How To Remove The New FaceBook Chat Sidebar – Drawbacks / Disadvantages

Selected few FaceBook users were offered the new FaceBook chat sidebar feature earlier this month. As mentioned earlier not everyone have got the invites and screen space is one of the main reasons for it.

A majority of those who decided to shift over to the new Facebook chat feature seem to have more complaints than praises. I too tried the new feature and there are a lot of short comings, but it might just be the beginning and FB, in future, may update / upgrade it, hence it’s too early to take a call.

Latest Update (July 29th, 2011) – Don’t forget to like us @ our FaceBook community page

Remove / Toggle Between Old and New Facebook Chat Sidebar

This is the best solution of all solutions which are mentioned below:

The only requirement is that you must have Google Chrome for this fix to work. Download chrome from here.

Once you have Chrome downloaded: Go to >> Chrome Settings >> Tools >> Extensions >> Get More Extensions >> type this in search –> “Facebook Chat Sidebar Disabler” >> Install >> Enjoy !

Or you can directly install the Chrome ‘Disable FaceBook chat sidebar’ from here.

Disadvantages of new Facebook chat feature are:

• It takes up considerable space. A manual option to ‘Hide Sidebar‘ is available, but you need to hide the sidebar every time you launch it, unlike in the old one.
• If you are one of those who have a lot of friends online all the time, you surely will not like the new chat sidebar. It shows a list of 20 – 25 online friends with who you interact most. There is no explanation as to how the rest of your online friends will be listed, hope it’s not another scroll bar to see the rest !
• I don’t understand why is it imperative to show the list of friends who I chat with most ? Since chat and my friends are personal to me, will I not be aware of it ?
• The new design is very confusing when compared to the old chat feature. In the old one all those friends who were online were listed first, this made the task easier to scroll through the list and chat with whoever I wanted. The new one lists my friends in alphabetical order, and it has nothing to do with whether they are online or not, which confuses me as I have to first search for the name and then check if they are online. How cool is that !!

My advice to Facebook is- they should consult Steve Jobs of Apple before they come up with a new feature and functionality design 😉 (pun intended 😉 ).

Can I remove the new FaceBook chat feature and revert back to the old one ?

I really want to, but unfortunately there’s nothing listed on how to revert back to old chat on FaceBook :(. Those who upgraded to the new Facebook sidebar chat are stuck with it for a while now !

I’ll update this page when I find a suitable solution or when Facebook decides to tell us how ! Meanwhile, if you figure out how to disable the new sidebar chat and enable old chat, please let me know via comments section.

If you too hate the new Facebook Chat Sidebar, you can join our FaceBook community page and then leave your comment, may be they’ll take some measures to set it right.

Update:

Finally found a work around to revert back to the old Facebook Chat !!

• Login to your Facebook account via any browser: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera etc., (most of these browsers provide tabbing facility, provided you are using the latest version).
• Open a New Tab and paste => http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php and you’ll revert back to the old chat (but the old chat is limited to this tab alone).
• The two drawbacks of this methods is:- you have to open the new tab every time you login to your Facebook account and your Chat window will be in another tab, which many people may not like. But this is the only workable solution.

Those who use Firefox, can load the old chat in sidebar, follow the instructions here.

Update:

Hide offline contacts, order Facebook friends contacts by online / idle / offline status, hide new sidebar chat button:

Joris Griffioen has posted a solution (on Facebook – I hate the New Facebook chat sidebar community page) for :

• Hiding all those contacts who are offline. This one’s such a beauty ! It really was an irritating feature.
• Ordering your contacts in the sidebar chat by online / idle / offline status
• And a one click ‘Hide Sidebar’ button.

The only constraint is, if you want these features you’ll have to shift to Firefox and must have GreaseMonkey scriptinstalled. Once you have GreaseMonkey on Firefox, you can download FB Chat Sidebar Fix script from Userscripts.org and install it to avail all the features.

If you too hate the new Facebook Chat Sidebar, you can join our FaceBook community page and then leave your comment, may be they’ll take some measures to set it right.

Update (22 – July – 2011)

So far, VasanSoft Chat Mechanic is best solution to get your old FaceBook Chat back !

• Using the VasanSoft Chat Mechanic on Firefox :
  Step 1 : Install Greasemonkey addon for your Firefox
  Addon Link : http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/?addon/greasemonkey/ 

  Step 2 : Restart Firefox

  Step 3 : Install the VasanSoft Chat Mechanic script for Greasemonkey
  Script Link : http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/10?7563.user.js

  Step 4 : Reload Facebook. Enjoy!

• Using the VasanSoft Chat Mechanic on Chrome :Step 1 : Visit the VasanSoft Chat Mechanic script link. It will prompt you, for installing the script. Just click Accept.
  Script Link : http://userscripts.org/scripts/source/10?7563.user.js 

  Step 2 : Reload Facebook. Enjoy!

[Via Vasan’s Photos]. Credit goes to Vasan for making our life easier :).