How to Work the New Facebook Chat (July 2011)

Recently Facebook changed the way the chat works and very many people are confused and angry that it is not working the way it used to.  In this post I will show you how to get it to work starting at step one.


EDIT: A simple, however, also temporary fix to this is using the popout chat.  You can get to that by copying and pasting this into the address bar: http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php


First thing's first.  When you first log in to Facebook nothing seems too different until you click on the chat at the bottom of the screen.  When you do this you will likely get this message:

Picture 1

When I got that message, that is exactly how it appeared on my screen, I couldn't see anything below that.  However, this does not happen with some people.  If you are using Google Chrome (which I hope you are because I don't know a way to do this with other browsers, you can download Chrome here: http://www.google.com/chrome), you can move that message away from the corner so you can see the entire message.  If you can already see the whole message, skip this part.  What you need to do is right click somewhere on the message and click inspect element.  Something that looks similar to the following picture should appear in either a separate window or at the bottom of the web browser.

Picture 2

The part that is red will be next to where yours will be higlighted.  Scroll up a bit until you find the part that I have highlighted it should include the text:

fbDockChatBuddyListNub

Click on that to highlight it, then right click and select "Edit as HTML," it is usually the third option.  Then all the text will appear black and white.  Go to the very beginning and right after "div" copy and paste the following code:

     style="position: absolute; right: 100px; top: 100; bottom: 100px"

 Make sure that there is a space between div and style and between 100px" and class.  Then click somewhere outside that black and white text box so it looks normal again.  After that, the message should appear somewhere else on the page where you can see the whole message (see picture 3).

Picture 3

Now, click the "Try It Now" button.  Don't worry if nothing happens, just refresh the page or open a new Facebook window/tab.

When you get to the new refreshed page, you will see a list of your most interacted with friends there, however, this will show you friends who are not even online.  If you wish to see only friends who are online, you can click the settings button at the very bottom right and from there, click "Hide Sidebar."

Picture 4

Picture 5

After you do this, the sidebar will minimize like it normally used to and then all of your friends who are online will appear at the bottom of the left sidebar (underneath your name and your groups and everything...at the very bottom of that column).  

Also in the menu shown in Picture 5, you can limit your availability which allows you to choose which friends in your friend lists are allowed to see you online, very similar to the old Facebook chat that had a pill like icon (see Picture 6).

Picture 6

So really, Facebook didn't take away any features from the old friend list to the new one, they just changed the user interface, though that was very quite possibly a bad decision on their part.

In conclusion, you can see all of your online friends by hiding the side bar.  You can still appear offline by making sure that "Available to Chat" is not selected in your settings (See Picture 5, in that, it IS selected).  You can still choose which friend lists are allowed to see you online, you just need to know how to work it and in this post I showed you just that.

I hope this has helped you in knowing how to work the new Facebook chat.  Please leave me your feedback in the comment section below and feel free to ask any questions regarding something I may not have covered.  

Side Notes:

First I want to tell you that I always use Digsby for chatting with my Facebook friends, so if you are still confused about all the changes to Facebook chat and you just want to use a chat that doesn't change, you can download Digsby here: http://www.digsby.com/download.php.  Digsby can also connect to other IM accounts such as Yahoo, Gtalk, MSN, MySpace, and can connect to email accounts by most providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and others), and can also hook up to your Twitter and Facebook accounts so you can check those without ever visiting the site.  It also allows you to update your status, make comments, like posts, dislike posts, and much more.  It is currently only available for Windows operating systems, but is coming soon for Mac and Linux.  You can sign up to know when they become available here: http://www.digsby.com/signup/maclinux/.  However, if you run Ubuntu, you can download the windows version and use Wine to run Digsby.  You can download Wine here: http://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu.  I am currently running Ubuntu, so I know that that works.

Second, having been using Digsby for so long, I did not know that you can group chat with Facebook, this may or may not be old news, but you can do it by clicking the settings button in a conversation, right next to the X and then click "Add Friends to Chat..."  Type your friends name, select the friend, click done and now you have a group chat.