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This article was published on July 26, 2011

How to see who really is online on Facebook Chat


How to see who really is online on Facebook Chat

There’s a way to fix the new and functionally horrible Facebook chat list that debuted with the Skype partnership announcement, we’re told by Tal Ater, the guy who first tipped us off to evidence of Facebook video chat in the works in 2010.

The new chat bar shows a random collection of your friends who are online and offline, making it a pain to communicate with anyone who isn’t in the list or see at a glance who is really online.

How to see who is on Facebook

Ater found that all it took to fix this glaring user experience problem was to modify one line of code, which he’s released as a browser extension for Windows user and a bookmarklet for OS X and Linux users.

“It used to be easy to see which of your friends were online in Facebook. But these days, the Facebook chat window is cluttered with the friends Facebook thinks you should chat with, ignoring who is online and who isn’t,” says Ater on his site, where you can download the extension or install the bookmarklet.

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