Mark,

We had an issue at a previous job where, if the libraryh3lp widget didn't
load properly, it prevented the rest of the page from rendering,
effectively making our website unavailable.

The snippet of js + html libraryh3lp provides doesn't account for
situations where their service is unavailable, so we just wrapped it in php
function that checked that the libraryh3lp.js (or whatever it is called)
file could be reached before we'd insert the elements into the page. If
unreachable, we'd insert our standard "Chat is Offline" image instead.

Once we did that, the occasional blips of chat outage we're less noticeable.

Chad



On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 9:06 AM, Mark Baumer <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> The library where I work is looking to update its chat services. We use
> Libraryh3lp, at the moment, but have recently had some issues with it
> lagging and slowing down the whole site.
>
> I am interested in hearing opinions on any of the services below as well
> as any other services not listed:
>
> A list of chat services I found being used at other libraries:
> -Libanswers and libchat (springshare)
> -Libraryh3lp
> -Question Point
> -Confluence
> -Various IM options (AOL, gchat, Yahoo, microsoft instant messager)
> -Velaro
> -Mycustomercloud.com
>
> A list of chat services that may or may not be used by any libraries:
> -imo.im
> -Trillian Web
> -Nimbuzz
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Mark
>