And by "almost ready," I mean I successfully connected to a chatroom, registered my name (after logging in to the real website), and typed out a "Hello world" message. That only took, what, two months? Hard part's over!
It's missing a bit of logic for handling the user list, but I may find time during AC to go sit in a corner and work out the code for that.

The new interface is as complete as I think I want to take it for the beta release, and not to worry: The lite version will still be there, and I've redesigned it so that you can see both video and chat at once! Thanks, interface design principles! In fact, about the only thing missing at this point is a volume slider.

There will undoubtedly be some major hangups in the coming week as I rapidly prototype my way into a premature beta release, and you can probably count on at least a day of downtime as I push the thing live. I'm gonna need beta testers on that day, so stay tuned: You could be a crucial part of making Watchtail work!