Tutorials/Chatting with the Chat Activity

• Communicate with other Sugar Learners and developers.
• Chat is an example of a shared Activity, which allows Collaboration over a network.

There are many different shared Activities in Sugar

Collaboration is one of Sugar's strongest features.

Boot Sugar

• The Home view (F3) appears

The Chat icon is on the right side of the Spiral of Activities

You must be connected to a network for Chat to Collaborate.

Start Chat

• Click on the Chat icon.

Share your Chat session

• Click on the 'white disc with a dot inside' icon on the Activity toolbar.
• Click in the drop-down palette menu.

You must run Chat as a shared session for it to collaborate.

You are now collaborating in a shared Activity session.

Your shared Chat session will show as an icon on the Neighborhood view (F1).

Other Learners can join your Chat session from their Neighborhood view.

Send Chat message

Type your message in the bottom text entry box of Chat.

• Hit the Enter key on your keyboard.

Here Testing Chat is the message

Note that the Learner's avatar name is displayed on the line before the message.

In this case, Tris5-sugar: Testing Chat

This becomes useful if several other Learners join the Chat session.

Use emoticons in your chat

Click on the "happy face" icon on the toolbar.

A drop-down palette menu appears and you can click on any of the emoticons on it.

• Hit the Enter key on your keyboard.

The emoticon is added to your message.

Joining a shared Chat session

This is an example of joining another Learner's shared Chat session.

• Click in the Frame or press the F1 key and you switch to the Neighborhood view.
• Move the mouse pointer away from screen/window edge to retract the Frame.
• Join another Learner's shared Chat session.

Hover the mouse pointer over the Chat icon.

Click Join on the pop-up palette menu.

You are Chatting (Collaborating) in the other Learner's Chat session.

You can see your messages in yellow and the other Learner's messages in blue.

Other Learners' colors will match the colors of their XO avatar.

It will not always be blue.

• Move the mouse pointer to the right corner of the field.

Wait until the Frame extends.

• This screenshot is from a new shared Chat session involving:

1. ACER ASPIRE ONE N450 10"-netbook - Trisquel 5.0-sugar CD.
2. OLPC XO-1 laptop running os508dx - a version of Dextrose 2

• An icon for the running Chat Activity is displayed on the top bar of the Frame.
• Avatars of the 2 connected Learners are displayed on the right bar of the Frame.

1. Icon for the Learner - (Has the same pop-up palette menu as shown in the Home view version of the icon (not shown).
2. Pop-out palette menu for the Learner sharing this Chat session - Remove Friend (shown)

Stop Chat

• Click on the white octagon icon with a black square in it, on the right side of the toolbar.

Stop Ctrl+Q appears on the drop-down palette label.

• Click on it.
• You return to the Home view screen.