Going, going, gone! (I'm off to bed)

At the end of the day, when making my final moves, it seems somewhat brusque to simply disconnect from chess.com without letting my ONLINE opponents that I am signing off the session for today.

How about a facility to send a message into the message box attached to the chessboard to all of my opponents who are online?

Would anyone else find this useful?

that would sure simplify things, good idear Artfizz.

That is a great idea. I always try to tell people I'm signing off, except when my internet connections goes wonkie!

Excellent idea artfizz!

With us living in so many different time zones we are always coming and going,  leaving a goodbye message to all online opponents would be a nice touch.

It's good if you're getting on with your oponent, but if your not talking at all, thay might take it the wrong way!

I can just about understand "Good Luck!" being misinterpreted (http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/wishing-people-good-luck); but "Good Night!" ???

Could mean curtains!

I can appreciate such a feature, but I'm not sure I would use it myself.

Another way of achieving this would be to have a navigation button Next Online Opponent (analagous to Next Ready Game), that would cycle through the list of games in which my opponent is online (but it may not be MY turn to move).

When the facility arrives - to list Current Games by online status - that will provide a workable solution similar to Next Online Opponent.

If you're planning to be online for say an hour, a facility to set up a banner (visible to your opponents) would be potentially useful. It would automatically count down - like the one chess.com uses to indicate when the site going down for maintenance. As well as making your remaining length of session visible to your opponents, it might also serve as a reminder to yourself that you have something else to do!  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/voluntary-restraint

You might think you could put this in your status - but there are two problems. First, someone's status is not readily visible (one of the clearest places to see it is on the My Friends pane). Secondly, without a central clock  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/does-anybody-know-what-time-it-is, a fixed-time  message (such as "here till 6PM GMT" or "here for an hour") is either unwieldy or useless.  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/simple-local-time-note

Such a manual online status would also overcome the problem of appearing to be active whilst, in reality, merely logged on.  http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/friends-that-are-offline

That would be a great Idea. Just a little flag or some such to show you are both looking at the same board.

I suggested the same feature for a different purpose over a year ago:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/vacation-warning

I was told when the My Status feature was implemented that that should cover it.

I agree with you and paul211, that would  be a good idea

On a related topic, I think it would be a good idea to have an msn style 'member is typing a message' in game and message windows in livechess so I know if it's ok to close them. 

Some type of indicator would help.  Also, I'd like to vote for a time stamp for the moves list.  Similar to the one you see on AOL IM, for example.

 Sounds nice in theorie, but how the hell are you gonna know who's watching what?

Ex.. I got 7 windows open but I'm interested on just one, so would I be misleading the other six or over exciting the other one?

When actually  I'm busy doing something else & forgot to close me windows & the poor 7 tulips are staring at thier screen in bewilderment!

I think it does for vacation -- if I'm not mistaken, your opponent's status is explicitly included in the vacation notificaiton at the bottom of a game in which your opponent is on vacation.

I always make a habit of updating my status to indicate when I'll be returning when I use the vacation feature -- I wish more people would do the same.

In fact, come to think of it, it would be great if there were a mandatory "projected return date" that needed to be entered when you manually turned your vacation status on (don't get me started about timeout protection...).  It would be informational only, as the idea wouldn't be to automatically take you out of vacation mode, but it would force some indication of when you will be returning to be made for the benefit of your waiting opponent.

"Chess with Friends" for the iPhone has a feature in which, if your opponent is viewing the same game as you are, a little pair of eyeballs appear in the upper-right of the game screen.  However, with an iPhone, it's not like you can have more than one app 'open' at once, and thegab03 is making some great points here about how people actually use their computers.  (Just because I've got eleven browser tabs open doesn't mean I'm not out getting coffee.)

I'm probably giving myself away as an introvert here, but the feature I've often wished for goes in the opposite direction:  I'd just love to be able to suppress that goofy little radio antenna that follows my avatar around when I'm on the site.  I spend a lot of time in here NOT playing chess (reading forums, messing with Mentor and wrestling with the Computer Workout, etc.) and what business is it of anyone else's?  Just sayin'. 

Yeah, but a pre-vacation notification would also be nice. As in, "hey, I'm going on vacation tomorrow" (or in a few days, or whatever). This is similar to artfizz's idea of "hey, I'm done with chess for the night."