Gmail Internal Chat Like Message Box

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Introduction

This article provides you with a multi-functional message box window through which the usability of the web-site or any web application increases.

Background

You all might be familiar with using Gtalk / Gmail chat application. Whenever someone sends a message to you, a small window appears at the bottom-right corner of your browser (in case of Gmail / Orkut) or at the bottom-right corner of your desktop. This message window works seamlessly without requiring any kind of user interaction, but still it interacts with the user.

What I have tried to achieve is to implement a similar kind of multi-functional message box window within the web-browser, thereby avoiding all kinds of unwanted clicks and providing all the useful information to the user at any interval of time.

Features

• Configurable MessageBox window with AJAX Support
• Can set maximum number of message boxes to be visible
• Can define the auto reload time, for single message, for all messages or no reload
• Can create messages through a single function call
• Can define auto hide time for each message

With this, you can avoid all alert messages / pop-up messages, and still intimate the user about what is going on in the system.

Using the Code

To start with, you are supposed to carry out the following steps:

1. Include the following CSS and JS files in your HTML page HEAD section:

   <link href="base.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
   <link href="theme.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" />
   <script src="MessageBox.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

2. In the BODY section, create one container to hold the messagebox window and provide a unique ID to it, as given below:

   <DIV ID="MsgContainer" CLASS="MsgContainer"></DIV>

3. At the end, you need to create an object for message box window.
   • thisObject: Name of the object you are creating
   • msgContainer: ID of the container that holds the messagebox window
   • maxMessages: Maximum number of messages that can be visible at a time
   • autoHideTime: The global auto-hide time for all the messagebox windows that appear

   <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">
   //MessageBox(thisObject, msgContainer, maxMessages, autoHideTime /*milli seconds*/)
   var messagebox = new MessageBox('messagebox', 'MsgContainer', 2, 10000);
   </SCRIPT>

How to Create MessageBox Window?

The MessageBox class provides you two APIs for creating messagebox window. These APIs can be accessed using the MessageBox object that is created above, in step 3.

1. messagebox.activateMsgBox
   	(msgHeader, url, minutesBeforeReload, autoHideTime, msgType) 

   Invoke this method if you want to display messagebox using AJAX request. No separate AJAX code is required. Just provide a URL from where data is to be fetched.

   Meaning of the Parameters

   • msgHeader: The header content to be displayed
   • url: The URL from where the data is to be displayed
   • minutesBeforeReload: The reload timing in minutes
   • autoHideTime: The auto-hide time in milliseconds
   • msgType: The type of messagebox to be displayed

   The msgType is classified into 4 categories, which is nothing but change in the background color of the message window. Currently, I have set them to:

   {DEFAULT: -1, INFO: '#FFFF80', ALERT: '#FF7E00', ERROR: '#FF0000'};

   It can be accessed using MessageBox object as:

   messagebox.msgTypes.DEFAULT
   messagebox.msgTypes.INFO
   messagebox.msgTypes.ALERT
   messagebox.msgTypes.ERROR

2. messagebox.createMsgBox(msgHeader, msgContent, msgIndex, autoHideTime, msgType) 

   Invoke this method if you want to statically display a messagebox window. For example, you want to intimate a user about "form saved successfully" through messagebox window.

   Meaning of the Parameters

   • msgHeader: The header content to be displayed
   • msgContent: The contents of the message box (either Text or HTML)
   • msgIndex: Set this to null
   • autoHideTime: The auto-hide time in milliseconds, if set to null, the default settings will be applied
   • msgType: The type of messagebox to be displayed, as shown above

Conclusion

Hope all of you will find this article very useful.

History

• 14^th September, 2009: Initial post