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April 24, 2008 9:29 AM PDT

Get Facebook chat minus Facebook

by Josh Lowensohn

So you've been having fun with Facebook's somewhat half-baked chat service for the last day now, but are you growing tired of having to first log-in, then pop-out the chat window? For those of you who want to chat without this two-step process, there's a nice little tweak discovered by Mozilla Links that lets you set Facebook chat to pop out in Firefox's side bar.

I'm not really a fan of sidebar driven applications (gDocsBar not included), but this implementation works out pretty well. It will load up your buddy list and work just like the pop-out version does--minus of course the actual pop-up.

I'm still waiting for Facebook to add away and invisible modes, and allow other chat applications, such as Pidgin, Meebo, and Trillian, to integrate it. In the meantime, this tweak makes it a little more bearable.

[via DownloadSquad]

Chat with your friends in Facebook without having to be on the page using a simple feature in Firefox.

(Credit: CNET Networks)
Josh Lowensohn is an associate editor for Webware.com, CNET's blog about cool and otherwise useful Web applications and services. If you've found a site you'd like profiled, shoot him an e-mail. E-mail Josh.
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by andrew.mager April 24, 2008 12:30 PM PDT
Innovative. Fresh. Convenient. Distracting. Wonderful.
Reply to this comment
by aleroglow2000 April 24, 2008 3:42 PM PDT
Nice find, also I was wondering what theme are you using for firefox in your screenshot for this article?
Reply to this comment
by jonq82 April 25, 2008 12:38 PM PDT
I'm pretty sure that's just Firefox 3.
by UH_stdnt April 25, 2008 9:07 PM PDT
its firefox 3 beta 5. not a theme.
by anthonyyaco April 27, 2008 5:21 AM PDT
Yeah that theme is called default. For the new Firefox 3.
Reply to this comment
by rdx8791 April 15, 2009 11:36 AM PDT
good
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