WebXMPP Help
If you think something needs to be covered in this help that isn't, let us know.
In general, we try to make the website self-explanatory, using in-place explanations and tooltips. This help is just a supplement.
a tooltip
If you think anything needs more clarification, though, let us know.
This is the main WebXMPP window. Click on anything in the window to find out what it is.
the main window
To connect to an XMPP server, fill in the XMPP server information, and press connect. If you successfully connect, some connection information will appear in the message box. It's OK to press connect even when you are already connected; you'll just get an 'already connected' message with some time information. Press disconnect to disconnect from the XMPP server. To add or delete an account, press the account button and follow the instructions.
To set your presence, press one of the colored presence mode buttons. That sets your mode and puts a default presence status into the presence status box. It also sets the keyboard focus to the presence status box, so you can further customize your status before it is sent to the XMPP server. Your presence is only sent to the server when you then click someplace else or hit enter.
open the contact window: opens a contact window, where you can contact us using email or a form.
manually get messages and presence: normally WebXMPP checks for arriving messages and presence every few seconds, in accordance with an option setting, the auto-check interval. This button lets you do a manual check any time. Also, its color represents the relationship between the auto-check interval and your internet bandwidth. If it's greener than neutral grey, that's good. If it's redder than neutral, you should probably increase your auto-check interval, unless you can get a better connection.
show/hide smilies glossary: shows or hides the list of all smilies and their associated tokens.
clear message box...: clears all of the messages out of the message box.
email message box to...: lets you email the contents of the message box to any email address.
The target is the person to whom, or room to which, your outgoing messages will be sent. The target information consists of a type (person or room), the target's presence if the target is a person, and the target's XMPP address (or JID).
person target
conference room target
To change your target, you can enter an XMPP address directly, click a roster item, or select talk to room in the room popup menu.
When you are connected to an XMPP server, the roster associated with your account on that server will appear in place of the ◊ beneath the subscribe box in the expanded roster tree.
expanded roster
To add someone to your roster, fill in their XMPP address and press add person to roster (subscribe). You won't actually receive presence information about the person until they allow your subscription request.
When someone adds you to their roster, you will receive a subscription request. If you respond allow to the subscription request, that person will appear in your roster and they will start receiving your presence information, but you will not receive their presence information until you add them, and they respond with allow. To remove someone from your roster, select remove person from roster (unsubscribe) in the roster popup menu.
expanded conference rooms
To enter a conference room, fill in the room's XMPP address and the nickname by which you wish to be known in that room, and press enter. The list of rooms and their participants will appear in place of the ◊ in the expanded conference rooms tree.
To leave a room, select leave room in the room popup menu.
You may notice a delay when you send messages or presentation control messages to a room instead of to a person. That is because the message is sent to the room, and your message box or presentation is only updated when you receive the message back. The reason for that is so that you see exactly the same message sequence the other room participants see.
The clock's format is yymmdd.hhmmss UTC (universal time). In local mode, it also includes the UTC offset (local time-UTC time).
The options box itself contains explanations for all of the options except the following.
unexplained options
On exit, save
determines what will automatically be saved when you leave the page.
If you are connected to an XMPP server when leaving the page for some reason,
and opt to stay connected, the assumption is that you are not really gone, so
options and username, server and target are
saved even if they are not checked.
If you are not connected, or opt to disconnect, only what is checked will be saved.
Anything that is not saved is replaced with defaults next time you load the page.
When use smilies
is checked, certain text tokens are replaced by icons in the message box. Press the
show/hide smilies glossary button to see the tokens and their icons.
Sometimes a message is delayed in transit. Sometimes a message appears to have been delayed when it hasn't, because a local machine's clock is wrong (WebXMPP's clock is sychronized daily, so it is unlikely to be the cause). Sometimes a message is stored on an XMPP server waiting for the user to connect. Whatever the reason, if the apparent transit time from client to WebXMPP to XMPP server to WebXMPP is above a certain reasonable threshold, you will receive a time delta warning. It starts with the greek letter delta (Δ), followed by two numbers separated by ◊. The first number is the apparent transit time in seconds from the sending client to WebXMPP, and the second is the apparent transit time from WebXMPP to the XMPP server and back to WebXMPP. The second number can be quite large if you are not connected at the time the message is sent, because it includes all the seconds the message is stored on the XMPP server until you connect again. The first number should always be small. You will only ever see the time delta message if both clients are WebXMPP.
a time delta warning
You can have numerous 1-to-1 chats and conferences going at the same time, but what you type into the outgoing message box always gets sent to your current target. One can easily get confused, sometimes with embarrassing results, so we invented the pink buttons. The pink buttons appear in order to warn you that the last message in the message box is not from your current target. If you click a pink button, it will change your current target to the sender of the last message received.
the pink buttons
The appointment maker looks like this:
the appointment maker
It's pretty forgiving about what you type into the time boxes. It takes the contents of the outgoing message box and sends a message that looks like this:
an appointment request
Read the tooltips to see what each green bead does.
The presentation launcher looks like this:
the presentation launcher
To create a presentation, put the following into the actionScript of any Flash movie:
System.security.allowDomain("www.webxmpp.com","webxmpp.com");
var controllerPassword=""; //set to "" to let everyone control
var viewerPassword=""; //set to "" to let everyone view
The first line allows the WebXMPP presentation controller to control the movie. Set any passwords you require, compile the movie, and put the resulting .swf file on any webserver anywhere. Distribute the URL (and passwords as appropriate). You're done!
To launch a presentation, enter the absolute URL of the Flash movie into the URL box of the launcher. Include http:// (the example movie is a relative URL, but that's because it's on our server; your movie will not be). If you are a controller, enter the controller password in the password box. If you are not a controller, and a viewer password is required, enter the viewer password in the password box. Make sure you are connected to an XMPP server, and that you have the intended target (usually a room, but you can control or view a presentation connected to a person if you wish). Click the green bead to launch the presentation. At the top of the launched presentation you should see some or all of the presentation controls, which look like this:
the presentation controls
The small square on the right means the movie has loaded; a green progress bar in that place means the movie is still loading. The three control buttons only appear if you are a controller. They are, from the left: back one frame, ahead one frame, and play movie from here. The ! button on the left only appears if there is an error; click it to see the error. You can launch a presentation that does not have a target, or when you are not connected to an XMPP server (useful for testing), but then, of course, no control messages will be sent, and you'll get an initial error message warning you that you are only controlling locally. If you launch a presentation that someone else is controlling after they start controlling it, you will not be at the correct frame until you receive their first subsequent control message. You can run or view as many concurrent presentations as you wish.
We try to minimize window proliferation by reusing a single popup window for everything except presentations (each presentation has its own window). You should never load the main page into the popup window, but don't worry; you'll be redirected here if you try to do that. If you get a dialog that says Permission denied to call method HTMLDocument.write, it means another domain is using our popup window. Closing the window or directing it back to a WebXMPP page will solve the problem.
If you press the launch mini button, it will open a new mini window that contains only a conversation with the target for which it is launched. Try it!
End-to-end encryption is available when WebXMPP is at both ends of
a conversation. It requires the free Java plugin, version 1.5 (Java Runtime Environment 5.0) or higher.
You can get the plugin here:
http://www.java.com/en/download.
WebXMPP and RSA encryption will still work without it, but end-to-end encryption will be unavailable.
To enable encryption between you and a particular
target, press the enable encryption button. To disable it,
press the disable encryption button.
◊
