Lots of libraries seem to be using Meebo or MeeboMe to collect IM requests from multiple clients (AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk). Up until today I used Trillian to manage all my accounts. While Meebo works just fine, I didn't like the fact that I had to have a web page open in order to see the chat requests come in. Well taking a lead from Amit at Digital Inspiration who showed how easy it is to run Google Talk as a sidebar in Firefox, I thought I'd see if the same thing could be done for Meebo, and it can!
The steps are identical; we'll just swap out a couple things in Amit's explanation:
To add Meebo to your Firefox sidebar, bookmark the following URL (right-click and choose Bookmark this link): http://wwwl.meebo.com/index-en.html
Now go to your Bookmarks menu, navigate to the above bookmark, right click and choose Properties. Tick the checkbox that says Load this bookmark in the sidebar.
Whenever you choose that bookmark (why not put it in your bookmark toolbar?) it will now open as a sidebar in your browser, and thus will always be visible.
So now I can browse away in Firefox, but Meebo follows along in a sidebar. Going to take a little while to get used to my slightly reduced screen space, but I think I can handle it.
Thanks for the inspiration, Amit!