Chat and IM are core apps that have been available from the moment we launched Skysa in January of this year. So far we have received great feedback on the apps; however there have been a few key areas that our users have requested improvement in and some bugs that have cropped up. This latest update addresses these issues and provides requested improvements. Here's what is included:

• Client to Server communication has been re-written to improve performance and simultaneous member compactly.
• We fixed an issue where if Instant Messages were sent exactly the same time by both people only one would show up.
• We fixed an issue with settings that rely on cookies not working correctly on sub-pages. One example is the online/offline option on the instant message app.
• We fixed an issue where images sent in chat and IM sometimes did not show up if the file extension in the link was uppercase.
• Many other misc. improvements and fixes to provide you with a smooth chat experience.

Edit 6/7/2010
If you are running IE7 you may experience an issue that submits text when you press space while in the chat room. For now, if you encounter this, refreshing your browser will usually fix the issue. Of course upgrading your browser is a good thing, but we are working to resolve the issue for IE7 users.

Click Here for SKYAUTH Documentation You can Share with Your Platform Provider

Would you like your website platform to fully support SkyAUTH? The only way this can happen is by you telling the people or community behind your platform to support Skysa, we encourage you to contact your platform provider (send e-mails, post in forums and contact support) and let them know it is important to you. SKYAUTH is easy to integrate into any platform for the platform provider, and we are happy to work with them to make sure it is integrated correctly. Remember you must create the demand!

We are currently testing built-in integration for SocialGo websites. So, those of you with a SocialGo site please test it out and provide us with your feedback on the integration, and if everything is working correctly with your members using Skysa interactive features.

The Ad Manager is an great way new way to monetize your website. Watch our YouTube Video!

Skysa Pro enables you to remove all Skysa Branding, Run your own advertisements on your Skysa Bar and on Apps, and has a few other peaks. Now with a 48 hour free trial!

Remember to follow us @skysabar on twitter or join our Facebook page to get the latest updates on new features, New Apps and other improvements!

Thank you for selecting Skysa!

After spending a bit more time on this one, we release to you a Facebook “Like” app this holds true to Skysa standards. Not only does it match your bar; it is also customizable just like other apps, allowing you to set the label and icon for the app button. When a user hovers over the button they are greeted with a special tooltip that shows how many people and what friends of theirs have already liked that particular page. Clicking the app button gives instant feedback showing that they liked the page (or prompts them to quickly login to Facebook to post their like, if they are not logged in).

BTW, other social plugins just released by Facebook, Recomendations and Activity Feed, can be easily added to your Skysa bar using the Custom App. Just go to the Facebook Plugins Page to get your code to add to the app.

 Spruz is a FREE social website creation portal that allows you to create socially orientated sites for your you, your business, or group.

Remember with Skysa as you move websites, take us with you! Never lose your settings, apps or content with Skysa. Skysa is portable!

Persistent Apps

This has been enabled for all apps and completely re-thought. What this means to you is when you open an app, it stays open. You can navigate around the site and your app will be open on each page until you close it. If you minimize it, it will stay minimized. If you move it or size it, it will stay in the place you left it. Even if you close the site and come back tomorrow, your apps will stay as you left them. Instant Message windows needed this new minimize aware app persistence to flow smoothly and act as a user would expect. By the way, persistence works in the chat room too! You can minimize the chat room and navigate to other pages while staying in the room!

Minimized App Notifications

Minimizing an interactive app does not do you much good if you don’t know when there is an update to the interaction. That is why we have built out a notification system that allows minimized apps to let you know when something changes. The notifications show up in the bottom/top (depending on your bar position) right corner of your screen. In the notification box events grouped by app name and each event is clickable, taking you into that app where the event happened. The events are messages from the app to let you know what happened. For example, when you get a new message on an IM that is minimized, the notification event shows who the message is from and what they said. This allows you to follow the conversation and only open the IM window when you need to reply. Just click on the event in the notification box and your IM window opens for you to respond. Notifications will hide automatically after a short time and also gives you the option to close them immediately.

Un-read Indicator

App notifications are an awesome feature for while you are browsing the site. However, if you stepped away or were looking at another tab on your computer when the notification popped up you could have missed it. That is why we have added an un-read indicator for apps. Now, if there is new activity in that app the red number on the app will flash yellow. When you open the app to see the latest activity it will go back to its normal red color.

Those are the main platform changes that make IM minimizing possible. Now let’s look at some other changes to the Instant Message app itself.

Active Chats

Due to the structure of the Skysa app bar, adding app buttons (taking up space on the bar) for active instant message conversations was not a great solution. You customized your bar with the apps you want to display on each side, and mixing in any number of IMs would make the bar really messy and hard to use. Instead we have re-designed the Instant Message app menu to include an Active section if there are any conversations going on. If an IM window is open or minimized they will show in the active section of the menu.

On Menu Un-read Indicator

If there are any un-read messages in your current conversations the number indicator will glow yellow on the app button itself. Along with that we have added a yellow blinking dot on the IM menu itself next to any conversation that has new un-read content. This enables you to quickly see what conversation you should open to see the latest information.

So, there you have it. Instant Message minimizing, persistent apps and great interaction than brings your user experience to life like never before!

As with any release of this size there may be a few bugs here and there. Please do report any that you find in a support ticket so we can address them immediately.

The Instant Messaging app now has window options you can set, allowing you to choose the location that the IM windows pop up at by default as well as default window size.

We have added 4 new, one click sharing apps, that display a count of how many times that page of your site has been shared. You’ve probably seen some large blogs have started displaying share buttons on their posts with a total of how many times it was shared with that service. Adding your own can be problematic though and hard to match well to your site as each uses its own service. That is why we have developed our own apps that keep track of the number of share actions for each. Just add the ones you want to your Skysa bar, and now each page on your site is shareable by your users and has its own counter. These apps count the times when people have used each service in the Interactive Sharing app as well.

The new apps allow sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Buzz and Digg. Each one you can fully customize, with icon and label, as you would any other app.

Other options you can now set in the search app are: the tooltip for the “search provider” button, the default “Search…” text that displays in the search input, and the size and position of the app window for providers that you have set to load in an app window.

With social platforms here are some example uses of search providers:

• Enable searching of your blog(s)
• Member Search                         
• Site Search Using Your Built-in search (if you have it) or any search service of your choice

The great thing about how our bar style presets work is, after you have selected one, you can change everything about it; including the colors, texture images, etc. The preset just gets you started, and then you can make it look just how you want to match with your site.

Key Features Include;

• Easy to use Ad Placement Setup (Set Campaign Name, Ad HTML/Code, and Selectable Placement Areas)
• Setup an Ad Placement to display directly on your bar, or inside Apps
• Setup Ads on a per App Basis or All at once
• More then 1 Ad? No problem, Ads Rotate automaticly.
• Ad Placements are unobtrusive! On Bar Placement is always visible as a visitor scroll the page, making it a premium placement.

Ad Placements is a premium feature that also includes our Skysa Pro (White Label) that removes all Skysa Branding and links. To signup and setup Ad Placements on your Skysa Bar click on the Ad Placements link in on your bar management page.

We have put together a very rewarding 2 part Affiliate Program for you. For starters, we are going to pay $1.00 per Free Skysa Bar Activation. This means for each person you referral to Skysa and they install our Bar onto their website you will earn $1.00 USD.

Next and the most exciting, when you refer a new Affiliate to us, you are going to earn cash for each of their referrals! Simular to when you have a Skysa bar activation, we will pay you $0.25 per activated Skysa install that your Affiliates' generate. Since we are a social company we felt this measure would add to the overall growth of Skysa and even if you have limited traffic, this gives everyone the opportunity to be rewarded well.

Plus to top all that off, we don't want to keep you wanting on payments. As soon as you reach $100 in referrals you can request that money to be sent to you via Paypal! If you have joined other programs before you know it can take 60,90 even 120 days to get your first payment. Not with Skysa for example if make $100 or more in your first week, you can request your first payment right away!

When you join our Affiliate Program we allow you to name your Affiliate link.  (Example: http://www.skysabar.com/signup "signup can be whatever you want")

In your Affiliate Program Management area you can;

• Access to your Affiliate Link so you can start right away spreading the word.
• Get Banners and Ad Code
• View your Clicks, Signups, Activated Bars, Referred Affiliates, and Affiliate Bar Activations.
• And of course see your earnings.

To get started click on our Affiliate Program at the bottom of the Skysa Website. This is a new system, and will be improved over time, so please share your feedback.

The Video Chat app (powered by Tiny Chat) does not have moderator control yet, however we are working with that company to be able to provide that option to our users.

To add moderators go to your bar management and clicking the new Moderators tab. Enter the person’s Member ID, a 4 digit PIN and their Name (for you to keep track of who they are); then click Add Moderator.

To get your Member ID, go to your website and hold the SHIFT button on your key board and press the F2 key. The 4 digit PIN is used for delete actions as an extra method of security if the moderator left his/her window open to your site while away from their computer.

The footer bar is dead, long live the footer bar. We can no longer call Skysa just a “website footer bar” because we have added the option to display it from the top of your site as well. This adds a great deal of flexibility to do more with the bar on your website exclusive to Skysa. You can change the bar position under your Settings tab in your bar management area.

Over the past few months we have added apps and a steady pace and plan to keep doing so moving forward. With more apps to choose from all the time, it is easy to install more than your bar can display. We have implemented a graceful solution for this. First, we made app overflow and drop off much smarter; if the window/bar is too narrow to display all the installed apps, apps will fall off equally from either side, keeping the bar balanced. Second, in the center region between the two sides a collapsed looking section of the bar displays the number of apps that are not visible. If you click on the collapsed section all the apps are come into view above (or below, for top displayed bars) the bar in a nicely organized format.

We are proud to be the first in this industry to offer either of these features.

With the new Skysa website design we wanted to make the navigation menu easier to read and enable it to highlight what page you are currently viewing, at the same time allow the design to incorporate what Skysa is about. Your personal account options are accessed from a drop down menu that is accessed from the Gears icon in the top right. When you receive a new message from us or other members, it displays the number of messages in a red box at the corner of the gear, carrying over the way we display counts on the Chat and IM apps. Plus depending on the time of day you may even see the stars come out in the background.

We have a new Logo (Well Sort of) thanks to you! Many of you may remember us asking for your votes and feedback on some Logo Concepts, well a majority of you seemed to be in love with our current logo. For now we are keeping what we have with some minor touch ups to match the new styling of our website design.

Now that this is out of the way, we can get some real work done. Enjoy the new design, please share with us your feedback.

Smooth Glass

Oil Slick

To customize your bar style and select presets go to My Bar > Bar Style

The RSS Ticker App uses an RSS Feed to show a scrolling "Ticker" of recent entries from your websites RSS Feeds. This App features a entry preview on hover and if the entry has an image, the first image in the feed will be displayed in the preview with an Auto Pan feature for extra Wide Images.

 This App Features a range of settings that include;

• Customize the Ticker Width
• Set if when an entry is clicked if it opens in a new window
• You can set how many entries are displayed from your feed

Get ready because this week we have several new Apps about ready for release and improvements to some current ones. Based off this App we will be adding a scrolling text App in the next day or two so you can have a ticker with a customizable message.

We hope you enjoy this new App

To improve our support levels we have developed our own support ticket system, that features ticket tracking, allows you to see the history of an issue and provides our team with an interface to make sure the support issues you report are addressed quickly.

You will notice on your My Bar page and in the login menu area at the top of the page there is a new link for support.

With these changes, we will be removing the General Support and Bug Report Forums and we have added a new How-To Forum to post general usability questions. We really hope you like this change!

Also in this update:

• We have made some performance improvements to restoring windows from a minimized position so that happens much more quickly.
• We made a styling adjustment that allows bar icons to be displayed their full width in the app window title bar. Before if the icon graphic was wider than 20px it would down size it in the title bar.

UPDATE - 02-26-2010

Thanks to all your great comments, we have developed a better form of feedback on the app buttons. Instead of the bouncing we depress the buttons immediatly when they are clicked (if your theme has borders visible).