vB Assistant

Name: vB Assistant
Version: 1.1
templates to edit: 1 - 2

Description: vB Assistant is like a mini cpanel for your members, it small yet contains lots of information.

It will help you get to things much faster in a organized fashion. It will tell you all you need to know about your private messages, How many you have, how many in total, and show you the newest one in detail. It will show you the name of the person that sent it, the link directly to the PM (no hassle with going to inBox first), When you get a new PM within 24 hours It'll let you know with a flashing image and a "Received Today!" caption.

After the message ages (24 hours has past) it'll show the date instead. vB Assistant uses all your current forum settings, from date format, to forum title name.

vB Assistant will also let you know when a thread you started has a new reply which you haven't read. You will see a "View Replies" when someone posts in your thread. It will also tell you who the poster is, without even visiting the thread! It checks when was your last visit and determines if you read it or not. It wasn't easy since there isn't a "message unread" column in the database, so i managed to use the last login time.

vB Assistant has a mini quick search box, just type and hit enter.

When a user is not registered and he/she views vB Assistant, it will let them know what feature they have access to, and also tell them to register to get access to those features. (PM, cpanel links, etc...).

The buddie list is also available, clicking the username takes you to the PM window, clicking the red X will remove the buddie.

Each section in vB Assistant has a expandable/collapsible switch, If you do not want to see a part of it just click and it folds away with cool javascript affect

By having expandable/collapsible sections vB Assistant becomes even more compact and organized.

vB Assistant will also refresh every two minutes by default, it can be changed if wanted.

I see vB Assistant as a mini messenger that you can keep open (since it's small) while you browse the 'net

There is also a mini statistics section that will show you some information about how many registered members, users online, total post, etc...

Plus it will keep track of how many posts were made in the last 24 hrs.

Anyway, you get the idea.


Installation:

Very easy: Instructions are attached.
couple variables to edit, couple templates and your done.

Other information:

I wasn't going to release this yet, because i wanted to add more features, and remove anything that i later find unnecessary, But I am releasing in hope that i can get some ideas from you people on improving it.

If you find any bugs let me know and i will fix them. I have tested it many times. And have been using it for a couple days.

It should work with vbulletin version 2.x.x. I've tested it on 2.2.9 and 2.3.0

Please lick install if you find this useful

Updates:
March 30th: New version 1.1 Released.
Changes:

- Added: a PM Meter, shows percentage of how full inBox is
- Added: a preview of the private message, will show 75 characters of the message.,
- Added: 5 new images, for Meter.
- Fixed: PM Meter disappears when you have 1 new message to make space for the PM preview, Meter returns once the PM is read.

April 1st:

- Fixed bug: PM would show 1% full inBox when you had no PM's, now shows 0% when you have no messages in inBox

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To upgrade simply re-upload assistant.php and overwrite. Edit new configuration settings.

Clear browser cache first to download the update.

[PiotrasG]

great hack got it installed works on 2.29

[partang2]

Hm... can't get it working.... When I click any of the menu items in the popup box, it goes to forum/assistant.php?s= and nothing happends...? What can it be?

[djr]

Installed and works beautifully! I have two questions:

• is there a specific reason to use javacript:redirect_to instead of a plain href in the assistant? (i changed mine to vanilla href's because otherwise nothing would happen if you've got just the assistent open)
• is there a way to keep the different menu items collapsed after a refresh?

Otherwise, very great hack, with many possibilities!

[empreur76]

very nice! thx

[dirtymerc]

Having a right click feature would be excellent, If users could just click their right mouse button and that opens, I would be exstatic.!

[Dan]

looks really nice may install it later

[Tim Wheatley]

This does indeed look very nice, boomarking this for an install when I have more time to look at it more...

Good job and a superb idea.

[Yo.]

I have modified this hack to work as a docked frame instead of a popup, you can see it in action by clicking here (click Enable TK Assistant at the top left once you're there). If people like this for some reason, I can post the modifications here at vB.org.

[pugmy]

A great hack. works perfectly.

How can you make the assistant always stay on top of other windows? (Just like MS Messenger)

I know this tag, <body onBlur="window.focus()"> but
this is pretty annoying since you can't virtually do anything with other windows
because it not only stays on top but forces window focus to it.

Any alternative ways to make it stay on top like MS Messenger?

Today at 06:23 PM djr said this in Post #24
is there a way to keep the different menu items collapsed after a refresh?

I'd like to learn this as well.

again, wonderful job.

[Sebastian]

Today at 01:23 PM djr said this in Post #24
Installed and works beautifully! I have two questions:

• is there a specific reason to use javacript:redirect_to instead of a plain href in the assistant? (i changed mine to vanilla href's because otherwise nothing would happen if you've got just the assistent open)
• is there a way to keep the different menu items collapsed after a refresh?

The reason i used javascript:redirect is so it doesn't go to that page from the vb Assistant, it will use another broswer window to go to that page, if you remove it it will use the same window as vB Assistant.

As for keeping the menu's closed after a refresh, it's possible, but it would require a cookie possibly.

@pugmy: Keeping vB Assistant on top of all windows can be annoying for some users, as you already mentioned.

I will try to make it easier for people with more than one style.