Friday, May 8, 2009

Meebo Desktop Client?

I've been looking for a desktop alternative for Meebo for a while, only to find out that's not how Meebo is supposed to work; It's supposed to be a complete online application and not a desktop one.

So to keep it an online app, I simply use Prism (from Mozilla) to have it running on my system out side the browser. The sound notifications are there, and Prism lets me add a notify icon so it's minimized to the tray. You can tell Prism to run it as a full-size window without any of the Firefox controls, or you can tell it to have everything--the sidebar, location bar, statusbar etc.

Currently there's no option to have the notify icon alert you when the page title changes (e.g. when you get new messages) but Meebo allows you to pop-up the contacts menu. To make all chat windows pop out, just click the pop out button on a chat window and minimize the main Meebo window to the tray. That way all new chat windows, will pop out as well, making it more like a desktop IM program.

These are my settings:


After my start menu shortcut icon appeared, I copied it to my Startup folder so it'll launch automatically at startup, just like an IM app.

Tip: They don't say it in the creation window, but if you want the settings button to appear you have to tick the 'Show status messages and progress' checkbox because the preferences icon is located on the statusbar.

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