Dec
16
2010

Editor’s Review: Chit Chat for Facebook

An article by Prerak Pradhan

Everyone loves chatting. Like it or not Facebook is the most popular website on the internet and it links more people than any other network. If you, like me feel that its chat window is a little too small then an IM for Facebook is just what you need. And so keeping that in mind, today we look at, Chit Chat for Facebook.

The Facebook login application, Chit Chat, was launched in August of 2009, when it was created by the team of Daniel Offer from the UK and Henrik Larsson of Sweden. The two men, both 23, began offering early carnations of their Facebook messenger application and since then interest in the program has grown by leaps and bounds. At the moment, this innovative and very useful application is gathering lot of admirers and is used by them every single day to send and receive Facebook instant messages from their desktop.

With several hundred thousand people using Chit Chat to log on to their Facebook pages each day, we put this Lilliput of an application under the microscope for a close look.

Design:

The first thing that strikes you as soon as you start up Chit Chat is its design. It seems the designers have taken the concept of simplicity a bit too far resulting in something that is not up to the mark in terms of interface design. If I might add it resembles how MSN Messenger for Windows used to look.

Your contact list is split in to online and offline contacts, with pop-up windows appearing in the bottom corner of the screen, notifying you of people who are online and offline. The main contact screen allows you to browse contact, and use the menu bar to access program preferences and check for updates.

The chat window is somewhat plain, yet functional. It has an array of emoticons but nothing special that would make it stand out from the other IMs available. The tabbed interface though is a brilliant idea it allows you to switch between conversations easily without having to manage many windows at a time. But besides that again the chat window again looks very bland. All in all Chit Chat seems to be lacking on the design aspect, I get trying to make it simple but common everyone likes a bit of style.

Functionality:

Chit Chat for Facebook competes in a crowded marketplace, and as such it has had to develop features that Facebook users will find compelling and difficult to replace. One of the things users seem to like about Chit Chat for Facebook is its low memory requirements. Chit Chat is designed to be lightweight, using very little memory and CPU time. Lightweight it might be but it has a great array features built into it, including the ability to set statuses from the program itself along with the ability for those who use Winamp or Windows Media Player to create musical status alerts. Besides that it also allows you to save your chat history.

It has a lot of shortcuts built into it to make your life a lot easier. The Ctrl+M shortcut that minimizes everything is sure to come handy to any employee/student. Users can also easily cycle back and forth through their various Chit Chat conversations simply by using the Alt+2 and Alt+1 keys to move forward and backward through the conversation.

All those features are real good but there was one feature that really stood out and is I think unique to Chit Chat. Chit Chat allows you to post message on the wall of your friends along with the ability send mails to your friends which I think is absolutely fantastic and is real fun to do.

Besides that one feature that is missing and the users would love to have is the invisible mode. I would have also liked to see more options made available for users wanting to customize the way the application look and feels. It allows you to do the normal customizations such as changing the font of the messages being sent and received but it doesn’t allow you to change the look of the interface itself. But besides those minor hiccups Chit Chat seems to be great on the feature font. It is real fun and convenient to use and play around with

Verdict:

Chit Chat for Facebook is a simple desktop app that lets you use the Facebook chat without even having to open the web browser. It is simple to use and has a very easy feel to it.

But on the downside, the truth is that Chit Chat for Facebook is not very reliable and felt quite unstable during our tests. It seems to take some time to recognize the text input after a message has been sent and it seems to show all the offline and online notifications in a bundle which is quite irritating with the notification buzz going off all at the same time.

But all that and I still think this application is great. Even though it has an unfinished feel to it the application is real fun to use. If you need an IM from which you only need to talk to your Facebook friends then Facebook chat is definitely the application for you.