Review: Facebook Chat on Adium
Background
Yesterday Adium released a beta version of their program that supported Facebook Chat. As one would assume Adium now allows you to log into your Facebook profile and chat with your friends without ever entering a browser.
Does it work?
Sure does! Adium did a wonderful job seamlessly adding in Facebook chat. I have the instant messenger service set up for aol instant messenger, gchat, and now Facebook Chat.
Problems
Running Adium with Facebook Chat enabled makes browsing Facebook a terrible experience. Every page you attempt to visit requires a log in. Every step you take is accompanied by yet another prompt to log-in. It is basically a see-saw effect of you logging out of Adium, and then in turn Facebook. One has to wonder if Facebook built the platform like this intentionally to stop companies such as Adium from building this type of application.
What do you think?
Do you like having Facebook Chat within Adium? Have you experienced the continual log outs? Do you think Facebook did this on purpose?
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June 12th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I don’t use Adium or Digsby (which also incorporates Facebook Chat) and I still seem to get logged out a lot more than I should. Sometimes I’ll be playing a game of Facebook Poker (addicting) and I’ll be disconnected from Facebook Chat, even if I’m right in the middle of a conversation.
I’m not sure Facebook is doing it on purpose, I think they just haven’t fine tuned everything yet.
June 12th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
That login loop will be a killa.
I can’t wait to try Facebook Chat in Adium.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I started to notice the continual log-out problem last night…after using Adium + Facebook with FB open in my browser without any problems for hours.
You raise a good point. It’s possible that Facebook has intentionally sabotaged Adium. By using Adium for FB chat, a lot of people will be spending less time on the Facebook website…which means Facebook’s advertisement exposure is going to take a hit.
It’s also possible that it’s an issue with the technology they use for chat implementation. FB chat uses a combination of Comet and JSON in order to keep a constant HTTP connection open between the server and client. This allows Facebook’s servers to push messages to the client instead of having the client poll the server every x seconds. I’m not too entirely familiar with how Comet works, but I have a feeling its the culprit. Two constant HTTP connections to Facebook’s servers from the same IP address? That might be a problem.
June 12th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
It seems that facebook does not know how to create a good login platform. Getting logged out everytime another browser or program tries to access the network is just a bad login script. I have not looked into it, but my first guess is that they are using a session cookie that only allows a single login at a time.
If this is the case then it is quite easy to log other people out of facebook with a little script. Create some javascirpt that alters the cookie, *poof* they are logged out.
I don’t use facebook, so I am unsure exactly how their login process works. However I do know it can be avoided quite easily.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I just enabled FB chat on Adium a half hour or so ago and haven’t experienced log in issues yet. I am stoked about this though. It’s probably the only way that I’d actually use FB chat since I don’t like my IMing being locked to a web page. It was the same case for Gchat - I use it much more on Adium.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Yeah I am having the same problems. The facebook chat works great but it is almost unusable with it opened and then trying to view facebook itself. Continual log outs. Real pain.
When I shut down adium or log out the log outs stop on the facebook page.