Facebook: Keep an eye on who's online

February 23, 2008 | 1,891 views | Trackback | |

Facebook users out there will agree with me - it's always more satisfying sending messages to your friends, commenting on their notes or photos, or writing on their wall something that will likely garner an immediate response or "bite", if you know that they're online at the same time and therefore more likely to respond straight away.

Until recently, I had to go through the process of clicking on the little down arrow next to the "Friends" menu item, select "Online Now" and wait for the new page to load. Thankfully those days are over.

Through the magic of Flock (or Firefox), the "Greasemonkey" add-on and a simple user script, you can now get a tiny, unobtrusive list of those of your Facebook contacts/friends who have been online within the past 5 minutes in your left hand column on every page (click on the image for an example).

Here's what you need to do step-by-step:

STEP 1: Get Flock or Firefox

This is a mandatory step and a pretty intelligent one if you're one of these slaves to the awful IE browser. Download and install the latest version of Flock (recommended for Facebook users) or get your hands on the latest release of the mighty Firefox.

STEP 2: Install the Greasemonkey Add-On

Get it here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/748

STEP 3: Install the "Online Friend List" user script

Click on the grey "Install this script" button at the top right of this page: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/19696.

It's as easy as that. Next time you log onto your Facebook account, the "Online Friend List" will appear under your application list in the left column.

If you wish, at any time, to remove the user script, all you have to do is:

right click on the little monkey head that should appear in the bottom right of your browser
select "Manage User Scripts" from the menu that appears
highlight the "Facebook Online Friend List" in the script list if it isn't already
hit the "Uninstall" button

Simple.

There's a whole stack of user scripts available for changing the appearance and behaviour of Facebook. Visit the Userscripts.org website for more.

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Your Comments

4 Responses to “Facebook: Keep an eye on who's online”

Comment by Meg on February 24th, 2008 @ 9:34 pm

Slightly stalkerish, but handy in some instances I guess.
Comment by melissa on October 16th, 2008 @ 9:18 pm

Hi,
it's not working for me. Does this still work for the new facebook?

Thanks!
Comment by Masey on October 16th, 2008 @ 9:25 pm

Probably not Melissa, no.

Most of the Greasemonkey scripts that worked pre the changeover don't work now as the CSS structure was completely overhauled.

Sorry.