Some of you are (no doubt) already aware, but for the less observant among us, I wanted to let you guys know that the instant messenger is up and running again - a brand new version, for those of you who may have been familiar with the old one.

It's just below the "My corner" box on the right-hand side of the page. Click on the blue arrow to open it up. It's a great way to practice your Esperanto with other students from all over the world. Happy chatting!

Hi, can I ask why it has been ofline? Just curious

I've just been trying it. Slightly scary, but good fun!

lagwagon555:Hi, can I ask why it has been ofline? Just curious

You may or may not be aware that the site used to look quite different from how it looks now.

When the appearance of the site changed, it was not just the site's appearance that changed; the inner workings of the website changed substantially. Due to the internal changes that were made, the old instant messenger would no longer work with the new site.

It took so long to release the new version because our programmers developed a completely new messenger to work with new version of lernu!, after exploring some other options first (such as buying third-party chat software to run on our site). Also, our programmers spent a lot of time working out other bugs with the new site. The release of Internet Explorer 7.0 put a big wrench into the works, because parts of the site no longer worked with it, so fixing that had a higher priority than the new messenger. Also, we have released a couple new courses in the meantime, and a lot of time was spent programming those.

Ahh i see, i was not aware it changed its looks. I first saw this site in about December last year, and it had the same format.

But thanks for bringing the messenger back! Its great fun! Give my thanks to the programmers