Future Plans

-Package it -Include it in upstream Pidgin -Fetch Facebook chat history -Allow grouping with other accounts (by name as OCRizing the mail adress img is against the Facebook Use Agreement) -Fetch and make intelligent use of FB data (eg birthday)

Characters like æøå are not displayed correctly. I can send them, though. But such characters in buddy names, status or messages are displayed like \u00e9 or similar.

I'm getting a lot of repeated messages and errors that kill conversations. I can't talk to someone after said error unless I restart pidgin. "Send destination not online"

Keep up the awesome work- because of you, I'll actually /use/ facebook chat.

Brilliant work. I have really been looking forward to seeing this!! I hope you will keep integrating more from facebook. Reading peoples info, getting noticed about facebooks notifications, friend requests, messages in inbox and on your wall etc. And being able to to read/write messages from the inbox, and maybe also walls (not sure how the latter should work) But basically make it such that I need to open my browser and point it to facebook as little as possible. (of cause this should not become a facebook client, but these things could be seamlessly integrated into pidgin, and make this plug in extremely useful. )

I tried this plugin and I love it. Impressive work here!!! My only concern before using it full-time is that when using special characters like é, è, à, ç, etc., it displays \u00xx codes. When typing in french language like I do most of the time, it makes lines very hard to read. Fixing this little issue would be highly appreciated and I would then definitely recommend the plugin. :)

Any change of a .rpm in addition to the .exe and .deb?

Can you add a menu item to go to the users Facebook page when you right click on them? Thanks, great plugin!

A LOT of the time it seems that I send a message (or supposedly receive a message) that does not show up on either end. So messages aren't going through. Also is there a way to disable the FB chat? I mean if I have it on in pidgin I don't want it online as well. I do a similar thing gmail chat. As in I keep it off in gmail, and switched on in pidgin.

I notice the same effects as abhiroopb241088. About half of the messages sent to facebook IM don't show up in pidgin, while the other half do. I don't notice any discernible pattern for which messages make it through.

The effect is repeatable with facebook chat (at facebook.com, that is) on or off.

By the way, great product!

This plugin is GREAT. Keep up the amazing work!

impressive work, this is by far the best messaging app i have used. this plugin is here to stay!

Fantastic plugin. I've been looking for this since Facebook implemented the chat.

But if I may make a recommendation for future revisions, I think it would be pretty cool if setting your away message/invisible put you offline for FB chat. I guess it could be as simple as disabling the plugin when you set the away message? But then again if I knew how to code it I'd be doing it already.

I hope you keep this project running!

This is a brilliant plugin. The only thing that made me want to move over to digsby was its integration of facebook and thanks to this plugin I get to keep my favorite open source messenger.

Just keep the good work going guys.

# Download all of buddy list (not just those people on chat)

I think, without looking at what you've done to actually implement the plugin, you could take a screen-scraping approach and grep all the user information from the friends. This would get many friends, but not all, due to the way Facebook has implemented their AJAX calls just about everywhere.

Also, I second demonwolf04's comment about offline settings via away/invisible. Makes sense at least. Perhaps an internal setting to disable the connection of the Facebook Chat Protocol when the user is set to one of those modes?

Can you add an option to have your facebook status be the same as your pidgin away message?

THANK YOU for this.

Is it possible to set the plugin up so that when using it it will not log you out of Facebook in your browser?

It'd be nice to have your Facebook status follow your status in Pidgin. So, online=online, offline or invisible=offline, and Do not disturb or Away=Idle.

As it is right now, it seems rather odd to other people on your Friends list if you're online all the time on Facebook. Like, "Don't you have anything better to do than be on FB constantly," is probably what many think. ;)

when trying to write to a friend, i get the message authentication failure, but im logged in, so it shouldent do that. used the .deb package to install as im using Ubuntu 8.04, dont know how to fix this, but im gonna check if everthing is in its place, checking .so files in .tar.gz package

Any messages received should be marked as read, so that the same message doesn't appear again each time you go online with Pidgin. If you don't know what I'm talking about, try sending yourself a few messages, then go offline and then back online.

nice job...

and, hm, maybe, you should write your own smiley pack for facebook... or maybe I should do it?

I guess facebook has its own set of smileys & it'd be nicer to see them on pidgin :-)

and, hmm, yes, i thought of another good improvement to it.... any idea of integrating that poking thing into facebook chat plugin?

@nibras.ahamed Check out http://andreineculau.com/blog/2008/04/original-smileys/ for the smileys I like the poke idea though... Perhaps a /poke?

anyone here using 64bit Linux?

and having succes with facebook plugin?

i'm having the same problem with getting Authentication Failure when messaging some people, not all

eionrobb:

sorry for the delay. the poke idea...

i'm not sure whether you want to have it as /poke or as a context menu item... anyway, it'll be a very nice idea to have the poke feature...

I can remember that both MSN & Yahoo have only a textual command(/nudge & /buzz)though third-party plugins which give you a graphical button are available. maybe, /poke together with a choice in the contextual menu will be perfect I guess.

Straight away opening a link to http://www.new.facebook.com/poke.php?id=profileid will take you to a page which will ask whether you really want to poke or not... hmm, but, it'll be nice if you could avoid the need of opening a browser window, straight away performing a poke to desired user...

Fantastic plugin! Thank you!

I second the comment by brian.keith.macdonald on Jul 16, facebook status should be idle when pidgin is away or N/A or DND... Great plugin, thanks for the work.

add a check for new versions bit like in the skype plugin?

nice job buddy,

you seem to be updating it very often... it's something that i didn't expect in this project...

keep it up..

Great plug-in! Thank you!

My two suggestions:

(1) Add the capability for the .exe installer to install to a specific location. I am using Pidgin Portable (portableapps.com) and I had to install to my computer, then copy over the files to my USB key.

(2) For the server field, is it possible to use https:// (SSL) instead of http:// somehow? I tried adding https:// in the server field, but was unable to connect. This functionality would be good for those who want extra security, or are trying to use at work (for example, http://www.facebook.com is blocked but https://www.facebook.com isn't).

Thanks again!

An right-click option to go straight to profile would be cool.

And thanks alot for the plugin...it's amazing :)

Is it possible to make this so that it can be installed on Carrier (a fork of Pidgin) as well as Pidgin?

People marked 'idle' in the buddy list are not signed into facebook chat (but are browsing facebook) and can't be spoken to. That's a little confusing at first. Could there be an option to show those people as offline?

rpm packages are available thru official fedora repositories.

would it be easy to port it to empathy/telepathy ? i would use empathy because it also provides sip voip (and it works).

Please consider adding an option to separate online/active Facebook chat users from idle ones (the way it is in the interface on Facebook itself), and then a second option to hide the idle users if we want.

The list simply gets too long once you have a certain number of Facebook friends particularly at certain times of the day, and this would be a way to trim it down to those most likely available.

I noticed in the most recent update that we are now receiving the smaller profile icon. Was this to bring down the bandwidth? Would it be possible for you to put in the option of which to use so that those of us with a faster/unlimited connection can still get the full pic? Also, would it be possible for us to pick our own refresh times? Thanks for all the hard work. If I wasn't such a poor college student, this would be a project I'd donate to.

Dont know if it should work yet, but make pidgin able to download the whole friends-list even after reinstalling the facebook-plugin/upgrading the plugin

Kind Regards Michael H

just got an idea, how about a facebookchat for google-gadgets?

Kind Regards Michael H(MikeDK)

Returning from auto away/idle status causes duplicate status updates to be sent to FB. Is there any way to prevent the status update from occurring if the text matches what is already there?

Sometimes when i haven't facebook web oppened, i can't recive mesages from my friends

thanks

I see there's a problem sending messages to people who use a dialup/slower connection. I guess the problem lies in the fact that when people tend to navigate pages, the message bounces back when their client is not available for a while. So, it's better if perfectly timed retries are added rather than evenly timed retries as been implemented now.

How about ability to force idle on FB? I tend to leave my computer on at all times, with pidgin and firefox up. When I used the browser version of FB chat, it was all good. After fifteen minutes or so, I would show up as idle, with the moon logo next to my name.

Now using the pidgin version, people have been telling me that I always show up as online/available.

So, is there any chance of idling facebook, and not just disconnecting when I leave the laptop/go to bed?

Can't you just use the 'alien' program'/package in nix to automatically convert your deb or other package to rpm?

I love this, srsly.

My first idea tho is to integrate the Friend Lists on FB and translate them into the buddy list groups. Because I've been busy categorizing my FB buddies into groups for organization. And of course editing this in Pidgin should (optionally) modify the actual Friend Lists on FB. It would definitely make Friend Lists more useful to me in general!

Peace, DJ Phazer a.k.a. Nick

I want to compile and install from source using svn. The process is not working. I have compiled and installed pidgin from source and other plugins. I usually do this within a local directory and then do a sudo make install. For compilation of this plugin, I am placing the svn sources within ~/src/facebook-plugin Should I be doing something else? My pidgin is installed within the /usr/local tree.

Thanks

I attempting to write a how-to for compiling and installing from source (which Ive done with pidgin and many other plugins: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=975783 I can't seem to get the facebook program problem resolved.

this is awesome been using for a while now also its sweeet to block people threw pidgin but i was thinking since fbchat runs on xmpp is it possible to compile a version of pidgin for arm processors on pocket pcs and smartphones then i could chat with my friends anywhere i go

dma5291, Facebook chat doesn't use XMPP at all. There's a few versions of the plugin already compiled for PPC and ARM processors on the downloads page.

Not a bug, but a minor annoyance. When I receive a message it goes both to the pidgin chat window and the facebook webchat bar, is there an option to stop this or a bug reported for this? Thanks.

I'd like to see my facebook news feed as a buddy / chat window with the ability to update my own status there as well.

now, when i block a friend on pidgin, they can send me messages but it doesn't "jump" in a new chat window, so the friend thinks he been ignored because he think that i get the message from him. I think that when i block a friend and he send me a message, they need to get some type of error message that the send operation has failed or something like that.

I hope i explained myself well, sorry for my bad English. Keep on the good work!!! :-)

or even better, if it can be done, that the blocked friend wont see me as online

Modify the plugin to allow a chat history that can be uploaded to im-history.com or one of the other messenger archive sites.

Really, this plugin is amazing! thanks so much! I hated the interface that facebook has.

This is an awesome, awesome plugin. The only issue I have is that I never seem to "go idle" when logged in via Pidgin. Does the "Idle" state of Pidgin not correspond to that of Facebook?

I agree what douggg...@yahoo.com recomended, I would like to see facebook news (home page), in a chat window like the twitter plugin.

Also i would like to see the names for the offline users, instead of their id number.

I'd like to see a couple of things, because I'm behind corporate security:

• ight now, you have to have an active log-in on the current machine, in order to connect. I mean, I have to load FB in the browser, and log in, then I can close the browser and use the plugin. Even at home, this is annoying; if a company's web filter blocks opening FB directly, this is a problem. My current workaround is a saved version of the login page stored locally. Logging into this will bring me to a "this page has been blocked" but the cookie and session will be set up.
• I don't see an option to choose the port, or the FB server. These are settings that could be fiddled-with to try to get an "allowed" connection.

Thanks so much for this plugin. Can you update notification to use the standard notification system in the latest Ubuntu version?

something else that would be useful for this otherwise awesome messenger is that you should either be able to go away or your facebook message should show up when your pidgin goes away (right now what it does is says david is away when im away on pidgin)

Maybe sync the facebook status and aim status? or all statuses?

I would dearly love the ability to either set a size limit/resize on Facebook profile pictures or turn them off entirely. They are currently massive and explode out at me on every mouseover, blocking out most of the buddy list.

I've got and idea and working example how to get all friends in the contact list. I use facebook connect, but with no interaction with user. So the user won't need to click "allow" button

For those of us who are chatters first and facebookers second, I would really like to be able to turn off the notifications. Or at least turn off flashing the buddy window when they come up.

I have the error "Error getting info from Facebook" when I try to connect across a proxy with authentication. It's possible to add this feature?

Facebook support chat groups. Include this.

I second djphazer's request to sync FB friend groups with pidgin buddy groups.

When someone is idle on facebook, it just shows up as online on pidgin. I haven't seen anyone mention this, just the other way around (where the pidgin user shows up as online when they are idle) thats a feature i would like to see, so i don't have to check my facebook page before messaging someone.

I have compiled the plugin on OpenSolaris? and it is available as http://www.sunfreepacks.com/pkgpool/ASpidgin-facebookchat-1.50.pkg.gz

wouldnt it be great if this plugin starts using facebook connect?

finch support would be lovely.

One thing that bugs me about the Facebook plugin is that it doesn't show when my friends are "away/idol" Facebook will now go idol if not touched for x amount of time but pidgin shows that the user is always online.

Just an idea

Anyone ever have disconnect issues? My client disconnects every 5-10 mins. I think it has to do with the Facebook servers as I do not lose internet connectivity.

Other then the disconnect great product! Keep up the good work!

More smileys! http://www.djod.co.uk/2008/04/23/facebook-chat-emoticons-emotes-and-smilies/

Synchronize FB and plugin chat history.

What about Carrier compatibility?

An option to disable the "Facebook friends lists support" feature please, it's completely messed up my pidging contact list, automatically (and forcefully) moving my facebook friends out of meta contacts or my IM groups into my facebook contact list groups...

Ditto the above comment by guiltyvictim. I agree, I'd also like the option to disable facebook friends lists, and rather just have one group in pidgin "Facebook" like I used to have it...

+1 for guiltyvictim's request

+1 for guiltyvictim's request

+9000 for guiltyvictim's request

Would be nice to have a feature that tells if one or more users deleted you as friends from facebook. A sort of diffs in friend list between pidgnin connections. Wonderful would be if I could be to have a friends addition/deletion log. Like today Facebook user A left you, and Facebook user B was added, yesterday ... etc. As soon the feature "Download all of buddy list (not just those people on chat) " will be added is this a reasonable feature?

Add a PPA so all you need is the apt line and the gpg key to install across most nix distributions. That'll make it easier to update and install.

+1 guiltyvictim's request

In 1.60 you have implemented Facebook Group/List support, could you possibly implement a setting to disable that feature? I just don't want all the Facebook groups I have setup for privacy then creeping into my Pidgin list.

I like and use a lot your plugin. Thanks. Yet, I have to report that it frequently disconnects, even without the web version opened in parallel...

+1 guiltyvictim's request rightclick to open profile would be great

"could you possibly implement a setting to disable the grouping feature"

seconded

I think you should make it so people's Facebook statuses appear as their status in the IM window, if possible.

How do I get this plugin for Mac OSX?

are facebook profile pictures supposed to be there? if so, not working for me (xubuntu 9.04), if not yet a feature, would seem a natural thing to have.

thanks for this plugin btw

You should make the group called Facebook and make it display the contacts name instead of their ID number.

"could you possibly implement a setting to disable the grouping feature" "You should make the group called Facebook and make it display the contacts name instead of their ID number." Second these. Also, you should try to use the medibuntu repository to get more bleeding edge updates out. Thats what they do. They keep a repository of media and goofing off softwares more up to date than ubuntu wants for stability reasons. Its always good to have at least one repository tracking your most up to date.