Chatting with Friends Online

An online chat is different from an instant message. Whereas instant messaging describes a one-to-one conversation between two users, online chat involves real-time discussions between large groups of users. These chats take place in public chat rooms (sometimes called chat channels).

You can find chat rooms at any number of websites, accessible via Internet Explorer or any other web browser.

Chatting at Yahoo!

One of the most popular chat sites is Yahoo! Chat, which is part of the giant Yahoo! portal. You access Yahoo! Chat by clicking the Chat link on the Yahoo! home page or by going directly to chat.yahoo.com.

tip

The first time you visit Yahoo! Chat, you'll be prompted for your Yahoo! ID and password; if you don't yet have a Yahoo! ID, take this opportunity to register. (It's free.)

The main Yahoo! Chat page is your home page for all of Yahoo!'s chat activities. From here you can access featured chat rooms and chat events or click the Complete Room List link for a list of all available Yahoo! Chat rooms.

After you select a chat room, Yahoo! loads special chat software into your web browser. This is done automatically, and takes just a few minutes.

When you enter a chat room, you see the screen shown in Figure 25.3. All messages are displayed in the Chat pane; everyone chatting in the room is listed in the Chatters pane.

Figure 25.3. A typical Yahoo! chat roomenter a message in the Send box, and then chat away!

You enter your messages in the Send box and then click the Send button or press Enter to send the message to the room. After you send a message, it appears in the Chat pane, listed in-line with all the other messages.

Everybody else in your chat room is listed in the Chatters list. In addition, you can display a list of all the participants in every Yahoo! Chat room by clicking the Who's Chatting button in the Tools section.

If you want to change chat rooms, click the Change Room button in the Tools section. When you click this button, Yahoo! displays the chat room list; click a room name to change to that room.

Other Chat Sites

If you're serious about online chat, you might want to check out some of the other major chat communities on the Web. These sites include

• Internet TeleCafe (www.telecafe.com)

• MSN Chat (chat.msn.com)

• Talk City (www.talkcity.com)

If you're a subscriber to America Online, you can also access AOL's proprietary chat rooms. These are some of the busiest chat rooms on the Internet, and they're reserved exclusively for AOL members.

The Absolute Minimum

Here are the key points to remember from this chapter:

• Where email is great for longer, more formal messages, instant messaging is better for short one-on-one conversationsand Internet chat is good for more public discussions.

• There are many different incompatible instant messaging networks, including AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN/Windows Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger.

• To message another user, you both must be online at the same time, using the same instant messaging software.

• Internet chat rooms can be found on many different websites, such as Yahoo! Chatas well as part of the America Online service.