Note: This plugin is still in alpha stage, and most likely has quite a few bugs in it .. you have been warned! ;)

** First chat version - very alpha release for those interested in helping bug test **

Welcome to my first attempt at a plugin!

The bottom_bar plugin adds a fixed bar at the bottom of the browser with an auto updating notification and friends list.

The notification button will show red when there are new notices to be seen. When the button is clicked, the notice is cleared ready for the next update. The friends list auto updates with a list of online friends.

As of v0.2, basic chat has been added to the system, including persistant windows between page loads, chat history, sound notifications and smiley and url translation. There are now some settings for both admin and user to enable/disable chat and a few other bits.

I have tested this with Internet Explorer 7, Google Chrome 2.0 and Firefox 3.0 & 3.5, and as far as I can tell it works ok. If anyone can test against other browsers/OS I would appreciated it. Also, please let me know if you come across another plugin that this conflicts with.

Known Bugs:

• Occasional chat messages are lost - still looking into this one.
• Chrome doesn't cache the sound files for some reason, so can block for a second or two when a notification sound is triggered.
• Message delivery speed is not always consistant, but that might be due to my sandbox server ;)