How exactly does the chat's time work?

Question

Basically the clock on my computer went ahead by a minute so my messages all said "a minute ago" right after i typed them, so I fixed the time but then intead of "seconds ago" it went to "seconds from now" and then about 30 seconds later it turns to "seconds ago" even though it always started out as "seconds ago". Since this was my first time seeing this on chat it confused me and "seconds from now" is just so much longer than "seconds ago" so it looks so wierd and it's hard to get used to.

So I'd like to know exactly how the chat's time works please?
Oh and what's the longest amount of time the chat can say? I mean, if nobody typed anything for ten years, would it say "a decade ago"? If nobody typed anything for 100 years would it say "a century ago"?

Just me and my curious self :3

Comments

quick look at the source coding of the chat room;
jQuery.timeago.settings.strings = {
  prefixAgo: null,
  prefixFromNow: null,
  suffixAgo: "ago",
  suffixFromNow: "from now",
  seconds: "seconds",
  minute: "a minute",
  minutes: "%d minutes",
  hour: "an hour",
  hours: "%d hours",
  day: "a day",
  days: "%d days",
  month: "a month",
  months: "%d months",
  year: "a year",
  years: "%d years",

It would never say a century,
Probably just 100 Years.
The longest it could go would be some random number thats really long which only PM knows :I
I believe the order that is posted in, is the order you should see the 'seconds ago' stuff in.

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Yeah, I changed the year on my comp to 2099 and it says "85 years ago"

Answer 1

suffixAgo: "ago",
  suffixFromNow: "from now",
  seconds: "seconds",
  minute: "a minute",
  minutes: "%d minutes",
  hour: "an hour",
  hours: "%d hours",
  day: "a day",
  days: "%d days",
  month: "a month",
  months: "%d months",
  year: "a year",
  years: "%d years",

Basically if the post was posted a few seconds ago the the chat adds:
> Scizornician 2 seconds ago / from now

Then you for 1 minute it takes the variable called 'minute' which in this code happens to be 'a minutes' and adds 'ago' to it to form:
>Scizornician a minute ago.

The above is the same for all the other times as the chat will switch the correct variable in to replace the 'minute' variable in the example above.

I think if the amount of seconds is closer to 0 seconds (Under 30) then the chat adds 'seconds from now' anything from 30-59 seconds makes the chat use 'seconds ago'. PM can clarify this though.

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To answer the question on what's this highest time value it will go up to I believe that 'years' is the highest as there are no 'decade' or 'decades' variable in the code.

I think I answered everything.

Answer 2

This was asked before. and it basically means that your PC's time is off by a minute or 2.

Comments

I know what it means, I'm not asking why it happens, I'm really asking how exactly the chat works with this wording, because the "seconds from now" surprised me, so  it didn't make much sense to me

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you want to know how it works? ask PM for the code thingie then

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maybe i will :P