Recording
Playback
HTML Formatting Raw Chat Logs
Resources
Under the Edit button next to the chat room title is an area where you can specify a file name to capture the conversation in that chat room. (Do not append .txt to the file name - Web Crossing will automatically add it.) This file will appear in your webx system directory.
Chat logs can also be played back at a specified time or in a continuous loop. To set this up, you'll need the name of the log file you want to play back. This log file must be located in the webx system directory on the server.
The setting for milliseconds determines how long the chat clip will run in total. If you put in a number shorter than the length of the clip (as long as your number is greater than 0), the clip will still play in total. If you put in a number longer than your clip, Web Crossing will pad the extra time at the end of the clip.
You can determine the number of milliseconds in your clip in a couple of different ways. If it's a long transcript, multiply the number of seconds by 1000. It doesn't have to be exact. If it's a short clip, you can get the number right from the chat transcript:
10185 m Clara@ cFF0000@hey there :)
11146 m Turner@ c000000@Hey early bird!
11439 m Clara@ cFF0000@yup, was cruising the neighborhood so decided to stop in before I forgot ;>
394 m Turner@ c000000@Howya doin? When do you fly in the big metal bird?
The numbers just before the "m" are the number of milliseconds that elapsed since the previous comment sent to the chat room. Just add up those numbers and you'll know the length, in milliseconds, of your chat clip.
Incidentally, the "cFF0000" indicates the color that particular chat comment from Clara appeared in - in this case, red.
If you want to simulate or invent a demo chat, you can create a file in this format and use it for your playback file.
You might want to change the Access List for the chat room to read-only while the playback clip is running. Otherwise, users get no warning that what they're seeing is recorded, and they can speak as usual. They might wonder why nobody's answering them!
One option is to use the Chat Parse macro in the Free Code Library, which takes raw chat logs and makes them into HTML for posting transcripts online.
For Mac OS 9 users, Andre Hinds has written an enormously useful HyperCard stack to take raw logs from any platform and format them into HTML. You can use it, with Andre's permission. We've included it here. (13K .hqx file) Read Me instructions are included. (Sorry, the converter itself doesn't work on Windows or Unix but you should be able to convert chat logs from any Web Crossing platform.)
Sysop Documentation
Web Crossing FAQ