A new client has been released today to Google Labs, for testing and feedback purposes. This is not a final product, and still contains quite a lot of bugs (please report all bugs you find to Google using the Feedback-button). This client basically allows you to run the Google Talk flash gadget as a window in Windows XP and Vista, but it also offers notifications like the old desktop client. :)

Update 1:
Google Talk now requires an installation, something the old client did automatically when you ran the program. This is due to the fact that there's a new version system, making it easy to separate between different versions.

Instead of installing it to the Program Files-folder like the old client used to, it now installs it to these folders depending on your operative system:
XP: <Drive>\Documents and Settings\<User>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk, Labs Edition\
Vista: <Drive>\Users\<User>\AppData\Google\Google Talk, Labs Edition\
<Drive> should be replaced with the drive where Windows is installed (very often C:\).
<User> should be replaced with the current user signed into Windows (probably your name).

Update 2:
The client is now using HTML, JavaScript and CSS to render all its windows, and stuff. This means it's skinable for us, and we can also make huge modifications. It's using the normal flash gadget to do the "hard work" though. :(
The rendering engine is webkit (the Safari rendering engine) instead of Internet Explorer. This means that it's going to be easy to port to other platforms like Mac OSX and hopefully Linux as well.

You can find all the important files in a version-folder inside the Google Talk installation folder (see above). It also contains DLL's (core.dll for instance) which are loaded dynamically by the EXE, that's probably the only thing the EXE does. I'll reverse engineer these routines later, so I'll be back with more information in a while.

By putting a simple HTML link I got it to load CustomizeTalk.com:

I hope we can get this client really customized with these great possibilities! :)

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