I have to admit, I rarely, if ever, look at Other Users. I wait for people to say something to me, or in the CB, before I assume they're there. (Possibly because of the MUDding background, where its also quite likely that half the 'who' list is actually gone to bed.. Especially in these days of cheap 24-hour internet connections..)

Anyfish, I think you mis-read my idea a little. The special nodetype would be for the xml-ticker nodes, the using of which could then be ignored (ie 'lasttime' wouldnt be set for users getting nodes of that type.) I dont think it would be all that difficult, either.

Fullpage chat, on the other hand, could just use the current way of being invisible, which is the logging on as an XML ticker thing, that you pointed to. *Just* for the purpose of getting the 3 frames it has /msgs, cb and other users. (Set up a second cookie for it, or something)

Specifically, logging on as an XML ticker sets a slightly different cookie. Clever clients, which hold the cookie in memory, could easily swap cookies to do one thing, and back to do another. They could just as easily not use a cookie at all, to fetch things like Other Users, CB, newest nodes etc, that don't need a login. The question is, can we persuade them to, its a social engineering thing.

If FPC gets fixed, theres still the 'other clients' ..

C.