This is something I've been working on for a little while now.

Screenshots: IRC plugin: http://www.mibbit.com/mibbit.png Telnet plugin: http://www.mibbit.com/telnet.png Jigsaw game: http://www.mibbit.com/jigsaw.png

It's just running on my home ADSL at the moment, so if you can't get into some of the IRC servers that may be why (I don't have an i-line yet).

The site should work ok on FF/IE, and mostly ok on Opera bar a few cosmetic issues. Probably doesn't work too well on anything else at the moment.

I have lots of big ideas for it, but would be interested to hear any early feedback for it so far.

Nice work!

Ok, so it's a chat site, with collaborative apps, and games. Actually quite fun, I just played a puzzle with you :)

For sure nice work.

I've wanted a good implementation of web-irc for a long time. That alone is cool enough for me.

However, the UI is really bad; I'm not sure where to begin. Once I log into an irc server, how do I play games? I remember seeing a selection for it when I first came to mibbit, but now it is gone.

When I first start chatting my messages aren't visible (because they're scrolled offscreen).

And it's really, painfully ugly. You might want to recruit a UI designer, or steal some styles from adium or xchat.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm a programmer, not a UI designer ;) I do plan on getting some decent UI design in the future.

To play games/connect to other IRC servers/etc etc just click on the 'welcome tab' again.

Not sure about the scrolling messages, the chat output will scroll as long as the scrollbar is at the bottom. If you resize the window that can sometimes affect the scrollbar position so it could have been that.

I should have explained, this isn't something I'd show end users, it's just an early stage hard to use prototype.

What is it?

I might be slow but I have no idea what the site does :)

Definitely looks like you put a lot of work into it, so let me know what it is.

It's a kinda ajaxy framework. Currently the plugins are

- IRC client - Telnet client - Multi player jigsaw game

You really need to let the visitors know what you are trying to accomplish with the website. After trying all kind of stuff I had to come back here to get a feeling of what you were trying to do.

You need to make it dead clear what the website does if you want to retain any users.

Sure. I should have made it clearer. This isn't something I'd show users, just some early toys I made.

I found this game more fun: http://weboggle.shackworks.com/

Yeah nice game. Might code up a plugin of that :) thanks.

How are you different from http://volity.net/

"Download a copy of Gamut, our client software, to enter the world of Volity gaming."

They're also developing a web-based version: http://www.volity.org/wiki/index.cgi?Web_Client

Anyway, you should probably have something more to distinguish yourself besides just being online-only. The Volity system is actually pretty interesting; it works over Jabber.

There are a ton of sites in the multi-player gaming niche. I think there's still lots of room for competition, and many ways to compete with existing sites. Whether on game selection / implementation or technology improvements.

They can still use Java and let users launch the application via Java Web Start.