MIT Media Lab
When you first enter the chat room your circle is in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. A written message appears next to your circle asking you to move out of the corner in order to start chatting.
How do I move my circle around?
Place your cursor on top of your colored circle, hold the left mouse button down and drag your circle to anywhere on the screen. Release the mouse button to start chatting.
How can I tell my circle apart from other people’s circles?
Your own circle is the only one with a white outline around it. If you ever lose track of your circle, press Home and your circle will be in the center of your window.
How can I see all of the other participants in Chat Circles?
There are several ways to discover other users of Chat Circles. You can see them on the mini-map in the corner of the view window. You can also change the size of your view window, or use the scroll bars to scroll around in the large chat space.
How do I send messages?
Type your messages inside the text field on the bottom of the chat window, then press enter. Your message will be displayed inside your colored circle.
Why are some circles outlined whereas others are solid?
Every user in Chat Circles has a “hearing range”. This hearing range defines who you can interact with inside the chatting room. When other users are close enough to your circle to be within your hearing range they appear as solid colored circles and you can see any messages they post. Similarly, they see you as a solid circle and are able to read anything you post. If users are far from you on the screen, they are outside of your hearing range and appear only as outlined circles to you. You are not able to read their postings and they cannot read yours.
Why can't I type really, really long messages?
Because huge messages result in huge circles, we limit the message size so that you don't fill up the entire chat room. Try to break your thoughts up into smaller pieces.
Where are the other rooms in Chat Circles?
In Chat Circles there is only one room. Everything takes place in the same space on the screen.
How can I see a log of my current conversation?
Chat Circles has a graphical History interface that shows the log of your conversations. The button for the history interface is located at the bottom of the chatting window.
In the history view, how can I see the text of the posted messages?
Pass your cursor on top of any solid horizontal bar and you will see the text message represented by that bar.
In the history view, why are some bars outlined whereas others are solid?
That happens because of the “hearing range”. Whenever messages are posted outside your hearing range, they will appear as outlined bars in the history panel.
In the history view, why can't I get the text from the outlined bars?
The outlined bars represent messages that were posted outside your hearing range. Because you did not have access to them in the chatting window, you don't have access to them in the history window either.
In the history view, where am I located?
You are represented by the left-most colored thread on the screen.
logging in
The most likely cause of this problem is that you do not have the Java Plugin installed. The plugin should automatically download, but if it doesn't, vitit http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/ to download the Java Runtime Environment. Note that the Java Plugin is not supported on Macintosh computers.
When I try to load Chat Circles, I get an error message saying I have an incorrect version.
Occasionally, we update the code for Chat Circles to fix bugs and introduce new features. When we do, you will need to get the most recent version. To do this, close all of your web browser windows, and then come back to the Chat Circles web site.
When I tried to connect, I got an error message saying I could not connect to the server.
This means that either you have lost your Internet connection, or our server has gone down. If you are sure your Internet connection is fine, please let us know immediately at cc-alert@media.mit.edu!
learning
more
I'd like
to know more about Chat Circles.
You
can read our project
and credit page.
And for a more in-depth discussion, here is paper
about Chat Circles that was presented at CHI '99.
How can I send
feedback about Chat Circles?
You
can fill out our
feedback
form.
We appreciated
your feedback!