Facebook New Chat Interface

A Quick Glance At Facebook New Chat Interface:

On 6 July 2011, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be implementing a newly designed chat interface that allows for group chatting, and partnering with Skype to provide a new video calling service, according to Techland. The new Facebook chat interface is available right now, with Facebook group chat and Facebook video chat integrated in it. Let’s see what’s new in the Facebook new chat interface.

The new Facebook chat appears as a sidebar which is fixed at the right side of your browser, and the Facebook main interface has moved slightly towards the left. Frankly speaking, I would prefer the old chat interface, which only displays your friends’ name whenever you click on the chat bar, instead of appearing statically at the right side. It distracts me from focusing on my news feed, because the news feed no longer displayed at the center of the browser.

Similar to the old ones, but even you untick the “Available to Chat“, the chat still appears at the side bar. You can neither chat nor see who is online, even though your friends list is at the sidebar. If you really dislike this Facebook new chat interface, you can choose to “Hide Sidebar“, which changes it back to the old look, by showing your friends’ faces at the left side of your browser.

You now can see the chat history between you and your friends by clicking on “See Full Conversation“, which will direct you to a new window.

“Clear Window” deletes all recent chats in the chat window, whereas “Add Friends to Chat” allows group chatting by adding friends into the present chat box. 

The new Facebook video chat button will only appear on the chat box after you install the plugin at Facebook video calling page. For more information, you can refer the full guide on How to Video Chat on Facebook by wikiHow.

In short, the both new features are great, but I would recommend Facebook to restore the old design of the Facebook Chat, which definitely looks better. What do you think? Do you like the Facebook new chat interface?