A gradually self-hiding chat box
 

Would it be possible to create a chat box that can gradually re-size itself, so that it can shrink based on the amount of text in it?

As an example, let's say I have not recieved any tells for some time, so my chat box is currently invisible. I then recieve a tell that is 3 lines long, so my chat box appears and shows the last 3 lines of text I have recieved. After a short period of time (say 20 seconds or so), if no more tells are recieved, the box resizes so that only the last 2 lines are visible. If no further input is recieved, the box will continue to shrink to 1 line, and then vanish altogether.

There would be a maximum number of lines that could be shown at once, possibly a variable amount between 4-8 or so, until it started scrolling as normal. This way, those of us who really like to maximize our visible space at all times could make sure to always have as small a chat box as possible.

I got this idea from Final Fantasy 11's UI, which I thought was very good about keeping the UI unobtrusive. Basically, it would allow you to always keep a background on your chat box that allows you to easily read the text therein, but also makes it vanish when unused without having to mouse over it.

I do not know if resizing on-the-fly is even possible within EQ2's UI, but I think it would be a very nice addition, if so.

I built this in part. however I have yet to be able to get the chat window to remove a line after a certin amount of time, nor be aware of how long a certin amount of time is.

Perhaps you could query the in-game clock? I don't know how interrelated the UI windows are, or if they can even do things like that. But it seems like if you can display the clock, you should be able to find out what it says and use that info in the code. However, I haven't really played with the XML functions, so I cannot be sure.

There really aren't any xml functions :P

There's no way to use a type of delay command. There's no IF/THEN statements that we know how to use (that I know of), and things like dynamic data only seem to be used as attributes for otehr things, not as open expressions/variables that you can plop in the middle of a sentence.

As for the gradually part... I know you can set the fade rate in the settings I believe? This doesn't make it shrink, but... it is gradual :P

Wow, so you really can't do anything fun with it, then. That's disappointing...

I got the dancing hampsters to work while zoning.... thats fun!!!!!!!