Local Chat Window - Resizeable?

Hi, all - kind of a newb still so please don't flame me if this has been asked before.

I'm wondering if there's a way to limit the size of the local chat display. I find when I go to clubs that there's always some idiot who thinks it's oh so fun and original to spam the howling wolf gesture five times in a row and suddenly the entire left half my screen is covered in forgettable ASCII "art," and the only way I've discovered so far to mitigate this is to keep a chat window open on Local Chat - which works, more or less, but even at its smallest still blocks some of my screen.

Is there a way to limit the amount of Local Chat that's displayed without keeping a chat window up?

Thanks!

Welcome to SL. And yes.
You can open your chat window and drag it to any size you want.
If you are talking about local chat that is displayed in the actual viewer window.... you can go in to preferences and go to the text chat tab. There is a space there to adjust the number of lines of local chat that will be displayed. I believe the default is 30 lines. You can crank that down to 20 or whatever you are comfy with. You can also adjust how many seconds chat will stay on your screen before it fades.

You can also right click on the person howling, choose profile from the round menu, and click the mute button to shut them up (for you only). If the local chat window is open, clicking their name works the same way.

I always have two windows open on my screen

I have the Communicate window open, to see my Groups/Friends and IMs.

I also have the Local Chat window open. By default, it appears as a tab in the Communicate window, but it can be undocked with the little "pages" icon in the upper right. I keep it separate from the other Communication tabs.

By doing this, the temporary Local Chat display is disabled, and all the chat appears in the Local Chat window, safe and under control.

Another option is "Bubble Chat". If you set this in your Preferences, then local chat will appear in a word balloon over the speaker's head, instead of in a line bv line display. I think this is harder to follow, but you should try it yourself and see if you like it.

Thanks, this the one I was after - though I appreciate all answers. I guess my viewer is set to like 40 lines or something outrageous - will be pruning that severely when I get home from work this evening.

yes good idea , I have mine down to 2 lines and fade after 5 sec