I think you should have the ability to Instant Message members that are on the forum!

There is. It's called a PM. :)

That's store-and-forward, not instant.

Another use for AJAX?

PM & IM are basically the same thing. On the forums, they are the same, really.

Pretty much yeah, but I do kinda see this as a possible opportunity to where Matt could possibly throw some more AJAX into IPB so that way the messages could be instant...:)

Why have an IM system while there's a PM system. It's better off left as a mod. No real use for it.

Still would be AJAX abuse. Also the amount of database queries necessary would be obscene. 100 members signed in, even at 1 query per minute, would still be 100 queries per minute, and that's a bit of a delay to have real-time IM'ing. It'd be more like auto-reading PM's every minute. At 30 second intervals, it'd be 200/minute; 15 seconds = 400/minute.

Even on a board with 25 active members, every 15 seconds would be 100/minute, which is a bit much on a constant basis when the member could be just idling on a page.


Don't get me wrong, the idea in and of itself is nice.. But the implementation would be the downfall. Only way I could see it happening is if there was to be a free service that would act as a server and some sort of java or ext program could be used and..

oh wait...

AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo.. Just to name a few..


I will admit that it would be nice if there was some way to send a message via the board and have it show up on someone's messenger, and have it cross back and forth.

ie, Sam sends John an IM through the forums. John replies, Sam gets the reply. One is using MSN the other is using AIM.
:D

I agree.