Welcome to the web's finest, hosted online chat service. This chat software includes features such as multiple subrooms, font/color/branding customization, audio, emoticons, private messaging, profanity filtering, and many more! As of this writing, SigmaChat is available in over 17 different languages. This page will provide a brief summary of many of the features that you presently have access to.

To log in, simply enter your username/handle in the text box located at the center of the applet and press Enter. Certain restrictions are imposed upon usernames, and they should be 64 letters or less in length. A sample login dialog is shown below:

To communicate in the chat room, you may simply type text into the multi-line text box towards the bottom of the applet, and press Enter to send your message. Your message will appear in the content (larger) box above it when it is received by our server. Others may then read what you have typed, and respond to you. If you wish to get another user's attention, simply type in (or click if available) their name somewhere within the message that you are sending them. Their message will appear in a different color, and a sound will be played. A sample text input box is shown below:

You will notice various buttons within the chat room. These allow you to logout, request help (as you have already figured out), float/dock the chat room, turn on/off audio, specify color settings, and more. Buttons are described in detail in the Button Toolbar section of this control panel. A sample selection of buttons is shown below:

Certain chat rooms may have different features, or different layouts, depending upon how they have been configured. With some chat rooms that do not show buttons and checkboxes, you may access the features described above by right clicking in the content area where messages appear.

If you wish to exit the chat room at any time, simply click the Logout button. On some systems after logging out you will automatically be taken to another website, on others, you will have the option of logging back in again.

The button toolbar provides access to various features of this chat software. Some systems may have the button toolbar disabled to conserve screen space, or may have opted to remove certain buttons from the toolbar. The button toolbar can be found after you have logged in. Below is a description of each button.

You may change the size of your font by accessing the right-click content menu. To do so, right click on the content area (the area where messages are displayed) and a small menu will appear. Select "Font Size" to show the font selections allowing you to change your font size. Click on the font size you'd like to use. You may also increase/decrease the size of the displayed text by using the Zoom-In and Zoom-Out buttons located in the Button Toolbar.

Premium SigmaChat chat rooms may allow their users to change their own text color as it is displayed within the chat room. To change your text color, you may right click in the content area (where messages are displayed) and select "Colors". You may also access the color dialog by clicking the Color button within the Button Toolbar.

A sample color dialog is shown to the left. You may select a color directly from the web-safe palette, or you may manually adjust the red, green, and blue scrollbars to find the color that you wish to use. Click the Apply or OK button to apply your new color settings.

URL's, such as http://www.sigmachat.com or www.raidersoft.com, as well as email addresses such as mailto:support@raidersoft.com or sales@raidersoft.com may be entered into the chat at any time to share with. Some systems may show URL's in a different color (usually blue) and may allow you to click on them to launch either another web page, or your default mail application.

Note: Many modern systems are now equipped with popup-blockers. Web sites, and popups launched from SigmaChat may be prevented by your browser if this is the case. To override, simply hold down the "Ctrl" button while clicking on a popup link or button.

To send private messages, use the /msg command. I.e., to send the private message Hello, there to the user Timmy, you would type:

/msg Timmy Hello, there

Private messages are shown in a seperate color within the display to be easily differentiated.

You may also initiate a private message session with another user by double clicking on his/her name, or by right clicking on a username and selecting "Send Message". Once doing so, a popup dialog will appear for you to communicate with the other user in privately. The recipient may receive all messages in the main content area until he/she also double clicks on your name. To close a private message session, simply click the X in the upper-right hand portion of the window. Audio emoticons are not available within private message sessions.

Your chat room may have filters in place to ensure that certain words (such as profanity) are not allowed. You may receive a warning message such as "Please rephrase your last message" if you use an illegal word in a chat room that censors profanity. If you receive this warning, you can easily go back and edit your message by using the Message Scrollback feature.

You may toggle the timestamp on/off by clicking the button shown above. The timestamp may also be accessed from the right-click menu in the main content area (where messages are displayed). When this feature is turned on, all incoming messages will be displayed with the time that they were received. This time is relative to your own computer, and the timezone in which it resides.

Click the Float/Dock button to load the chat room into a separate window. This feature allows you to conserve screen space while you chat by minimizing the browser window that you floated the chat room from. When you wish to return the chatroom to it's browser, simply reclick the Float/Dock button.

Note: With most modern web browsers, you must keep the browser window that the chat room was floated from open. Closing this window, or changing the web address may cause the chat software to close.

When clicked, the Copy Content button will display a popup window allowing you to easily copy text entered within the chat room (both private and public messages may be copied) by right-clicked, or using either the Ctrl-C (PC) or Alt-C (Apple) keyboard commands to copy text to your system clipboard.

The Message Scrollback Feature allows you to scroll back through the previous messages you have entered into the chatroom. To use this feature, simply press the Up and Down arrow buttons in the blue box where you type messages. Often times, we make typos, or we are censored by SigmaChat's text filter. This feature makes it easy to simply go back and edit the message that you have just typed. Some operators may have disabled this feature to prevent flooding within their chat room.

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