---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cobrow Newsletter - No. 3, Mar 29, 1999 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- In this message: Announcements * Cobrow version 2.2 * CoBrow server port News * Cobrow hosting * New Java user interface * Java user interface source code available * HTML user interface * Java based CoBrow server Tips and Tricks * Did you know... * Customize the Java user interface * Sound on chat event * Default user properties * Programming Vici (the robot) * Runtime information * Troubleshooting: Icons missing ? List related * How to unsubscribe You need additional features? Send suggestions to: info@cobrow.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcements: -------------- - Cobrow version 2.2 is now available. http://www.cobrow.com/ -> Download It has lots of new features, enhancements and bug fixes. See the change history of the CoBrow server for details. - CoBrow server port IANA assigned the TCP port 677 to the CoBrow protocol VPP (virtual presence protocol) as published in the internet draft. The latest version of the document is at: ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-wolf-vpp-01.txt News: ----- - Cobrow hosting You have Web pages on a Web hosting service like GeoCities and you can not run a server program like the CoBrow server. Use our CoBrow hosting offer. Send an email to info@cobrow.com with "subject: CoBrow Hosting". We need the base URL of your pages to set up the hosting. We will tell you which HTML code must be inserted into your pages. You will usually add this code to your pages using server side includes, if server side includes are can be used on your Web hosting service. - New Java User Interface The user interface has been streamlined and enhanced. Greyed out names indicate tracked only users who do not have a user interface. Flat and button-ized icons indicate the availability of a communication url for the person. A button bar offers uniform access to all major functions. - Java user interface source code available The source code has been put online under GPL (Gnu Public License). So you may take it, change it, adapt it to your needs and sell it as long as you are mentioning the CoBrow team as the creator of the software. The archive contains Java sources and Visual J++ project files. The source files should compile under any other development environment. After all its pure Java. It compiles and runs everywhere. The platform dependent problems Java developers experience, and which take 30% of typical Java development time are pure imagination. Happy development. - HTML User Interface A first version of the HTML-only user interface is available and currently in beta test. It will be delivered with the CoBrow version 2.2.1 next month. - Java based CoBrow server A Java based CoBrow server is under development. This will be the first implementation of the CoBrow protocol version 2.0 (VPP). Clients and a ANSI C++ implementation will follow. Tips and Tricks: ---------------- - Did you know, that you can reject TCP connections from IP adresses or address groups using the cbVici parameter RejectTCPConnects. - Did you know, that you can temporarily disable user interface startup. Imagine your sales assistant leaves the workstation fo lunch. No reason to start the user interface for every user as long as there is no sales assistant in the shop. Just set the cbVici parameter DenyTestAndSet to "on". - Customize the Java user interface The user interface can be customized easily. You can change colors, arrangement, include your logo, or the live video of the sales assistant. You can even through out the CoBrow logo. The button bar of the upper part is plain HTML with Javascript. Only the lower part is a Java applet. But even that can be changed. The source code of the user interface applet is available on the CoBrow web site for free. - Sound on chat event Add the property line "UIEventSoundChat= on" to your (or your user's) properties. There is only one chat event sound for all users yet. - Default user properties You can pre-configure default properties for every user using the cbVici UserDefaultProperty parameter. This is a comma separated list of name=value pairs. Each pair will be applied to all users when they enter the first time. The second way to establish default user properties is the cbVici parameter DefaultInfoURLBase. This is the base URl of the default user configuration. Both the properties file and the default icon can be changed here. The properties file rules. cbVici uses both properties and icon only, if the properties file exists. - Programming Vici (the robot) Users can be put on pages artificially. If you want to be permanently present on a page, but yoy do not want to keep a web browser open all the time then send a permanent ENTER command for a user and a page. For testing purposes we implemented a robot, which jumps from page to page. You can watch it on the model railroad web site. The robot consists of 2 shell scripts. The first creates and configures the robot user's name, icon and commpage. The second lets it jump around by entering and leaving pages. See more explanations and source code at http://rr-vs.informatik.uni-ulm.de/rr/robot/ - Runtime information Call the maintenance interface of the CoBrow server at the CoBrow server port 4145 with your browser. Click "state" for runtime information, "params" for the set of configuration parameters, "users" for a list of known users. Click a user to see the details. etc., a list of commands is available from the "commands" button. Be aware that if you change parameters online, these changes will not be saved to the configuration file on disk on exit. Rather enter permanent configuration parameters into the config file. - Troubleshooting: Icons missing ? Make sure that cbVici takes the correct DNS name as hostname. This is an important issue, if your NIS+ Domain differs from the DNS domain or if you have more than one hostname for the Cobrow server. The 'Hostname' parameter of cbVici must be the external (fully qualified) DNS name. If the online configuration shows a different name, then enter the correct name into the cbVici configuration file cbVici.conf: Hostname your.host.com List related: ============= You can unsubscribe at http://www.cobrow.com/pages/maillist.html Your email address will not be distributed to any other company or organization. Send us your comments, suggestions and ideas about this newsletter to info@cobrow.com -Klaus H. Wolf