New Facebook chat layout

Testament1 · 11-07-2011 10:03pm #1

I logged into Facebook the other day only to be greeted with a message on the right hand side of my page saying they had a new sidebar/chat layout. Since there was no option to decline it I had to click "try it now". Personally I find it to be an incredibly annoying setup now as it no longer shows everyone whos online, only the people you interact with most (apparently), even if they're not even online! I liked the way the chat system was before and this new one just seems like a huge step backwards. Its sh*t like this that will spell the downfall of Facebook in my opinion.

Tallon · 11-07-2011 10:18pm

It's the way the site is moving. It's to incorporate video chat, which is pretty awesome btw

Testament1 · 11-07-2011 10:31pm

I doubt I'm ever going to utilise video chat. And surely the person you want to have a video chat with is going to have to be online in order for it to work so theres still no point in showing people who are offline in the sidebar.

henke · 12-07-2011 11:21am

Does everyone have the new chat layout now? Still on the old layout on my account.

Ian Beale · 16-07-2011 5:57pm

Mine keeps hopping between the new sidebar (awful) and the old chat list, it seems if I click a link from google it loads the old chat list

hoff1 · 16-07-2011 5:58pm

this is crap! anyone know how to change to the old chat? fb are shooting themselves in the foot with this one

Frank Bullitt · 16-07-2011 6:56pm

How the hell do you change it?

Frank Bullitt · 16-07-2011 7:40pm

This will only help Google+

Blink182rock · 16-07-2011 11:09pm

this is bol0x

Frank Bullitt · 17-07-2011 12:57pm

Its back to the old one on mine, maybe Facebook actually listened to its users this time?

henke · 17-07-2011 1:41pm

Mine only changed to the new one yesterday and today is back to the old one. Hope it stays that way but I fear it wont.

Andersy · 18-07-2011 6:43am

I don't like this chat setup. This is annoying. If I do not want to chat, then it is not possible for me to hide that. The old one was better, because that was easy to hide and show. This, all time viewable system is not good.

harr · 18-07-2011 7:00am

Hit the settings button at the bottom of the side bar and there is option to hide it.

ando · 18-07-2011 3:05pm

awful.... No "Likes" for this new chat feature that we are forced to use

Frank Bullitt · 18-07-2011 5:01pm

This is very annoying indeed, can't say im a fan, i can't see them keeping this unless they want to run Facebook into the ground.

henke · 18-07-2011 5:01pm

It is a real pain that you can't hide/show it with one click like on the old chat.

hoff1 · 18-07-2011 7:01pm

one of the main the reasons fb was better than bebo was the chat thing.... if its not broken..........

Andersy · 19-07-2011 7:14am

harr wrote: »

Hit the settings button at the bottom of the side bar and there is option to hide it.

You are right. If they include a hit-button at bottom to hide or to be visible the chat bar, then it will be fine. And that will also be helpful for users. Facebook is not a chatting forum, so that bar should not be there continuously.

Frank Bullitt · 19-07-2011 8:11am

Don't see why they need to change it, it only had a small revamp last week and now its turned to this tripe.

Lets start a group to get the old one back.

Aishae · 19-07-2011 1:59pm

drives me spare - id been using fb less and less - i hardly bother with it at all anymore except for chat. now for some reason the chat messes up if i try to close it and have to go to a whole separate page to view the whole conversation. its too inconvenient - im toying with the idea of going back to msn messanger if they dont fix whatever the bugs are with this chat.

fb needs to learn to tweak out most of the bugs before rushing to release things, they really do.

henke · 19-07-2011 2:08pm

I have this URL bookmarked and open it in a new tab for chat.
http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php

It is the old layout when you popped out the chat. It still lists users the old way showing all that are online. If I was guessing though I would say this URL wont work for too long but for me its a workaround for now.

TheHumanOnion · 21-07-2011 6:12pm

Are there others out there that are having any messages they send or receive via chat showing up under the "messages" section on the left of the page instead of popping up as normal chat messages?

It gets kinda annoying when you're not supposed to be on FB in work (use meebo to log into the chat instead) and can only sneak a quick peek at it every so often, and you see 5 or 6 different people have been trying to talk to you but you know nothing about it

Frank Bullitt · 21-07-2011 7:15pm

Viral campaign against it now, haha.

Paigne · 23-07-2011 11:43am

I think its an absolute pain, I didnt even want it :mad:

The go offline thing doesn't work for me, even when I have it set and it says it people can still chat to me, but I cant reply until I set it online :rolleyes: I dunoo why Im online on everyone else's

Frank Bullitt · 24-07-2011 8:05pm

http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php

Works great for me.

Testament1 · 26-07-2011 9:58pm

Here ye go

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Old-FB-Chat-Application/230361736996200

Click on see more and follow the instructions, works fine for me on Firefox.

Owen · 26-07-2011 10:00pm

What 'special' developer thought this was a good idea? Lets have contacts, lots of contacts, even offline ones. Then we'll arrange is so you have to hunt between the offline and online contacts to find people you need to talk to. Simples!

Asphyxia · 27-07-2011 12:13am

I'm not liking it at all but it's going to end up blending into fb like all the other annoying features they've added but soon you'll just forget about them. FB is slowly becoming more like Bebo lately they have several similarities and I'm not sure if that's a goo thing or bad thing.

refusetolose · 27-07-2011 12:27am

anyone know how to edit the friends lists in chat?

Andersy · 27-07-2011 7:32am

FaceBook has done that and fix that side bar, now it can be minimized. That is really a great update.

Trotter · 27-07-2011 1:59pm

Andersy wrote: »

FaceBook has done that and fix that side bar, now it can be minimized. That is really a great update.

Mine seemed to order the online ones together this morning, but its gone back to a mad mixture of online and offline now.

heresjohnnie · 09-08-2011 1:19pm

Is there any word on this returning back? I've actually stopped using facebook because of it and i was a major user before. Found chat was great when i was down last year and started loads of new friendships/reignited new ones thanks to chat. Now you have to know who you specifically want to talk to and search constantly to see if they are online, a joke!

aidan_walsh · 09-08-2011 6:51pm

Highly unlikely. Facebook doesn't mind pissing off a few people now and then to do what they want with the site, and very rarely go back on it.

bpb101 · 09-08-2011 7:24pm

i hate the new chat and then i found this

http://www.facebook.com/activate.old.chat

i ussaly hate these pages but it works well ( firefox anyways)
you like it and it will give you a link for a add on that put the old style chat on

it can still do 3 way chat

callaway92 · 10-08-2011 12:29pm

I actually didn't mind the new chat and Layout. I liked the idea of that New News Feed on the right of the screen, but then all of a sudden it reverted back to the old way for me. Old chat and no more new news feed.

Surprise question here, but how do you get the new chat etc. .?

jester77 · 11-08-2011 11:57am

wow, they have somehow managed to make a horrible feature even worse :eek:

Feck me, have they no UI teams in there at all. Now you can't see who is online without clicking on that horrible sidebar, and worse of all, it is now polluted with status updates.

jester77 · 01-09-2011 7:21am

jester77 wrote: »

wow, they have somehow managed to make a horrible feature even worse :eek:

Feck me, have they no UI teams in there at all. Now you can't see who is online without clicking on that horrible sidebar, and worse of all, it is now polluted with status updates.

woot, they changed it back. What an awful piece of UI design that was.

Owen · 01-09-2011 10:49am

jester77 wrote: »

woot, they changed it back. What an awful piece of UI design that was.

Not on mine they haven't. They made it worse last week. Now my sidebar has mostly a list of offline contacts and 2 or 3 online contacts. Then there's a link at the bottom for more online friends. I click that, it expands, but then I can't see the ones above, and can't minimise the more online friends panel that popped up.

Why. The. Frak. Would I want to have a list of offline contacts in my chat? This all started to go wrong when they made chat and messaging the same thing. There was nothing wrong with the old system.

I can't even hide myself from friends I have in an ignore friend list like in the last chat. There's an option for it, but it doesn't work.

py2006 · 07-09-2011 10:37am

The changed it back to the original format for a few days but this morning its back that horrible big list of names on the right hand side!

08-09-2011 4:54pm

py2006 wrote: »

The changed it back to the original format for a few days but this morning its back that horrible big list of names on the right hand side!

Seems to be the case. I'm still on the old chat but one of my work colleagues is on the new one now. I guess I'll be going back to the Greasemonkey script soon.

New Facebook chat layout

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