[serious] who all has...[/serious]

who all has attempted a chat program at some point in their VB Experience :p


and for those of you who went further than a 1on1 simple messenger and further than a simple 1 chat room (multi-user) ...continue reading:

Well i've done all of the above before out of bordem...and to learn more about sockets and even the winsock control ;) Right now i'm involved in a chat system this time, which will have a buddylist with private messaging capabilities and ability to join chat rooms that are created by users. Also if i ever get all of this completed then i'd work on file transfers too. No voice or video though ( too much for me to do by myself :( ) Anywho, just wondering IF any of you have done something similiar with a buddylist , what ways did you go about having a buddylist and showing online/offline users and the ability to interact with them based off of this.

Also, all users have to register and names/pwds are stored in a database on serverside... so my idea so far is to have 2 lists made from the database showing what users are online and offline and have those lists sent to all clients every so often....

I'm moving kinda slow seeing as how i've only got the login/registration part complete along with the buddylist design and all that good stuff. :(

Any advice is appreciated,
However, BAD advice is frowned upon :wave:

you know i was using a chat program one day that SUCKED, i mean it really sucked! and i swore i would make a chat program, that was like 5 months ago!

but i did a program like an email client, and i learnt alot form it! i learnt alot about firewalls, ports, pop3, smtp, exc... and i thought i knew a fare amount the way email works, now i know i didnt know anything!

most people probably encounter a similar incedent!

haven't bothered trying. i'm sure that I could figure it out. in fact i did have some code that worked in house, but never bothered going through the firewall.

I did many and I now work on server systems full time. I have communications programs, file transfer programs all sorts.

I would setup a main server that is connected to all clients to establish if they are online or not. Use the database to access there accounts etc. The main server approach means you send the ip address to a connecting client and remove the bandwidth of all the messages by telling the clients to direct connect. It may seem strange but having a main server app allows IP's to change on clients without haveing to transmit all data through the fixed IP server ;)