New Feature: Live Events!

December 27, 2011 3:53 am

I am proud to announce a brand new feature updating our event system: Instant event notifications.

Your events tab on the left hand side of the layout now has an event "counter" bubble with a number amount of events you have, and when you receive a new event, the counter will update automatically without having to refresh the page. These updates are LIVE!

Along with this, a larger speech bubble giving you the alert will popup at the left corner of your screen. See a preview below:

Live Events

This feature is experimental and we realize that bugs will come out of this. Please report all bugs for this in the Problems & Bugs Forum.

If you are having problems with this new event feature, please try and clear your browser's cache (ie: CTRL + F5)

Note from Keith: Make sure to take a look at your <a href=/preferences.php?act=sidebar>sidebar preferences! You might be able to change to 'Dashboard' because of this ;)

Updated Note: Sometimes the event dispatcher will not notice you are online, and therefore not send you a live notification bubble. It does this when you are in between page loads. So, if you get an event when you are in between page loads, you will not get the bubble. However, you will get the event on your next page in your events tab similar to the old system.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

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December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

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December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

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December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Quote by excitement

</p>
<p>I will be developing the option to turn it off for users who dislike the feature or for users who are content with using Events in their dashboard.

I'm grateful for this. When I'm online, I'm pageviewing enough that the instant thing doesn't really matter to me w/ my events in my dash as it is. :D

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

...and now it's fixed itself.... :x

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Mine doesn't look like the preview image... My 'counter' is black plain text, and shows up in the dashboard, in the upper left, between the 'tab' and the first widget box.... it is always there, (at zero atm) and there is nothing showing up on the events 'tab' button except the word 'events'... its a good idea, but am i the only one with the "awkward blackhead counter" ?

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I've been on "Dashboard" forever, since I have a widget at the top for events. I guess it's just an event counter for me?

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I notice some people don't see how this is useful, so I will say why I like the feature. Normally when I get an event it automatically switches from dashboard to event (if I didn't have it setup this way I would never think to check my events). If I'm chatting in the SB on a busy day I could completely miss part of the conversation while I switch back to dashboard or deal with the event. Then if I refresh the page before removing the event, it automatically goes back to event page and I lose dashboard again.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I love this new feature! Thank you so much, staff!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

This is AWESOME! :D But is there a way we can remove the event directly from the bubble? Sometimes (mostly in the forums) when i'm doing something and the top of the page isn't visible, i have to scroll up, switch to events tab, delete, then go back down to do what i was doing again... It's a bit tedious :P

But other than that, this is an amazing feature, thank you so much for implementing this kind of thing :)

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

This is something I really thought I would love, but so far not so much. It's a nuisance to have to keep watching that tiny little number in the upper corner all the time. And for some reason I'm not getting any snowball events, last night someone threw a snowman snowball at me but I have no idea who it was because no event ever showed up. (so I had to hit everybody back:) )

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

The Live events is not meant to be a game-changing feature, it is simply a nice little add-on that allows users to be more connected to the site at all times. If someone comments on your profile, you now know instantly instead of having to wait until your next pageview (Of Course, the exception is in between pageviews, when you are no longer connected to the Event server and therefore cannot receive an event until the page loads...this is not something we can fix)

I will be developing the option to turn it off for users who dislike the feature or for users who are content with using Events in their dashboard.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I love this! Thank You!!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I .... don't really get why? I dunno. This doesn't sound like it has much of a use lol. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I personally don't really see the need for this, but oh well xD

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I've been playing with it all day. I love it. Works great.

One thing is sometimes if I close an event box containing multiple notifications, the counter doesn't recognize it. However, if I close each event individually, it works fine.

Someone suggested maybe a coloured number so that it is more noticeable....that would be my only suggestion.

Awesome and thank you for making these improvements!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

The pop-up won't appear for me. Also, I think being able to exit the popup would be nice.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Not really liking this. :( Usually I don't mind new features but I really don't like this... specially if we miss a notification and can't check out events board.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I'll feel silly if this was already addressed, but when I delete my events and then go to a different page, they come back, and I have to delete them again. :s Is there any way to stop that? It did it before this update too but now it does it with ALL of my events and not just my shop one.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I have the Dashboard option, but if it ain't broke.....I don't want my event notifications pushing what's on the page down so I have to scroll down....

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Hmmm... Now my speech bubble doesn't show up. But maybe it's my fault :/

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I'm getting the weird pop-up too. It only happens when I got to remove an event. Either way, I hope there's a way to move this. I just don't see a need for the feature and I'd rather not have it there. I keep events on my Dashboard so I don't need TWO alerts on the same page in the same area telling me the same thing, you know? I'm hoping its made so you can choose to disable it soon.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Quote

Great idea but This is what it looks like for me? Not exactly pretty</p>
<p>Posted by Nonchalant

Mine looks that way too! Id love to know how to fix it if anyone has discovered it.. :D

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Turned off the smart version in favor of just dashboard to see how this works- works out wonderfully! I love it~ Especially love that I'll be able to leave events up that I don't have time to deal with and not have to be annoyed with switching between events and dashboard manually~

Thanks for this!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

ah so THIS is what that little number on the dashboard was last night ;P

thanks for this! all the new features lately are really awesome!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

...don't usually get many events but this sounds like an awesome feature! =3

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

What a great idea! It seems to be working alright for me. :) Hopefully we get all the bugs worked out soon. xD

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

i love it!

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

this makes me happy.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I LOVE this thing. Works fine for me :)

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

It isn't working for me.. the icon isn't over the event tab.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I keep getting 1 event, when I have no events.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

I am also getting these really annoying pop ups when i delete an event now, latest version of Firefox for me:

Screenie

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

this is nifty.

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by

Is there a way to turn it off? I have the events widget onthe dashboard, plus when i delete events it pops up to tell me how many are left... i don't t know if that's because I'm browsing mobile or what, but it's s not ideal at all ):

December 31, 1969, 7:00 pm by