Post Confirmation for Game Chat / Different Background Color vs Team Chat

I and others I know have made this mistake a number of times already - accidentally chatting in the Game Chat window what was meant for Team Chat only. Yes, I know this was my fault and I should pay more attention, but it would be much appreciated if users could turn on an option as part of their profile which asks to confirm Game Chat posts before posting. 

Barring that, it would be helpful if the Game Chat background were tinted red or something, as a reminder of "Hey knucklehead, you are about to post in the Game Chat window." 

I suggested somewhere that in team games the chat window could be divided in two, so you can see everything at once and avoid this kind of problems.

I've looked at changing the background colour for the input, but that kinda screws up the entire input box.

Will have to think about this one for a while.
Having bot chat boxes together works for a large monitor maybe, but not for a small screen.

I really hate confirmation boxes, especially for something like sending chat.

And what about making one chat partially visible while using the other chat? Like overlapping windows, similar to double column, but better for screens with small resolutions (I still believe that even if it's not optimal, the two column thing is not that bad).

What if there was some "placeholder" text in the box to tell you it's team chat. The text goes away once you start typing.

I added some placeholder text (only for team chat), good idea.

The problem with the placeholder text in the Team Chat windows is that the fact that it is missing isn't going to be noticeable to the player who thinks he is in the team chat window and doesn't think to look for it, just like he/she didn't think to check the tab to make sure the Team Chat tab is bolded. It would be more helpful if the placeholder text were in the Game Chat, although the placeholder text does not draw much attention to itself, so it may only be of limited effectiveness. I do like the split chat window idea, though, since the team chat will always be on the same side.

That's always the source of every problem; people don't think.

I'm against the split chat idea at least until the majority of our users have at least 1920x1080 displays. I also think Psymon's overlap idea would look bad.

I know matty mentioned changing the background color of the input box but to me it looks fine so I added a light cyan background color to it. Does that help? Does it look ok?

Edit: while I was in there I fixed the chat input losing focus after sending chat in non firefox browsers problem. Also it will now focus the input automatically when switching tabs.

Yeah that looks terrible on my firefox (on linux) here.

The best thing I can do is put "To All:" in front of the public chat and "To Team:" in front of the team chat.

But if that's not going to help you seriously should reconsider thinking about these things again

The problem is you are making all these changes in the Team Chat window - the Game Chat looks the same, which is the one I want to avoid accidentally posting in. Can you add a slight amber tint to the Game Chat entry field?

"I'm trying to think, but nothing happens." - Curly

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlejsgxOxrU

You need both to be different, then adapt and mentally assign the differences as team chat. Not the other way around. If you see it "too normal" then you're in the wrong place.

I'm not saying I'm not a fault for posting in the wrong chat window. I'm just trying to give some suggestions to make it more idiot-proof, since I have seen that I'm not the only one you makes this mistake.

There was something that was catching me out when I tried team games, if I remember correctly, the Team Chat tab is coloured differently and that kept telling me, it was selected. If this is true to my memory, perhaps try making it the same as all other tabs, so that it only changes colour when selected.

I have noticed that as well, depending on which browser you use. It doesn't do it in Chrome, but it does in my BlackBerry browser.

Yes the point of idiots is that all humans are. Making a desing idiot proof is very, very hard, if not impossible.

For example, adding a confirmatiion will never help. It just means ppl click another OK button without thinking about it.