User:Platinum Lucario/Xat.com

Xat

138px|The official xat logo.
border|195px A screenshot of the xat homepage captured on 22 November, 2010
Type of site	Software, flash applications and chat groups website
Available in	English Afar Abkhazian Avestan Afrikaans Akan Amharic Aragonese Arabic Assamese Avaric Aymara Azerbaijani Bashkir Belarusian Bulgarian Bihari Bislama Bambara Bengali Tibetan Breton Bosnian Catalan Chechen Chamorro Corsican Cree Czech Church Slavic Chuvash Welsh Danish German Divehi Dzongkha Ewe Greek Esperanto Spanish Estonian Basque Persian Fulah Finnish Filipino Fijian Faroese French Western Frisian Irish Scottish Gaelic Galician Guaraní Gujarati Manx Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hiri Motu Croatian Haitian Hungarian Armenian Herero Interlingua Indonesian Interlingue Igbo Sichuan Yi Inupiaq Ido Icelandic Italian Inuktitut Japanese Javanese Georgian Kongo Kikuyu Kwanyama Kazakh Kalaallisut Khmer Kannada Korean Kanuri Kashmiri Kurdish Komi Cornish Kirghiz Latin Luxembourgish Ganda Limburgish Lingala Lao Lithuanian Luba-Katanga Latvian Malagasy Marshallese Māori Macedonian Malayalam Mongolian Moldavian Marathi Malay Maltese Nauru Norwegian Bokmål North Ndebele Nepali Ndonga Dutch Norwegian Nynorsk Norwegian South Ndebele Navajo Chichewa Occitan Ojibwa Oromo Oriya Ossetian Panjabi Pāli Polish Pashto Portuguese Quechua Raeto-Romance Kirundi Romanian Russian Kinyarwanda Rusyn Sanskrit Sardinian Sindhi Northern Sami Sango Serbo-Croatian Sinhalese Slovak Slovenian Samoan Shona Somali Albanian Serbian Swati Sotho Sundanese Swedish Swahili Tamil Telugu Tajik Thai Tigrinya Turkmen Tagalog Tswana Tonga Turkish Tsonga Tatar Twi Tahitian Uighur Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Venda Vietnamese Volapük Walloon Wolof Xhosa Yiddish Yoruba Zhuang Chinese Zulu
Owner	xat.com
URL	http://xat.com
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Current status	Active

Xat is a website that was once originally known as a website with Windows programs, since then it became bigger and better as flash content was added (such as Xat Quiz and the chat boxes). Once the chatboxes were introduced, xat became a much popular website with it's chat groups that were introduced later on. Xats and days were introduced in 2008, xats allowed you to use special timed animations on the chat (alot like what is used on MSN, but different) as they all costed 25 xats for each use, as for days were known as subscriber time, days also allowed certain smileys that don't have animation to end up having animation, xats and days are also used to buy powers, which enable you to do special abbilities or even use more smileys on the chat, group powers were introduced in 2010 which those powers allowed everyone to use the power if the power is applied on the chat group. Some powers are rare and are in limited supply at launch. If any limited powers run out, they can be bought from a chat called Trade, which users can trade their old powers for xats or days at higher or lower prices, depending if the power is rare or not. Xat chat groups also have the feature to login to MSN or AOL Messenger client on the chat group. You can also Private Chat with a user on the chats as well, which will bring up a tab in the chat box. And Private Messages are used in the same way, except they will appear on the main chat with a padlock beside it to indicate that it is a Private Message.

History

The website of xat began back in 1997, as the website started off as a website for containing a program called JPEG Optimizer, which is a JPEG Image Compressor Windows 95 & NT 4, version 2.02 was released on 29 May 1997. The demo version of JPEG Optimizer was available for downloading, as the registered version gave several extra features, which included Batch File mode (compress multiple files at a time), removal of the watermark on the JPEG files, zoom feature, undo and redo feature and the added bonus of entitling you to free upgrades to future versions provided by xat. When people ordered JPEG Optimizer, though their server called The Ordering Network, which was hosted on a website called Evergreen Networks. On November 30, 1998, JPEG Optimizer was updated to version 3.00, which had support for Windows 98 as well, which during that time became the top pick on Download.com.

In April 1999, xat released JPEG Disk Optimizer, which compresses every JPEG Image on the hard drive or server, the free version is exactly the same, but just doesn't have the MagiCompress funtion added to it, so if users wished to use the funtion, they would have to buy the registered version which the user will be emailed with an unlock code upon buying the registered version to upgrade. Xat also had an external link to a the 3Dize Cool Page website to promote their product. Later in 1999, xat released Image Optimizer and WebSpeed Optimizer. Image Optimizer can compress JPEG, GIF and PNG files in the same way as JPEG Optimizer did; WebSpeed Optimizer can show a designed webpage on the hard disk in the speed of dial-up to show how it would load up on the internet. On October 1st, 1999, xat created it's first multi-language support for the website and it's products, xat was supported in the following languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

In May 2000, xat.com released Image Optimizer Professional, which "includes powerful image enhancement tools", which were Enhance/Levels, Color correction and Clean/De-noise tools, this version was an improved version to the standard version. And during that time, xat removed Cool Page from it's website and replaced it with Image Optimizer OCX, which is Image Optimizer though an ActiveX runtime.

In January 2001, xat released a new program called xatshow, which is a screensaver maker for PC, DVD and TV for making your own Slide Show. This program had an extra feature in the professional edition of xatshow, which was the ability to do customizations.

In February 2003, xat created a xatshow group on Yahoo! for people to join; to share thoughts and experiences with other users.

On April 11th, 2005, xat.com updated it's homepage with a better design. On December 10th, 2005, xat released a new program called xatquiz, which allowed users to create their own quizes and then post the xatshow flash content on their website. And during that time, xat created a forum for xatquiz which users could discuss about their experince with xatquiz.

On April 5th, 2006, xat created the xat poll, which is a flash content you can create at any size and put it on your website. Along with that, free room 101 was added as well, which you would use to list the things you cannot stand, and in which the people can either agree by clicking the leaver, or disagree by pressing the heart. The xat poll and free room 101 were both free to use. In late September 2006, xat released a chat box, which was a chat box you could embed on your web page, like most of the flash content on xat. As this simple chat room was a flash content that allowed you to talk to different people and change your username that would display on the chat box. In December 2006, xat.com updated it's homepage with the catergories of it's products and web gear. And the chat boxes gained two new features. A Lobby tab, which is an optional feature you can use on your chat box which allows users to chat with other users that have a chat box, which put a tab of the Lobby chat where you could chat with random people. And audies, which were sound effects you could use by typing in "#[insert word here]" into the chat box then it would play the sound effect.

In early January 2007, xat created three chat groups, which were Ignition, Illusion and Flirt. These were the first ever chat groups that were created, except for Lobby, which started it all. In early May 2007, users were now able to create their own chat groups. Users were able to edit their chat group page with putting in things below the chat box, this was useful for people being able to insert things like the rules for the chat and other stuff. In mid August, 2007, xat updated it's homepage with a more redesigned look along with a search powered by Google that searches xat or the World Wide Web along with an xat Wiki as well with guides to help out users on xat. On October 3rd, 2007, xat implemented a feature where you can change the language of the chat or the website itself from a variety of languages.

On March 8th, 2008, xats and days were introduced, xats were able to be used for kisses and marrages on the chat boxes, and days were used for using Ultra Avatars and Ultra Smileys. Ultra Avatars had special effects to the image, such as sparkling or smileys going around on the image, or just a plain smiley as the avatar. Ultra Smileys could only be used if you were a subscriber (in other words, have days). On March 24th, 2008, xat introduced built in radios in the chat boxes. Which allowed users to use a radio on their chat group so people can listen to an internet radio station that is used for the chat group.

Then later on, xat released their first ever power. Powers gave users special abilities on a chat, like Topman for instance makes the user appear on top of the visitors list, regardless of the ID. However, powers could only be used when you were subscribed (in other words, have days), users were able to buy powers on the xat powers page with xats.

Products and Web Gear

Products

JPEG Optimizer
This program is able to compress .jpg images to make the image smaller in size by using MagiCompress. Doing so however causes the image to become more distorted. This program is shareware and is not free, it has to be purchased in order to get the registered version.

JPEG Disk Optimizer
This program will compress every single JPEG, GIF and PNG image on a system hard drive by using MagiCompress. However, doing so can cause some distortion on the images.

Image Optimizer
Image Optimizer is compatible of compressing any JPEG, GIF and PNG images to make the image more smaller in size by using MagiCompress. However, doing so can cause some distortion on the images.

xatshow
Xatshow is a program that is able to create a slide show screensaver for PC or DVD. This program has many animations for a slide show.

Web Gear

These are flash content that are used on web sites, or even places like MySpace ect.

xat quiz
When xat quiz was introduced, users were able to create their own quiz and share it with others, users could see how many answers they guessed correctly and stuff.

room 101
A web gear that allows a user to type in all the things that he or she cannot stand, then people can either agree by clicking on the lever or disagree by clicking the heart. A flash content that people can agree or disagree to the things that a user cannot stand.

poll/mini survey
Xat poll (also known as a mini survey), is a poll you can create, there can be up to a maximum of 12 answers and a minimum of 2 answers you can use in the poll, and inserting an image before use.

slide show
Other than xatshow, xat later on created a slide show maker for putting on your web site without the need of using xatshow. However, it does lack some of the features that xatshow has. You can use up to 2-15 images, they have to have the URL to the pictures you've uploaded onto an image hosting website, or from your own website. You also have to enter the background color for the slide show, the ammount of time between switching to the images, and the transition type (if you want all of them, you'd have to select "Random").

chat box
The biggest ever application to be made on xat was the chat box, it started out as a chat box, then xat introduced chat groups which enabled you to put in text below the chat and add HTML codes below as well. Chat boxes have several features, such as the ability to Private Message or Private Chat a user, adding a user as a friend, and many more features. You can also use powers which enable you to use special abilities on a chat, such as nameglow, which makes your username glow.

External links

• Official website
• Xat Community Forum - A forum for discussion about any xat web gear (including chats) or products.
• Xat.com Wiki page - A Wiki used to help xat users with their chat box.
• Xat.com Buying powers page - To buy any powers with xats or days.
• Xat.com Help chat group - For any help regarding the chat boxes and chat groups.
• Xat.com Trade chat group - A chat for trading any powers, xats or days.
• XatWorld - First ever resource website for xat chats.
• Xat Blogs - A blog website for many xat contests are used here.