Cached messages New!
  
  Once a user enters a room, the latest 5 messages will appear in chat window to give the new comer a brief picture of the conversation which was going on, in gray color or other predefined color.
  The number of entries of messages was configured by admin.
  
• Chat bot Message New!
  
  Webmaster may define some canned messages to broadcast to specific room or all rooms at certain intervals, for site news or text advertisement, in the admin panel.

Top buttons >>

• Enable/Disable Sound
  
  Administrator can enable or disable sounds in a room as default setting, every user can change the setting with the top buttons.
  In a chatroom, if you want to be notified of any occurrence, like someone says something, someone enters or leaves the room, etc. you'd better enable the "sound" button so that even if you left the chat window, you know what's going on in this room.
  If you feel all the sounds are annoying, please click the speaker icon to disable sound, to mute the whole room.
  Your setting only affects your own chat. Once you logged out, this setting will restore default.
  This "sound" button control all the sound effects in a chatroom, if you just want to enable/disable one specific sound, you can configure in "option" panel instead.
  
• history

  There are two methods to access conversation history panel.
  You can click the "history" button to open conversation history easily. or you can check chat history in option panel: options->view.
  by default you have 100kb space for chat log, but surely you can set it bigger or smaller in option panel, according to your hardware performance.
  Once this 100kb is filled up with chat log, it will stop recording further messages. So please periodically backup chat log.
  Once logged out, your chat log will be cleared. So if the conversation is very important to you, please remember to save it before you leave.

• Enable/Disable Scrolling
  
  New messages come in from the bottom of the screen. As new messages come in, old messages will scroll off the top of the screen. And only a certain amount of lines can appear in your chat box, the previous history will be automatically cleared to ensure the chatting speed.
  When checking details of some words, you may want to stick the chat window to one position and stop scrolling, click "scroll" button and you can stay where you are.
  Click it again, the screen will start scrolling all over again.
  
• Clear screen
  
  Press the rubber button to clear all messages on your screen.
  
• Exit Room
  
  Click the "exit" button to exit current room.

Middle Toolbar >>

• Change Avatar

  There is a toolbar above the input area with many options. And the first icon is a default avatar image.
  you can select an avatar to express your feeling or your style by clicking on the icon and choosing from the nail-up panel.
  One avatar for one message, you can't have over 2 avatars once.
  The avatar you chose will apear in 3 places: before your words both in public and in private, and before your name in userlist.

• Bold Font

  The "B" icon represents bold text.
  You don't have to highlight any words in your message to change it bold, just click this "B" icon and the whole message become bold.
  Click it again to restore it back to normal text.

• Italic Font

  The "I" icon represents italic text.
  You don't have to choose any words in your message to change it italic, just click this "I" icon and your message become italic.
  Click it again to change it back to normal text.

• Underline Font

  The "U" icon represents underline text.
  You don't have to choose any words in your message to change it underline, just click this "U" icon and your message become underline.
  Click it again to change it back to normal text.

• Font Color

  The color block beside "U" icon is for selecting colors.
  Once a color is selected from the color-picker, the whole message will change to this color.
  Sorry you can't have 2 or more colors in one message.

• Smileys
  
  There added a smiley face in the toolbar, you can launch animated smiley panel by clicking this icon.
  The smiley faces you've chosen will appear at the bottom of your conversation, at maximum you can select one line of smileys.
  
  Tip: Now smiley can be inserted into chat using shortcut, like ":)"= smile.
  Check detailed list
  
  Note: If any of the above buttons disappears, means it's disabled by the webmaster.
  
• Change Background
  
  Every skin of 123flashchat has some backgrounds for you to pick.
  The skin is chosen by administrator while the background is up to you.
  Click "change background" icon and you'll see variable backgrounds.
  
• flashEmotion New!
  
  Animated emotions can be chosen to launch a "play" button into the chat lobby or private chat.
  If in lobby, then all users in current room can click "play" to enjoy the flash;
  If in private chat, the specific recipient can click "play" to enjoy the fun.
  By default it's "true", means the emotion button will be visible to all users.
  
• Predefined Message New!
  
  Frequently used messages can be easily added to/removed from the predefined section to save time, they can be easily copied into chat input area by double-click. After editing it or just confirming it, press “send” to publish it.
  

  The regular users can define their own messages in chat panel, above chat input area there is a middle toolbar and the last icon is for define and launch canned message.

  predefineMessage panel
  • add: press “+” to activate add message window.
  • Delete: choose one message then press “-” to remove it.
  • manage pages: Multiple canned messages can be managed in multiple pages.

Room Password

• Entering Room

  Administrators can create a password-protected room.
  In the room list, you will see this kind of room start with a lock-room icon instead a normal room icon.
  When chat members or guests click this room, a popup dialogue will ask for password.
  He or she can only enter the room until supplying the password.
  Please contact your administrator to ask for password.
  

• Changing Room

  When you change room from a normal to a password-protected one, a popup dialogue will ask for password.
  Enter the password and you are in.

Private Window

• Chatters are able to start a private window to any other chatter in current chat room to talk one on one, unless admin disabled this feature.
  Note: Private Chat is monitored by admin too and recorded in message log.
  
• There is a user list at the right of the chat box.
  Click any username you like, the background color of the chosen username will change and a mini menu popup with "private" button in it.
  Click the "private" button, then a private window is activated between you and the recipient.
  If you choose a user name but no such "private" option comes out, probably you've chosen the id of yourself:)
  Or you can double click a username to activate a private window with him or her.
  Click the "minimize" button at the top menu of private window to shrink it to a single bar, or click the "maximize" button to extend it to original size.
  Click the top bar of private window to activate different private chat window.
  Click the top bar of private window and drag, you can move it around.
  Click the right-top "close" button to close this private chat window.
  
• Even if the one you're private chatting with left the current room, maybe he was in room-list page, maybe he entered another room, as long as he didn't log out the whole chat, you can still private chat with him. When he logged out and got offline, you'll be notified that he logged out, you can't send further message to him since then, but the private window remains and you can still read your conversation.
  
• User can change setting in option panel to refuse to accept private window in case he or she want to be left alone, and also entitled to change setting later to activate the facility again to receive private window.
  
• There are two destinations of the new incoming private message: in current browser or in a new browser. New!
  If in current browser, the PM can opened quicker;
  If in a new browser, the benefits are: it's easier to manage multiple PMs and when new message coming, you will be notified by the blink.
  This setting can be predefined by admin and configured by regular users according to the system specification. By default it's set to "true" means in new browser window. But be careful, too many PMs in multiple browser may lag your chatting speed.

Option Panel

Click the top button"option" and you'll launch "option panel ". Explore it and you'll find some of interesting features, like: