Get Invisible in Google Talk at Desktop with Prism
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Google Talk was launched on August 24, 2005. Since then it lacked in features such as Invisibility mode, Video Chat, etc which other competitors like Yahoo Messenger supported. Google has surely added these features in past year but only to its online versions of Gtalk i.e. Gmail and the desktop version is lacking behind.
Google also have a beta version which is based on Adobe Flash and is having a sky of errors. Using the Google Talk Labs Edition gets impossible at times and most users un-install it. Google seems to be slow at desktop development of Gtalk. So we came up with the following solution for invisibility in Google Talk.
In order to use invisibility at desktop, here is a short tutorial which lets you run the online version of Gtalk on your desktop.
First step is to download Prism, a product in development by Mozilla Group which integrates web applications with the desktop, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser.
Note: This trick will only work on all Windows OS as currently Prism runs only on it.
Second step is to run the prism and configure and create a Prism app (basically a Prism shortcut) and specify the Google Talk Gadget URL in it.
The Step by Step Guide:
- Download Mozilla Prism.
- Install the Prism.
- Run Prism, a window will open. Paste this link ( http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout ) in the URL field.
- Give it a name as “Google Talk Gadget”.
- Configure other options as per your need as where do you want to place its shortcuts. Prism creates a shortcut for every app you create. Make sure you place atleast create one shortcut.
- Run the shortcut you just created.
- Re-size the window to look like a messenger by using Drag button in the bottom right of the window.
I found this as an effective way to remain offline while staying at your desktop and without launching your heavy browser. Though you get invisibility in Gtalk at your desktop but there is still a flaw in this trick. It doesn’t notify you when a contact comes online or goes offline. Also when someone sends a message, the window in Taskbar never blinks and so you have to keep a check at this window in order to know if you have got any message. So basically you get no notifications by this method. If you have any better way than this, do drop a comment below.
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We can easily create application shortcut with Google chrome browser without installing any third part software.
@Nilesh I appreciate your interest and reply. You can surely create a shortcut in any browser and run it from there. But we used prism as it actually get the feeling of Desktop application like there are no browser buttons and even you can hide navigation bar resulting in pure Desktop experience and currently Chrome has just 2% market share so not everyone today has Google Chrome Installed.
Another issue is for those people who have multiple accounts. With Prism it treats every window as a separate browser. So even if you have multiple Google Accounts, this method will help you run multiple desktop-like Gtalk messengers with different accounts.