home pagehome pageType your messages in the entry field above. When you press Enter, whatever you typed is broadcast back to you and to everyone else who is currently looking at this page.
The following commands are available, and are only recognised in UPPERCASE.
Show round trip time: Sends out a special timing packet whenever you send a line, and prints out how long it takes for that packet to come back to you after being echoed by the JavaTalk server.
Show timestamp messages: Shows the timing packets mentioned above (yours and other people's, if they are sending any) which are otherwise normally filtered out. This option is only useful for debugging and shouldn't be of much use to you. It will probably be removed in later versions.
Please note that the JavaTalk server records all the input it receives in its log file. For chats that are officially organised by the maintainer of this page, the session transcript may then be mailed to all those who took part.
JavaTalk has a high ratio of buzzwords to lines of code. It is simple, lightweight, object oriented, multithreaded, distributed and multiuser. It is a very basic but effective multi-user chat. There is no special software to install and no complicated command set to learn. Any number of people can chat simultaneously through this page, with no other client software than a suitable java-enabled browser.
JavaTalk only has one chat "room", but more may be provided by running copies of the server on other pages. This design provides simplicity and independence: you can kill the server (and keep a separate transcription log) for one room without affecting what happens in other rooms.
Have fun!
Well, you can have it! This is one of the very few Java chat systems which are given away freely, server and source included. You are welcome to use JavaTalk on your public page, on your intranet or as the basis of another applet.
Here is the readme file from the distribution, in case you want to look at it online, and below are the actual distribution files (with Netscape, use shift-click to download them. With other browsers, use the "Save link as..." facility).
The only differences between the "Unix" and "Windows" distributions are in the line terminators (LF or CRLF) of text files and in the compression format used (note that you'll need archival utilities capable of unpicking long file names). Of course, being written in Java, the program is not restricted to those two platforms: it will run on any system with a working Java environment.
If you have any problems, please read the FAQ first.
More than 350 downloads of the source distribution in the first month!
And they keep coming! More than 4000 downloads (4000 source + 4000 executable) of the distribution in the first year. More than 14000 source + 11000 executable in the first two years.
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The JavaTalk applet is also featured in the Java Web Magic book/CD by Joseph Sinclair and Lee Callister (Hayden, 1997, 1-56830-341-6). Written for non-programmers in a clear and readable style, this colourful book highlights and describes a number of interesting applets that a web author may use to spice up a web site. |