I think it would be great if mIRC had a status bar at the bottom of the screen. Kinda like the one Microsoft Internet Explorer has. If it's implemented, it should have an option to disable it and should also include commands, identifiers, and events to make it fully customizable.

Don't tell me that this can be done with a dll or some other external source!

I'm not necessarily for/against it, but if you are going to propose it, can you give a purpose? What information should be displayed in the statusbar? Why would a statusbar be a better place to display this than say the titlebar?

I think displaying information in the titlebar looks sloppy. That's why the status bar was invented. By default, the status bar should show the channel you're on, the channel's topic, your current user mode, etc.

So basically you're suggesting, everything that is currently in the titlebar should instead be in the statusbar?

Yeah. I think there should have been a status bar years ago. The titlebar should just display the application's name and nothing more! That's just my opinion.

actually i like the idea of having an added status bar ..... because ive seen some nice dll addons that have some decent looking things added to a status bar ...... if mirc had a status bar we could manipyulate thru scripts as opposed to the dll it would be alil nicer i think ....... besides it cant hurt anything other than cutting down on what 30 pixels or possibly 40 pixels in height to your screen basically just like the button bar

I've posted something along the lines of this before...



http://users.bigpond.net.au/pboy/mircbar.jpg


*note* - That is a fake screen shot, I have merely used photosop to manipulate the screen print for the purposes of the thread.

I think it would be great. If you are an op on a channel, the statusbar would be like a tool bar, where you could change things without having to bring the channel info box up (yet still be able to of course). Making it fully optional would be a necessity.

yeah ive seen that and i like that type thing ...... altho also ive seen em on the bottom of the mirc with other info like lagbar attached to it and such

Yeah. I quite like the idea of lag bar etc.

Perhaps have a Microsoftian Office style approach, where you can select from certain types of menu/task/switchbars.

Ie, channel info (generic), mIRC stats (ie, uptime, lag, server name, network connection), etc.

As well as the ability to create specific ones in a similar manner as to dialogs.

yeah id love the in built ability to play around with such stuff ..... altho yes it can eb done with dlls but hey mirc already has the buttons bar and servers bar u can play with why not givie it a more current look ...... id even like to see a small buttons dialog docked below the nicklist for mouse click things on one button such as functions like op deop kick ban and such ......... even allow a user to configure these buttons would be awesome too ....... maybe someday we will get all our suggestions added ...... lol till then we just hope and plry khaled likes some of them enough to give em a try

I think there should be:

1. Nothing apart from "mIRC" and a script name, if any, located in the titlebar.
2. No statusbar. Bersirc has a status bar and only repeats information that is already on the screen which is a pointless exercise to me.

I agree with watchdog, and I especially dislike the one in that "altered" image.

I might add that the type of status bars which have been talked about are all scriptable.

Lastly, I have a point to make: there is only a certain amount of laziness we IRC-going people should afford ourselves. I prefer to type out commands like /mode #DolphinRules -o MegaZeroX, etc. I still use popups every now and then, or the channel dialogue. I consider this all relatively easy. Now, adding something else that is 5% easier to use than a popup just for the point of having it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

You might like to use /mode ....., but that doesn't mean popups shouldn't exist, other people might like them, with the same respect, you might like to count the number of ops, type /topic, etc, to get channel information, but others might not. As long as the statusbar would be able to be disabled, I really don't see why anyone should complain. Like I said, if you decide you like to type out everything and make work for yourself, thats fine, you can do as you please, but I see no reason why you should prevent the rest of us lazy people from having mIRC do the work for us, especially when it shouldn't really have any impact on you. If the statusbar were disabled by default, you wouldn't even know it was there.

<laziness_rant>
The primary purpose of computers was laziness. People didn't say "lets create machines that make more work for us!" they said "lets create machines that do our work for us and at the same time allow us to sit and play solitare while it does it!" Remember, the computer engineers aren't trying to work on ways to make it more difficult to interface with a computer, they are trying to make it eas... lazier. Right now the goal is speech recognition, but you can rest assured that 50-100 years down the road they'll be working on direct thought interfaces where you merely think about what you want the computer to do and it does it. Laziness is good, laziness is the thing that keeps computer programmers employed, I for one applaud laziness in all its forms and would love to see mIRC have the ability to make us as lazy as possible. People will often say that man is the "thinking animal" if you ask me, man is more accurately described as the "lazy animal" because we don't use our brain so much for the "common good" we use our knowledge to prevent us from having to do work, a characteristic unique to humans.
</laziness_rant>

Popups are a bit different to the function provided by a status bar though. I'm not saying you are wrong, I actually like (and write my own) popups and use them all the time.

Back to the status bar issue, what does a status bar do? Provide information. Yet in mIRC's case, and also Bersirc, the information provided by the status bar, such as your name, the active channel the network, etc are already provided in other parts of the GUI. While I am not necessarily against the idea providing it can be turned on and off at will, having the info repeated again in another part of the GUI just doesn't make sense. It's no different to websites that provide more than one set of navigation links. It's a waste of resources.

If you look at web browsers there will probably come a time where the status bar in them is not required either as the webpage itself often (and indeed should) provide most of the information the IE status bar repeats, such as where a hyperlink leads to via "title" or "alt" attributes, though the progress bar does sooth the onslaught of impatience I would concede.

Back to mIRC though, unless the starter of the thread could explain what the status bar can display that is not already displayed somewhere then I wouldn't be all that fussed over whether it is included or not.

Like I said in my original post, there would be an option to disable the status bar from appearing. As codemastr said, you wouldn't even know it was there.



I already explained what it would display. Read my second post.

<example>

If the active window is the Status Window, the status bar might display something like:

Status Window - Not Connected

or

Status Window - Buffalo.NY.US.ZUH.Net 6667 - +i


* Custom Status Bar

on *:START:{
statusbar -s Welcome to mIRC!
}

Note: The -s switch means Status Window

</example>

Again, those are just three examples. You could have it display anything you wish with commands and identifiers.

anything added that u can customize to me is something worth playing around with ..... i love a new challange of making something do something i want it to do

Well not everything that could conceivably be put in a statusbar is currently available elsewhere. I mean, given that such a feature should have scripting support such as chaning text, adding new "cells", adding icons, etc, you could put just about whatever you want in there. But just to mention one thing that could be nice "You are currently marked as away." Away status is shown in the titlebar, but only in the status window. Would be nice if you could put it in the statusbar and have it displayed for all windows on a particular server. I know there are numerous times where I'll forget I set away and just start talking without ever /away'ing. But like I said if scripting support is added, it can have whatever you want, "Remember to go to the store at 1:00pm", and again, if you don't like it, just disable it.

I'd love a D9 bulldozer because I would be able to drive it straight through a block of flats. Does that mean I actually want the bulldozer for that purpose though? Apart from stating that he wanted $identifier support the user never stated what purpose he actually wanted the status bar to do.

I disagree with the prospect of being able to issue commands from status bar as that is what the toolbar is for, perhaps extra buttons could be added there, as there is already spare space for this, which could be user-configurable from the options dialogue. I would find this handy and it wouldn't gulp up the space occupied by the room windows/nick listbox in the process.

As for the traditional role of the status bar I have looked at other programmes, the most recent being Bersirc and its status bar shows of all things the time, the network, the active channel, the nickname and it repeats the [email]user@host[/email] of chatters when you hover over it which is bloody useless because no-one ever uses their fairdinkum email address there anyway.

Still, if a status bar is for you, far be it from me to hold back the idea.

gulp up space for the channel? geez man step into the new millenium they have monitors biger than 12 inch now ....... a status bar would only take up what 30 pixels in height? when ppl are running screen resolutions in upwards of 1024.1280 what is 30 pixels really? i mean why should the ppl that suggest an idea and would like to see this be held back by the ppl who refuse to get with the future?

Well when I say scriptable I don't mean those dropdown lists, checkboxes, etc that were shown in that picture, I agree, that is the job of a toolbar, not the statusbar. I'm talking something similar to /titlebar.

/statusbar -editr window N [text|icon]
-e = enable (show) the statusbar
-d = disable (hide) the statusbar
-i = set an icon
-t = set a tooltip
-r = remove a cell

/statusbar -e @test
; displays the statusbar in @test
/statusbar -d #chat
; hides the statusbar in #chat
/statusbar -i @awaylog 1 away.ico
; shows the away.ico icon in the first cell of the statusbar of @awaylog
/statusbar -i @awaylog 1
; removes the icon currently set as the icon for the 1st cell of @awaylog's statusbar.
/statusbar #funzone 1 Topic: $+ $chan(#funzone).topic
; Displays the topic of #funzone in the first cell of #funzone's statusbar.
/statusbar -r #help 2
; Removed the 2nd cell (shifting cells 3..N over to the left) from #help's statusbar.
/statusbar -t #blah 1 This is a tooltip!
; sets the tooltip for the first cell of #blah's statusbar.

$statusbar(window,N).[icon|text]
$statusbar(window)
Returns the icon/text for the statusbar on the given window
in the Nth cell. If N = 0, the number of cells in the statusbar is returned. The second syntax returns $true if the statusbar is active (shown) for the given window, and $false if it is not.

There might be other things necessary to make it actually work, like you'd probably need a /statusbar -a to "add a cell" which allows you to specify the width of the Nth cell, because not all cells of a statusbar are the same.

about 2/8" (2.5cm) on 1600x1200 (and more like 20 pixels >:D)

I noticed you mentioned "thought based interfaces", and I thought I'd just post this:
Its not 100 years off, its actually probably more like 20 (if the field gets attention). I have old sci fi magazines from *1970* that advertise mini EEG (or is it EKG, i can't remember) machines for $10.

You might think monitoring electrical brain activity and actual thoughts are miles apart - well, yes and no. You'd probably never be able to dictate to your PC from your mind. The most you could probably get is something like a 3D mouse (i think its possible coz you can learn to move an arm in 3D space, and yes, nasa did research on controlling stuff with nerve impulses too)

Two articles slightly related:
http://mentalhealth.about.com/library/weekly/aa101600a.htm
http://mentalhealth.about.com/library/weekly/aa070300a.htm

People are being treated for ADD via their TV - how wonderful. The way its applied here is kinda a lil off tilt, for what you'd need to control a PC with your mind. But, its possible. There's also proven research into giving blind people sight via sending electrical impulses on the optic nerve - if these two get combined, you'd have a damn scary VR world. If you want articles about the seeing thing, use google, i saw it on tv. TV tells me everything!

Learning to think your way around a computer is no harder than learning to walk. Trouble is, after 18 years of life i still fall over


PS
Why a statusbar? Why oh why a status bar? I think we should include one, rename it, and put a marketing spin on it - "The Ritz Bar" or something

My monitor is 21 inches. That's 53cm in real measurement. Or actually 50 cm because none of the CRT manufacturers bother to comply with the Trade Practices Act and actually quote the viewable area as the screen size.

That really isn't so much an argument as a justification of why you do something one certain way, which is fine.


I respect that people have different methods of doing things within mIRC, and will never at any time suggest that people should do it any other way.

To a comment watchdog made, about repeating information already shown in other parts of the gui.
Yes, but what if mIRC suddenly became a "smart application".
Consider this. You turn the "status bar" on, and instantly, all the "repeatable" information dissapears from the titlebar, and gets put into the status bar. Still allowing for the end user to see what happens in the titlebar when they minimise the window.

Back to megazerox's comment about these sorts of status bars being scriptable.

Yes, they can be scripted, but it usually involves using (what I consider) 3rd party hacks to allow mIRC to do this. To be quite frank, I can't believe mIRC has gone so long without this particular feature. Personally, I distrust dll's that modify the appearance of mIRC. I think they "kludge" up and are very ineffiecient at doing what they do. They can be done better, and in my opinion, they could only be achieved properly if Khaled implemented the ability to do so.

The photoshopped image is just an example of the sort of thing that we should be able to create/access within mIRC.

I would also like to point out, that typing a command is far less effeciant (in terms of energy output) than moving a mouse, double clicking, and so forth.

The whole point about scripting, and hacking (which this is to a certain degree), is about improving the software to suit your needs, or to modify an application to do something it can already do, but make it 100x better.


I should also point out, that if you can't see how an idea works, without thinking about it for 5 or so minutes, and "explore" how it would work, then don't post replies until you have. Some of you seem to have just sat there and gone, "eww, that looks really gross, I hate it" or, "omfg, what a waste of space that is" or, "it's not optional, kill it".

Use a little common sense.

I can do it without a hack. It would be either a dormant dialogue or a picture window. Picture window could look much better, and could have a theme.

In fact, this is such a good idea that I am considering putting something like it in my script, due for release twenty-two days from now. It wouldn't be a "status bar" as anyone here has described it though.

Edit: By the way, I loathe MDX, and will burn my hard drive if any files beginning with the letters "MDX" ever show up on it. If it were possible, I would make my Norton Antivirus treat MDX.dll like a virus.

Ok then, please make me a statusbar with all the features I described, and that looks EXACTLY like a WindowsXP statusbar, and when I say EXACTLY, I mean regardless of what WindowsXP theme I have set, whether a builtin theme, or a 3rd party theme. If you can do that, then I'll agree, this feature is not needed, but without the use of a dll to at the very least obtain the information about the current theme, it is not possible, so your claims are not valid.

you do have a point.. i agree.