Have you ever thought to yourself, "Man, I really wish I could talk to someone right now, but actually, not really"? Boy, do I have the solution for you! Enter LonelyChat, the chat client for people that just want to talk to themselves. It's all the fun of talking to someone else but with none of that whole pesky "talking to someone else" part.
Please note that it is a work in progress.
LonelyChat is currently a one-man chat client without any connectivity capabilities, like Notepad but with a lot of extra steps. The end goal is for it to be a chatroom-like environment where multiple users can connect to and send messages to each other. Users have an identifying icon next to every message they send, which, when clicked, will show other users their saved profile information. Nothing revolutionary by any means, but it brings together a lot of things I haven't played with much in Java so it's really good practice for me.
Speaking of Java, LonelyChat is programmed entirely in Java focusing on the javax.swing GUI library. This is my first foray into creating a program with an actual UI, which, strangely enough, has come up a total of zero times in the 4 or so years I've been programming. I admit that the learning curve was steep, but once I got over it, it was actually pretty enjoyable.
- A separate login window in which you can enter a username of your choice which will be attached to every message you make. No pressure.
- Send messages to anyone in the world, as long as anyone is yourself, and the messages are under 150 characters in length.
- Share basic information about yourself with other users by filling out your profile. Or, just fill in every field with
your mom. Nobody's going to stop you. - Choose an icon that represents you best to display next to your messages and on your profile, as long as whatever represents you best is one of the four included image files:
Definitely Happening:
- A less lonely LonelyChat: adding connectivity to other machines (and probably a new name)
- An improved and aesthetically appealing GUI using JavaFX's CSS parsing capabilities
- All
//TODO:and//FIXME:comments scattered around the code files - Bombproofing all user input
Possibly Happening:
- Allowing the user to choose their own icon from any saved image using File Explorer
- Account registration, passwords, and saving user account info/profile info/icons
- Allow user to set the color of their name (or maybe their text?) and display it to others
A few things that I used in the making of this project:
Hi, I'm Danielle, an aspiring Software Engineer from upstate New York who loves to play with code! Thanks for checking out my project. If you have any tips, pointers, or insults to hurl at me, feel free to contact me!
Find me on LinkedIn!