Chat4Eclipse is a free IM plugin for Eclipse that allows you to chat with your Facebook and Gmail friends while you code. It’s a nice free instant messaging plugin that provides you the freedom of chatting with your friends while you are working on Eclipse IDE. Chat4Eclipse integrates perfectly with Eclipse and lets you chat with your friends from within the IDE.
The chat window appears as a separate panel and leaves the impression of a log file being printed instead of a usual chat display. Thus, it’s a perfect instant messaging solution for your workplace that you can use to chat with your Facebook or Gmail friends whenever you need a break from coding.
Download and Install Chat4Eclipse:
Chat4Eclipse is available as a freeware on SourceForge and can be downloaded easily using the link given at the end of this article. The download will consist of a JAR file of size 1.1 MB, which you need to put in the plug-ins folder of Eclipse IDE. Once this is done, you can launch Eclipse and setup your Facebook and Gmail accounts for chatting. Let’s see how.
Setup your Chat Accounts and start chatting with your Facebook or Gmail friends:
To configure Chat4Eclipse to begin chatting from Eclipse IDE, you need to first open the account setup dialogue box and provide your login credentials for Facebook and Gmail.
For this, click on the “Windows” menu, click on “Show View” submenu, and choose “Other..” option. This will open a dialogue box displaying a list of categories. Expand “Chat4Eclipse” and choose “Chat4Eclipse – Accounts”. Now a view panel will appear below the code window with a toolbar listing “f” and “g” characters. “f” corresponds to Facebook and “g” corresponds to Gmail.
To login with Gmail, click on the “g” icon and enter your Gmail login id and password. To login with Facebook, click on the “f” icon and enter your Facebook username (NOT the email id) and password. The Facebook username can be found in your account’s setting page.
Once this is done, you can click on the search bar of “Chat4Eclipse – Accounts” tab and type the name of the person you want to chat with. If the name you enter matches with any entry in your chat list, the person will be added to the “Chat4Eclipse – Chat” tab.
You can see the visibility of your offline friends by clicking on the toggle button from Chat4Eclipse toolbar. To chat with your friend, you can simply double click on his/her name in the “Chat4Eclipse – Chat” tab and start chatting right away. That’s it!
Key features of this Free IM Plugin for Eclipse:
- Free IM plugin for Eclipse.
- Brings Facebook and Gmail’s instant messaging features to your workplace.
- Interface of chat window looks like a log file, thus hiding you from getting noticed by others.
- Shows visibility of offline friends.
- Chat with multiple friends together.
- Toggle chat window on double click.
- Easy to use.
- Simple and handy.
- Lightweight.
The Final Verdict:
Chat4Eclipse is a nice free IM plugin for Eclipse that allows you to chat with your Facebook and Gmail friends from within the Eclipse IDE. It’s a perfect instant messaging solution for your workplace that not only gives you the freedom of chatting while you work, but also saves you from being caught by others by getting perfectly blended by the Eclipse interface. Download free and give it a try.
