chatterbox/shoutbox

[sparrow91]

I am developing my own chatterbox for my page, because I want to force people to login before posting comments.

I have the submition form, and the script that writes posts to a database setup already. I just can't figure out how to retrieve and display the information the way I want to.

I am trying to superimpose the chatterbox over a background image, so I need to make the script display as many posts as possible, without going over the edges of the background image.

If there is some way to make a HTML table cell not streatch to fit it's contents, I would prefer that to formating the output with php. :thumbsup:


Thanks,
Mark

[Element]

Just as a suggestion. It is a very bad idea to use a graphical chat. They are very annoying. Everytime someone wants to see a new post they'll havee to wait through the white blank while the page loads, when they are already used to the image of the chat, this is why most chats don't use graphical interfaces unless they are live. Which can be achieved by using AJAX with JavaScript.

As far as your problem, you would need to make a table, or something, and set the width and height to the background image. Then you would display only a few results, and add a max character limit to every post. That way you can define how it will look. Though, this all can change depending on a users defualt web font, font size, and such.