Considering your Options: Facebook Chat
It’s undeniable that some of us rely on Facebook more than others. While the official facebook app on webOS is good at what it does, it’s missing something crucial for many: Facebook chat. The team over at Palm updates the app frequently so we’d expect to see this feature added in the future. In addition (as you will read later), webOS already has native support for Facebook chat. In the meantime, however, read on for a guide on different methods for connecting to Facebook chat on webOS.
Paid apps
In the app catalog there appears to be three paid options: Mundu IM, Facebook Chat, and Agile Messenger. Judging by the reviews, users are not able to consistently access Facebook chat (the service not the application). However, this could quite easily be chalked up to users who don’t follow directions. It is also worth noting that Agile Messenger seems to be the best solution, but it also cost the most, $10.
If you are like me, you don’t want to have to spend up to $10 to get onto Facebook chat. Even more, there are three free options which will get the job done.
Facebook.com
While Facebook has an excellent mobile site, it does not support chat. But, with a little bit of trickery you can get access to the desktop site. To save you some time, point your pre to http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php .This will render a a window that only contains Facebook chat. The size of the window is far from ideal, but it certainly gets the job done. You will probably have to scroll more than you’d like, but this is by far the most consistent method of accessing Facebook and that makes sense because you are, in fact, on Facebook. I typically use this as my fallback when the following two options aren’t working as I want. Sometime’s I’ll even leave a card open with this page loaded to monitor when I get a new message, but reply using ebuddy. Why I might do this will be explained in a bit.
m.ebuddy.com
Like accessing Facebook, this method also runs in the browser. Unlike the method above, m.ebuddy.com is optimized for a mobile browser. However, notice I said mobile browser, not the webOS browser or smartphone browsers. Because of this,
I find ebuddy to be a very clunky solution. For example by default your buddy list is paginated. When I log in i typically have four pages worth of friends. Another example is the web apps constant need to refresh. This becomes annoying because you will only get a friends message after a refresh, meaning you may reply to conversation before seeing the last thing your friend had said. Presumably, they problems result from ebuddy’s desire to support the lowest common denominator, the dumb phone. This does make sense’s from ebuddy’s perspective because they have iOS, Android, and Java applications already available to service a majority of cell phones. Regardless, ebuddy’s implementation works and will get you up and running with little effort.
Patch for default webOS messenger
The webOS messenger utilizes the open-source messenger engine libpurple. This is the same library that applications like pidgin use. What does this mean? Basically, 
webOS messenger can easily be extended to access many different messenger protocols. That is what enterprising developers at Precentral did. By only changing a few lines of code, the messenger’s Google Talk capabilities can be hacked to support Facebook chat. This works because both messaging protocols use the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, or XMPP. Unfortunately, even though this is the best integration with webOS on paper, I do not find it to be very reliable. There are times where some of failed to connect to the server after multiple attempts to log in. There are times when I’ll only be able to receive messages. And then there are other times where messages appear to be sent but are never received on the other end. (Ed: Some of us also found that this patch slowed down our messaging app on the whole. A big no-no.) Despite these bugs, I still look to this option first when logging in to Facebook chat. First, it intergates with synergy. My Facebook conversations are put right in line with my text messages with that person. Second, the patch enables use of webOS notifications. This way I’m pleasantly alerted of new messages. Finally, it’ll run in the background idly waiting for someone to message me; I don’t waste time glancing back and forth at my phone. You can grab this patch off Preware.
There you have it, a rundown of your free Facebook chat options on webOS. Do you find these free methods work for you? Have you bought a paid solution from the catalog? Are there other free options out there that we’ve missed? Hit up the comments and share your experience.
