customizetalk.com

[Wumpus]

Like I promised, here is the complete review of the new testing version of Google Talk. This version brings lots of changes, and the review will get a bit technical. If you don’t understand some things just read over it. Let’s start with the avatars.

Avatars

A while ago we posted a newsitem about the Google Talk buddy icons.
In this article you can see a picture of Gayle Laakmann, who made this possible, together with a preview of the Google Talk version we can enjoy today.



In the new contact list, on the right-hand side, you can see the avatars of your friends. If your friend has an older version of Google Talk (and so he/she has no avatar) you will see a blue, red, yellow or green silhouette of a person. If you want to change your own avatar, you need to click the little picture on the upper right. A menu of 5 by 5 pictures will pop up. You can click one of these pictures or click on ‘More pictures…’ to select a new one. The file has to be PNG, BMP, GIF, or JPG or you will get a warning message.



After the first install of this version of Google Talk, the avatars in the menu are the default avatars that were included in the installation of Google Talk, and they will be ordered by last use once you have selected an avatar. The avatar you have currently selected will not appear in this list. The dimension of an avatar is 96 x 96 pixels. Exactly the same size as the MSN Messenger display pictures. A strategic choice?

Avatars are saved in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\avatars. The pictures of your friends are also stored here. A small version (32 x 32 pixels) of an avatar is stored in a name like: 0b8ca9c8f4225048ce5b504ef9f855348373c8b9.online.avatar. The avatar of 96 x 96 pixels is saved in a file like: 0b8ca9c8f4225048ce5b504ef9f855348373c8b9.original.avatar (notice the same id). You can just open this file with your basic image editor. They are PNG files with a transparent background. To remember which avatar a friend has, Google Talk saves the email addresses of all your friends together with the id of the stored avatar they use in the file avatars.txt. The order of your recent avatars is saved in the file with your email address in it, for example: xxx@gmail.com.mru.txt. The file mru.txt contains the default order of the avatars when a fresh copy of Google Talk was installed.

Let’s take some breath …
And here we go again with the themes!

Chat Themes



Okay chat themes, what are they? Chat themes adjust the layout of your conversation windows. You can choose a theme by opening the settings window, and selecting Appearance. You can select a theme and view a preview of it before using it (I don’t know why, but a right double click opens google.com in Internet Explorer). Chat themes are files created in HTML and CSS. So this means you can create your own themes!



If you want to create your own theme you need to go to C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\themes. There are 3 directories here: chat, system, and user.

* I haven’t been able to figure out yet what the directory ‘chat’ does.
* The directory ‘user’ can contain chat themes that you have created. Place them under ‘user/chat’.
* The directory ‘system’ is used internally by Google Talk. Do not install additional files here; use 'themes/user' instead. Everything in this directory will be deleted whenever Google Talk updates. In this directory there are 2 more directories: 'chat' and 'common'. ‘chat’ is scanned for chat themes. This directory contains the 9 default themes. Actually there are 5 themes, but 4 of them have a choice between showing avatars in the conversation or hiding them. You have to figure out by yourself how to create these themes. This review would get pretty long otherwise. The directory ‘common’ contains files that are used throughout Google Talk. ‘common/images’ contains the 4 ghost images when a user has no avatar (the blue, red, yellow, green avatars).

Continuing with the contact list..

Contact list

You can view when a friend comes online now. Go to settings, select notifications, and enable ‘show notification’ in the ‘Friend online’ frame. A window like this will pop up when someone comes online:



There is no sound associated with this event. Right clicking the popup will close it, or you can just click the X.

On the bottom of the contactlist you will see 2 new buttons: The button '+Add' will open the window to invite a friend to Google Talk. The button ‘View’ has some options to customize your contact list. 'Show one page' which hides the scrollbar. 'Sort by name', speaks for itself. 'Show pictures' hides or shows the avatars in the contact list. 'Show offline friends', to… show offline friends (no way), and ‘Also show Gmail contacts' shows your Gmail contacts in the contact list (You need have ‘show offline friends’ enabled to use this option).



The right click menu changed too. And it now has menuicons in it. The first 2 options are ‘Chat’ and ‘Call’. Then there is an option ‘Set as my picture’ to steal the picture from your friend. The option ‘rename’ allows you to change the local name of your friend. And then there are the options ‘Block’ and ‘Remove’.



Next to the button 'view' there is an icon that looks like an envelope. This is the same icon that you can see in your system tray when you have a new email. You know, the red little envelope thingy. On the right of this envelope is a number that shows how many new emails you have. If you have no new emails it will show 0. When you click the icon, Gmail will open.

Contact Cards

Each user has its own contact card. I don’t know how it’s called officially, so contact card will do for now. A contact card will pop up when you hover over a contact in your contact list. The contact card shows your friends avatar, nickname, custom status, and email address. You can’t click it, because hovering above it will cause it to close. To view your own contact card, hover above your nickname.



Resource hacking

Let’s look at the resources. If you don’t know how to use resource hacker, you can skip this section. I’ve already checked out the registry and it doesn’t seem there are any changes there that need to be mentioned.

The bitmaps: In the BITMAP tree we can see the 4 ghost images, and the default buddy icons.

The String Table:
* The string $(PRODUCT_NAME) is used often, and will be replaced with Google Talk.
* You can change the text that appears in the chat theme preview.
* The default avatar bmp files are also listed here.

There aren't any other fun changes here.

Other changes

Emoticons that use ; as an eye are now shown in blue too.
The complete list is now ;-| ;-O ;-x ;-P ;-D ;-( ;-) ;'( ;| ;O ;x ;P ;D ;) ;( ;) :-| :-O :-x :-P :-D ;-) :-( :-) B-) :'( :| :O :x :P :D :) :( :)

The about box finally shows © 2005-2006.

Conclusion

I think we’ve seen all the changes in this version (I know, I probably missed a few small ones). You now know all about the avatars, the chat themes, the contact list, the contact cards and the internal resource changes. I, and the entire customizetalk.com team must say that Google did a great job creating this version. But remember it’s still a testing version, use it at your own risk.

Also, I'd like to mention that a new version of the website is being constructed. And it will most likely include a section for themes and avatars. If you are a creative person, need a challenge, and like Google Talk, you can send your own avatars or themes to gticons -[at]- gmail.com and we’ll try to put them on the website. Icons in the Google Talk avatar style and 96 x 96 pixels are preferred. Don’t forget to mention your name in the email.

( PS: moderator mEo is away for 2,5 weeks and has no Internet. You don't know what you're missing man )

(The release of Google Talk 1.0.0.91 was reported by Giacomo, Jonathan, and a person without a name)

Updates

I should have known I forgot something.
Thanks guys from the forum for posting these updates:

Ramibotros: "When I right click on an empty space on my contact list, a small dot appears and when a contact changes his status while a chat window with him is open, his new status is written in a grey font.

gIMpSTa: "I just noticed tho it appears to only popup notification if the person who just signed on is NOT set to busy mode."

Kououken: "I thought you might want to add to the featurelist of the new version, full Unicode support is working now. People who use Google Talk for Japanese, Chinese, and possibly other languages, can now use any language in any part of the program, from names, to away messages, to the chat window itself. The previous version allowed you to send foreign characters, but the interface support was still under development. Works great now!"

Vikke: "Hey Wumpus, you forgot that new (that you havn't visited) "weblinks" are shown in blue, weblinks that you already visited are shown in red. And also, if you invite a contact that have .91 it has its name shown in Gmail profile."

Vikke: "Google Talk is using http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0153.html enhancement to send / retrieve avatars. This means 3d party clients can also use this."

Wumpus: "If a contact says something and his/her window is minimized, a window will pop up, and now it also shows the avatar"

rapster88, vikke: "B) B( Bx BO B| BD BP are also smileys! B are sunglasses"

siddharthagandhi: "You probably saw this change, but you didn't officialy recognize it. On the e-mail and online buddy notification there is an X to close it...before there wasn't."

v1ncent: "i will be happy if a can see the chat themes, because they dot work... I think is because my sistem is in spanish an the Gtalk dont reconize were is the folder of themes, but i dont know..."

v1ncent: "i will be happy if a can see the chat themes, because they dot work... I think is because my sistem is in spanish an the Gtalk dont reconize were is the folder of themes, but i dont know..."

Troels Bay: "Have you noticed the cosmetic bug in the contactlist window, on the top right corner. It says 'Settings |Help' - I think it should have been 'Settings | Help'."

Troels Bay: "double (or tripple etc) whitespace is converted to single. No more typing errors like 'Hello fred. How are you doing' (this would be converted to 'Hello fred. How are you doing')."

Lucky: "when i typed :)) - it showed :)). and now it doesn`t make it blue at all"

Ramibotros: ":') and ;') turn blue , too , in case u wanted to express ur crying out of happiness. Very Happy"

Wayo357: "I don't know if this was mentioned yet, but it should be noted that gtalk can take ANY valid picture for your avatar and it will automatically shrink it and compress it to the correct size required."

Troels Bay: "when you log in from another location you still have your avatar."

[gIMpSTa]

Heh, in your pic you blurred out vikkes name in the title bar but not in the chat window!!!

[trinest]

You missed the "Set as my picture option" which people using this version have. ^_^

[Wumpus]

[trinest]

Realy easy to read the blured stuff. ^_^

[siddharthagandhi]

Help!!!

For some reason, the notifications of people coming online and all of that is shown, but I can't see any contacts!!!!!!!!! Only when I first IM a person does that person show up on my contacts thing. What should I do? What's wrong?

[Wumpus]

[v1ncent]

Please, i need some help in here... i will be happy if a can see the chat themes, because they dot work... I think is because my sistem is in spanish an the Gtalk dont reconize were is the folder of themes, but i dont know... I really wish to have that new feature, so please, can someone help me? =(
Thx

[Kououken]

I thought you might want to add to the featurelist of the new version, full Unicode support is working now. People who use Google Talk for Japanese, Chinese, and possibly other languages, can now use any language in any part of the program, from names, to away messages, to the chat window itself.

The previous version allowed you to send foreign characters, but the interface support was still under development. Works great now!

The regular codeset is enough to do some neat stuff

┐(;° д°)┌ \ (΄ζ ` ) /

But the full unicode set is way more fun!

[rapster88]

Seems Like Connecting Bug is fixed as i mentioned before.
but i think i found something



What's the gray rectangle up there?

and if i minimized and maximized again.
it's happen like this



the backgrouds are over there
and if happend like that, i can;t click on username and password text fields. so i've to moved by pressing Tab key.

and [mEo!]'s ET wouldn't work on v 91

But i haven;t test it on my Home Computer,
so here r my work computer specs.
CPU - 1.2 Ram- 256
AGP - 32Mb

[mazefa]

i have never met the thing above.

[rapster88]

[vikke]

Hey Wumpus, you forgot that new (that you havn't visited) "weblinks" are shown in blue, weblinks that you already visited are shown in red.

Edit:
And also, if you invite a contact that have .91 it has its name shown in Gmail profile. And this was my 300 post!!!!

[Wumpus]

[PauTo]