Please remove/disable the blinking suns from chat.

turbo

PF has some immature members that insist on populating chat with banks of the blinking suns, simply to be irritating. Is it possible to get rid of those? Those tricks are merely irritating to me, but they could drive my younger brother into a seizure, though his epilepsy is fairly well-controlled by drugs..

Thank you if you can and will do so.

Greg Bernhardt

I'll look into it. Don't hesitate to report a user who is disruptive.

turbo

Thank you. If there are members with epilepsy that is not fully controlled, they could be at risk just by visiting chat when these people are playing games. Evo is well-aware of the problem and the identities of the worst perpetrators.

dlgoff

At first I thought you were like me; just being a cranky old man.

But that's because I never even considered that risk. Thanks for the suggestion and sorry for judging you.

turbo

I'm not trying to be cranky. My younger (much) brother is an expert in manufacturing extruded plastic items for the auto industry, "invisible" piping for hockey rinks, and a zillion other applications, and he would be a welcome addition to PF, but chat could do him in. Grand-Mal seizures are not pretty.

Evo

To be honest photosensitive epilepsy is rather rare.

Only 3-5% of epileptics have the rare "photosensitive" type of epilepsy, and it would require a full screen of blinking icons to cause it, and out of those, triggers are not the same for everyone, and people with this rare type of epilepsy are already on medication that prevents seizures. Also, you can instantly close a screen if something appears.

http://www.webmd.com/epilepsy/guide/...uses-treatment

But I agree they are extremely annoying, I hate them. I always ask chat members to stop posting them. I don't know if flashchat can be modified to remove a single smiley and I can find no reports of this very common software causing anyone to have a photosensitive epileptic reaction.

What I hate are sites like TV guide.com that often have those large advertising banners or side bar ads that you cannot get rid of while you are reading the page, I have to hold something in front of the monitor that blocks just the ad so I can read what I went there for. I am somewhat photosensitive, I get stabbing pains in my eyes, I even wear sunglasses indoors if I can't control the light, I had a reputation at work because I would go into an office and turn off the lights and shut the blinds. I had to have them put shades on the flourescent lights over my cubicle.

So, I really sympathize with those that can't stand the horrible things.

turbo

My younger brother went into a seizure on a school-bus riding to a class event. His doctor thought that the trigger was was the (not even regular) variation in light-levels, but due to the bus driving along a road that was bordered by trees so that the sunlight coming into the bus was attenuated by the shadows.

We (family) didn't know he had epilepsy, and his JH classmates were at a loss to understand why he might be thrashing around with no motor control. It might be rare, but it could be a good idea to reduce the risk.

BTW, I attended HS with an older kid whose episodes could be triggered by flickering fluorescent tubes in the overhead lights. Our science teacher learned to recognize the early warning signs (vacant glaze, tapping pencil) as a reason to get him out of there due to an impending event.

Evo

Those are both examples of their entire environment being the possible cause, and something they can't control quickly, not an icon on a computer screen. I don't find any evidence of a computer icon causing an epiletic seizure, and a split second until they can close the web page should prevent seizure anyway. I'm sure that Greg will take your suggestion into consideration.

Saladsamurai

Hi Evo

Not sure what browser you use, but have you used adblock plus? I use it on Firefox at work and Chrome at home and it works wonders!

jhae2.718

Looking through the FlashChat documentation results in this for the global configuration:
To me, it sounds like removing the smilies would require editing the mentioned smilies.fla file.

http://www.tufat.com/docs/flashchat/layout.html makes it sound like you can hide the smilies bar, so using the global config file to change the smilie commands to something weird (e.g. a SHA-256 of some random string) might be a way to remove smilies through a little "security through obscurity"...

My suggestion would be to drop Flash chat and go for IRC. There are pretty decent web front ends for IRC, and it's pretty hard to abuse smilies in plain text. ;) (If you don't want to host a server I'd suggest Freenode or Rizon.) Edit: it occurred to me that using an outside network would be difficult for authenticating users.

Evo

We don't want to remove all smilies.

Also having used both IRC and flaschat, flashchat is so much more fun. I would have to vote against IRC. I personally wouldn't be interested in an IRC chat. Members come in chat and say "wow, this is so cool!!! But if you like BORING.

I'll tell you what, I will make another attempt to read Hitchhiker, and you leave my chat alone.

Evo

Hi Salad!!! Aww, thanks, unfortunately I prefer to use an outdated version of IE because it's user friendly. I only adopt new technology if it provides a better experience, and the occasional annoying ad isn't enough to make me give up the features I use constantly. Call me a luddite, but my cell phone is actually a cell phone and not a miniature computer/game console. It does have internet access, but I don't spend that much time traveling that it makes sense to pay through the nose for the monthly service for a handheld computer that can also be used as a phone. But if my home computer dies, I have a temporary *backup*.

Come on jhae, give old Evo a hug.

micromass

Well, there's your problem!

Saladsamurai

LOL. I use this one at work all the time (usually at very inappropriate times ).

HeLiXe

I use them sometimes for fun....not banks and banks of them, but they are quite intense. I'll miss them but I definitely agree with removing or limiting the use of them if they are causing issues for others. I've had to ask the police to turn off their flashing lights when they pull me over (not that it happens often >_>) One officer refused and started to get angry with me, but turned them off when I started to vomit. I wouldn't want anyone else to experience those symptoms when chat can be so much fun for everyone--even Borek.

dlgoff

Wait. An idea for a new product. The "PF Keyboard Splatter Screen". Might sway Greg's decision.

Gad

So, is it disabled? Can we try and have chat today?