Archive for the tag 'new release'

toksta chat rooms (beta) released!

Today we released the beta version of our toksta chat rooms application. I can’t remember if there has ever been a feature (or rather an application) requested as heavily as the chat room!! And as requested we kept the UI simple and clean to minimize chances that the layout of the chat room does not fit the design of your community. Or in other words: to maximize the possibility for you to customize the chat. Because similar to our toksta video im, the chat is fully design customizable through css.

The beta version of the chat room also features:

  • up to 25 people per room
  • unlimited private chats
  • css design customization
  • easy administration and user moderation
  • a lightweight html and javascript client
  • and much more!
Check out a screenshot below:

If you register as a new user at www.toksta.com, you get a 15-day free trial on all plans and applications including the chat room application. After the 15-day free trial, we charge 15.00 USD per 30 days for each chat room. If you have an existing toksta account, please check if you are still in the trial period in order test the chat room for free for the remaining days.

 

And as always: Please let us know your feedback and questions at support [at] toksta [dot] com ;-)

 

- Felix

How-To: Embed user pictures directly from your site

Besides the “normal” implementation code of toksta there are some ways to customize our product even more to your needs.

By default you can embed pictures in toksta by setting the variable $tk_profile_url in the implementation script. When doing this, we will scale the picture to the needed size and show it in the Instant Messenger. Due to the fact that there would be thousands of pictures waiting to be scaled at our servers we will only scale pictures of active users and the scaling is done with some delay.

To prevent this behaviour and embed the pictures directly from your server you can modify your implementation script like this:

Very important: The image size must be 61 x 46px (width x height).

1. Look for this line in your implementation script:

[...]
$tk_user_data="name:".$tk_name. ";gender:".$tk_gender. ";age:".$tk_age. ";single:".$tk_single. ";url:".$tk_profile_url. ";pic:".$tk_pic. ";city:".$tk_city. ";tk_zip:".$tk_zip. ";country:".$tk_country.";
[...]

2. Now add this to the end of the line containing the url of the user

";direct_pic:http://www.the-url-to-your-picture/pic.jpg";

The final Script should look like this:

<?PHP
//script for the <BODY> area of your source code, transferring necessary user data
//place this script on every page if the user is logged in !!!

$tk_name = "THE_USERNAME"; //<−− please set the username here
$tk_user_id = "THE_USER_ID"; //<−− please set the user ID here
$tk_gender = ""; //<−− optional (the gender of the user can be female or ‘male’)
$tk_age = ""; //<−− optional (the age of the user e.g. ‘23′)
$tk_single = ""; //<−− optional (is the user single? ‘Yes’, ‘no’, ‘0′ = no information)
$tk_profile_url = ""; //<−− optional (url to the users profile)
$tk_pic = ""; //<−− optional (url of the users picture)
$tk_city = ""; //<−− optional (city where the user is located, e.g. ‘Berlin’)
$tk_zip = ""; //<−− optional (users zip code, e.g. ‘92553′)
$tk_country = ""; //<−− optional (country where the user is located, e.g. ‘Germany’)

//DO NOT EDIT THE FOLLOWING CODE!
$tk_user_data="name:".$tk_name. ";gender:".$tk_gender. ";age:".$tk_age. ";single:".$tk_single. ";url:".$tk_profile_url. ";pic:".$tk_pic. ";city:".$tk_city. ";tk_zip:".$tk_zip. ";country:".$tk_country.";direct_pic:http://www.the-url-to-your-picture/pic.jpg";

//implements the js needed by the chatWatcher and to start a chat

$tk_hash = md5($tk_user_id.$tk_user_data."[[your password]]");
$tk_js = "<script type=’text/javascript’ src=’http://www.toksta.com/js/w/?tk_hash=" . $tk_hash . "&amp;app_id=8&amp;app_user_id=".$tk_user_id."&amp;tk_user_data=".rawurlencode($tk_user_data)."’></script>";
echo $tk_js;
?>

Thats’s it already!

PS: DO NOT USE THE SCRIPT ABOVE - THIS IS ONLY A DUMMY!

Release note: toksta v1.3

Today we have launched version 1.3 of the toksta instant messenger. The main changes in this release were related to our chat server technology which substantially improved the reliability and scalability of the IM.

But that’s by far not everything. Here is a list of the major changes in this release:

  • We added 13 more languages for the instant messenger. The toksta client is now available in English, German, French, Spanish, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Ukrainian, Hebrew, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Bulgarian (many thanks to André Moniz from amiguinhos who has helped us with the Portugues version!)
  • You can choose the language of client yourself in our backend. Before the language of the client was set to the default browser language automatically
  • You get noticed when your chat partner closes the window
  • toksta now also supports ASP.net and Python and
  • You can use the toksta IM with phpFox (Social Networking Software)

We also added even more ways to customize the toksta IM. We’ll write a detailed blog post about this in our How-to Series soon…so stay tuned!

New release: facebook-like chat bar for toksta IM!

Today we are proud to announce our new release with long awaited and heavily requested features:

Probably the most interesting feature is what we call “the facebook-like chat bar”. Just take a look at the screenshot below and you will get the idea:

As you can see, the chat-bar is placed at the very bottom of the screen to be always visible but never disturbing.

The next screenshot shows the online user search.

And the next screenshot (no, I am not color blind…) pretty much demonstrates the options for the chat bar design customization:

chat bar crazy colors

You can change:

  • The chat background color of the bar and the titles (pink)
  • The background color of the tab hover (turquoise)
  • The bordercolor (dark blue)
  • The text color (white) and font
  • The background color of the layer (bright geen)

Furthermore you can activate or de-activate

  • the friendslist
  • the search filter
  • the gender and
  • the display of the number of online users.

Just go to our customer backend at toksta.com (see screenshot):

Read also our coverage on mashable.com!