I’ve put together a tutorial for all the folks that use LiveJournal. Unfortunately they insist on blocking JavaScript, meaning the tutorial sets up a badge that users click on first to initiate the Hab.la window. Not the best option— but c’est la vie…

Also, we’ve added a page for third parties to showcase their plugins and tutorials… so if anyone is so inclined, they can add their super swanky Hab.la plugin or the like by posting to the forum here.

Thomas Edison thought that everyone should answer the telephone with “Ahoy”, my Hab.la greeting of choice is “Yola”. I digress.

I just pushed a few new simple – but much requested features to production they include: welcome message support, automatically expanding the Hab.la window when a operator sends a message to a visitor, and a really cool method of supporting offline/online images. The last of these features could use a full tutorial.. I’ll put that on to the todo list :-)

Welcome Message
The welcome message is shown in the Hab.la window before chat is started.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.hab.la/js/wc.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
config = wc_config();
config.vars["welcome_msg"] = "Hi Traveler, You can use this window to chat with me as you browse my website :-).";
wc_init("___YOUR__ID____",config );
</script>

Automatically expanding the Hab.la window when a chat is received.
When enabled this feature will expand the hab.la window when an operator sends a message to a website visitor. (In normal operation, the hab.la window remains minimized unless the visitor clicks on it).

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.hab.la/js/wc.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
config = wc_config();
config.vars["expandOnMessageReceived"] = 1;
wc_init("___YOUR__ID____",config );
</script>

Showing or Hiding Content based on Hab.la Availability.
We’ve made it really easy to show and hide content on your webpage based on whether hab.la is available or not. For example, when you are not available on hab.la you might want to show a contact form, when you are available, you might instruct your visitors to chat with you using hab.la. In addition you can use this same method to show or hide a “click here to chat with me” link or image.

Once you have the hab.la javascript installed on a page all you have to do is to create two HTML Divs, “habla_available_div”, “habla_unavailable_div”. (if you want a div to be shown when hab.la is loading create “habla_loading_div”).

<div id="habla_available_div"></div>
<div id="habla_unavailable_div"></div>
<!-- optional -->
<div id="habla_loading_div"></div>
<!-- /optional -->

Now, you can place content in these DIVs that will show based on your hab.la availability

Example 1: Showing and hiding some text based on availability

<div id="habla_available_div">Hey I am online on hab.la, see that little chat box in the lower right, you can click on it to talk to me instantly.</div>
<div id="habla_unavailable_div">I am not here like now, looks like you missed me.</div>
<!-- optional -->
<div id="habla_loading_div">Hab.la is starting up</div>
<!-- /optional -->

Example 2: Showing and hiding images based on availability

<div id="habla_available_div"><A href="javascript:habla_window.show()"\>"<img src="online_image.png"></a></div>
<div id="habla_unavailable_div"><A href="contact_us.html"\><img src="offline_image.png"></div>

That’s today’s list of features and improvements. Enjoy!

Things are going pretty well over here at Hab.la central, we’ve had members of our community volunteer to translate hab.la into other languages, we’ve been getting quite a few new signups each day, and things are moving along pretty well on development.

I just wanted to take this time to thank some of our contributors, Graham from Brookins Consulting has built a unoffical Hab.la plugin for the popular eZ Publish CMS system.

If your an eZ Publish user and need help integrating Hab.la, this extension will greatly simplify the process.

http://projects.ez.no/unofficialhabla

Do you have a website? Do you use Google analytics to keep track of your traffic? Well, now you can use it to keep track of how your visitors use hab.la too!

I implemented a cleaner plugin architecture, and implemented a Google Analytics Plugin as my first task. Essentially, all important hab.la events will now be logged to Google Analytics.. Want to know how many visitors sent a message to an operator, or opened the chat window? Just log into Google Analytics and look for the content items "/habla/sendmessage" or "/habla/expandchat".

This plugin is automatically enabled for all Hab.la users that have Google Analytics and Hab.la installed on the same page, if you would like to disable this logging, add the configuration option:

config.vars["disableGoogleAnalytics"] = true;

I think we are probably the first, if not the only livehelp / livechat provider to offer built in configuration free Google Analytics integration. [I am 100% sure we are the only company to offer this free of charge.] – Hopefully someone will throw up a tutorial, or some more documentation on this feature soon!

In a moment of procrastination I created a GAIM/Pidgin tutorial for our friends on Windows and Linux. I suppose you could even run GAIM/Pidgin on OSX if you wanted, but who would when you can run Adium. (It's pretty confusing that GAIM just changed it's name to Pidgin, and libgaim to libpurple -- what is this litigious work coming to?) In any case I intend to create a basic tutorial for adding Hab.la to your website pretty soon.

In a moment of procrastination I created a GAIM/Pidgin tutorial for our friends on Windows and Linux. I suppose you could even run GAIM/Pidgin on OSX if you wanted, but who would when you can run Adium. (It's pretty confusing that GAIM just changed it's name to Pidgin, and libgaim to libpurple -- what is this litigious work coming to?) In any case I intend to create a basic tutorial for adding Hab.la to your website pretty soon.

I'll be the first to admit that writing tutorials is not the most fun task in the world, but I've completed nice hab.la tutorials for iChat and Adium to augment the AppleScript installers. Writing all those tutorials made me think that it would be really cool if A. Tutorials were done on a Wiki and B. Help was internationalized, and by internationalized I mean -- wouldn't it be cool to have tutorials for pirates, Yarr!

I did a little bit of research, and found a nice comparison of the available internationalization options on the Rails Wiki. Of course I can't imagine how you could merge a Wiki and internationalization, so it looks like we'll have to pick one or the other -- or at the very least split the help documentation between a Wiki and more static internationalized documents. I'll see what the rest of the team thinks tomorrow.

I'll be the first to admit that writing tutorials is not the most fun task in the world, but I've completed nice hab.la tutorials for iChat and Adium to augment the AppleScript installers. Writing all those tutorials made me think that it would be really cool if A. Tutorials were done on a Wiki and B. Help was internationalized, and by internationalized I mean -- wouldn't it be cool to have tutorials for pirates, Yarr!

I did a little bit of research, and found a nice comparison of the available internationalization options on the Rails Wiki. Of course I can't imagine how you could merge a Wiki and internationalization, so it looks like we'll have to pick one or the other -- or at the very least split the help documentation between a Wiki and more static internationalized documents. I'll see what the rest of the team thinks tomorrow.