Making Google Talk Yours
By now, you’ve undoubtedly installed and had plenty of hands-on time with Google Talk. You’re probably busy finding new friends and contacting old ones to share in your new found happiness. But, wait; it doesn’t end there!
The one problem with a client as sleek and beautiful as Google Talk is that it looks the same as everyone else’s. It’s like living in a town where everyone drives a red Corvette! But, if you’re the type of person who wants to be unique, we have the perfect solutions for you. In this chapter, we will be covering some very cool modifications that you can make to your Google Talk client, as well as some additional fun actions that you can perform.
GT-Plug
Google Talk prides itself on its simplicity and basic interface, but one Brazilian programmer has given the client more flair with his creation of GT-Plug. GT- Plug gives you the ability to display real, graphical emoticons (smiley faces) in your chat windows, apply transparency to Google Talk, save conversations to local text files, and toggle a Boss Key mode.The program can be downloaded from www.projetobms.net/GTPlug.php?pagina=pj&lang=en and installs through a basic setup executable.
After it’s installed, you must launch Google Talk through the GT-Plug application. Run GT-Plug by selecting it from your Windows Start menu.
GT-Plug operates by automatically running the normal Google Talk applica- tion and modifying its operations on the fly.Therefore, if you usually run Google Talk manually, GT-Plug will not be loaded.The downside to this is that as Google Talk is updated, portions of GT-Plug could stop functioning or cause instability issues, as shown in Figure 5.1. Currently, a number of these functions do not work at all until the GT-Plug is updated to adapt to the newer Google Talk versions.
Figure 5.1 Google Talk Crash Caused by GT-Plug
Once you have installed GT-Plug and have launched it from the Start menu, you will see the usual Google Talk screen.To see the changes that accompany the application, click the Settings button to view the client set- tings. One unfortunate side effect with modern versions of Google Talk is that the actual GT-Plug configuration menu is hidden from view.You can still locate it by clicking the blank area immediately below the word
Appearance.This will bring up the GT-Plug configuration menu, as shown in Figure 5.2. Here you have the ability to toggle each of the settings of the application and apply changes to the way the settings operate.
Figure 5.2 GT-Plug Configuration Menu
can see how the normal emoticons with the standard Google Talk on the left are transformed into vibrant graphics with the GT-Plug client.The drop- down menu of smiley faces can also be accessed to input the appropriate smiley faces directly into your messages as you are typing them.
Figure 5.3 Viewing Emoticons With GT-Plug
GT-Plug also gives you the ability to assign a “boss key” to Google Talk, allowing you to quickly hide the client from the screen at a moment’s notice.
Boss keys have long been a part of the computing world, especially in games and other entertainment software, to give users the ability to hide their soft- ware use from their bosses, spouses, and children. While you might think that a quick Alt + Tab combination would hide Google Talk, it still leaves a tell- tale icon in your system tray. GT-Plug takes care of that problem by replacing the system tray icon with a new one, as shown in Figure 5.4.There are cur- rently issues with GT-Plug and the most recent versions of Google Talk, though, where using the boss key could crash Google Talk, displaying the error message shown in Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.4 Configuring GT-Plug’s Boss Key
In the previous chapter we discussed how all of your chat conversations are automatically stored on Google’s servers. This is an extremely useful fea- ture for traveling absent-minded professor types, as your conversations can be brought up at any time from anywhere in the world. However, for those of you who like to store your chat logs locally, there is a feature within GT-Plug to allow this. From the GT-Plug configuration menu, you can enable the saving of conversation logs, and specify where you would like to save them to, as shown in Figure 5.5. By default, these logs will be stored in “C:\Program Files\GT-Plug\My conversations”, though you can change this setting to any directory you wish.
Figure 5.5 Configuring GT-Plug’s Conversation Log Repository
to view through their windows into background data, increasing your mon- itor real estate. From within the GT-Plug configuration menu, you can enable this feature and set the visibility level of the window transparency, as shown in Figure 5.6.
Figure 5.6 Configuring GT-Plug’s Transparency Level
Finding the right amount of transparency can take practice and exercise, and it changes depending on the type of information shown on your screen.
Unfortunately, many people who play with this feature end up disabling it because they initially set it at a value too low to be readable. In most situa- tions, you shouldn’t set your visibility below 80 percent. An example of Google Talk at 80 percent visible is shown in Figure 5.7.
Along with these numerous features, GT-Plug also gives you some addi- tional features from the Windows system tray. One of these is the ability to change your account’s status on the fly by simply right-clicking the Google Talk icon. From here, you can choose from a preset list of status messages, as shown in Figure 5.8.
Figure 5.7 Viewing Google Talk at 80 Percent Visibility
Figure 5.8 Viewing GT-Plug System Tray Status Settings
Extended Talk
Although GT-Plug offers additional features not found in the original client, there is another team that has decided to up the ante and make a very fea- ture-rich addition, called Extended Talk. It is currently one of the most useful add-ons that you can download for Google Talk.This excellent addition can be downloaded from http://extendedtalk.meosoft.net as a simple setup exe- cutable.
Extended Talk introduces a large number of modifications and additions, such as:
■ Active Status A dynamic, scriptable online status system.
■ Graphical Smiley Faces Replaces the drab text smilies with large graphical ones.
■ Desktop Friends Lets you dock your favorite friends on the desktop for quick chatting.
■ Boss Key One set of keystrokes to instantly hide all your Google Talk windows when the boss walks by your office.
■ Keyboard Lock Prevents text from being typed into your Google Talk windows, for when you need to step away for a bit.
■ Text Color Changer Changes the font colors of received messages.
■ Leet-speak Text Translation Changes all your text to L337 speak on the fly.
■ Windows Transparency Makes your Google Talk windows trans- parent.
Once Extended Talk is installed and executed, you will be given the ability to change many of its general options, as shown in Figure 5.9. From here you can choose whether or not to enable some of the more prominent aesthetic features in the application.
Figure 5.9Extended Talk Settings
The rest of the features offered by Extended Talk are accessible from within the main Google Talk window and each of the individual chat win- dows. Simply clicking the icons marked with a biohazard signal will display the menu as shown in Figure 5.10.
Figure 5.10 Extended Talk Settings Through the Google Talk Window
Beginning with the menu inside the chat window, you’ll find a slew of items under the Chat Featuresmenu that deal with how the chat window, and text within it, is displayed. From here you can change the transparency level of that particular chat window, change the background colors of both the typing field and the message window, change the color of the received text, and implement typing filters.
The typing are letter translations features that turn your regular speech into elite “31337” speak or âỉỉÊ (“cool”) speak. To see how this affects what you type, consider the following popular phrase in all three forms:
Normal: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 1337: Th3 quick br0wn f0x jump5 0v3r 7h3 14zy d06
âỉỉÊ: THậ ảàẻâk òđỉwẹ ƒỉ? jàm?Đ ỉvậđ tHậ ÊÀzƠ ?ỉG
Some of the more advanced features are found under (you guessed it) the Advanced menu. From here you can manage your Active Status scripts, create desktop friends, and reference custom graphic images that can be shared with other Extended Talk users.
The Active Status manager is a unique feature found within Extended Talk that allows you to create dynamic status messages to be shown to all of your friends. Active status is similar to the current song display in Google Talk, but Active Status allows you to display a plethora of different items. To view an example of its capabilities, start the Active Status manager. Click the button labeled “Load” and select “C:\Program Files\Extended
Talk\Plugins\SamplePlugin.et” to populate the fields, as shown in Figure 5.11. The upper portion of the screen shows the information and options stored within the script, with the bottom portion showing what will be placed within your Google Talk status. Once you’ve loaded an Active Status script, you should see individual items show up in the “Functions” box.
These are the actual items that can be displayed within your status. Double- clicking on an item from here will add it to the “Your Status” field at the bottom. When you have finished selecting your status items, click the button labeled “Set”. As you can see in Figure 5.11, setting the status to show the clock updates the status line to read the actual local time, “11:15 PM” (a wonderfully creative time for a die-hard author). To create your own scripts, it is best to use the existing SamplePlugin.et file as a template for modifica-
tion. Refer to the Active Status Help item that exists within your Windows Start Menu for more help.
Figure 5.11 The Active Status Manager
One other unique feature within Extended Talk is the ability to create
“desktop friends.”These are icons that show up on your desktop that repre- sent the friends you most often talk to. If you want to shoot off a quick mes- sage to a mate, instead of wading through your Google Talk contact list, you can just double-click your friend’s desktop icon, as shown in Figure 5.12.
These icons can be stretched and moved around your screen, where they dock against the edges and each other.The color schemes can be modified and even replaced by your own graphic images, by simply right-clicking the icon you want to change and choosing the appropriate selections.
Figure 5.12 Double-Clicking a Buddy Icon to Initiate a Chat
Besides the options built into the client, you can make additional changes by editing many of the files that come bundled with Extended Talk. For instance, if you want to change the graphical smilies, you can simply replace the appropriate files within C:\Program Files\Extended Talk\Images\Smileys, where each smiley image is stored in its own file.
Creating Your Own Theme
As we discussed in Chapter 4, the Google Talk client includes a wide variety of colorful themes that can be applied to your individual chat windows.The process is fairly technical and requires that you have a basic understanding of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS), two fundamental technologies used to create modern Web sites.
The expected page-count of this book won’t support a discussion of HTML and CSS, but we will attempt to walk through the files and explain what the fields mean and how to edit them. Editing the themes inside Google Talk involve simply editing text documents, so there is no need for specialized tools or software. Windows notepad will prove capable enough for all of the work we’ll be doing.
Creating the Necessary Files
To implement a new theme, there are a number of required files that control how the theme is laid out and applied. Although these files can be generated from scratch, it will be easier to use an existing theme as a template and copy over its files.The base files needed are shown in Figure 5.13.This branch of directories is located off your C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\
Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google Talk\themes\user\ directory.
So, the Main.css file for a theme named PHP would be located at C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Google
Talk\themes\user\chat\PHP\Contents\Resources\Main.css.
Figure 5.13 Base Files for a New Theme
The expected page-count of this book won’t support a discussion of HTML and CSS, but we will attempt to walk through the files and explain what the fields mean and how to edit them. Editing the themes inside
Figure 5.14 Anthony Sottile’s PHP Theme
Altering Message Displays
The actual information that appears within a text window is broken into three distinct categories: incoming messages, outgoing messages, and status messages. Each category has a pair of text files that output information to the screen. Each of these files is called on to handle the display of messages in particular situations.The first time that you receive an incoming message, the Incoming\Content.html file will be displayed. For every further uninter- rupted incoming message, the Incoming\ContentNext.html will be pro- cessed. As soon as the message chain is broken by either a status change or an outgoing message, it starts over with Incoming\Content.html. Consider the string of messages shown in Table 5.1 to see what files are accessed during the chat session.
Table 5.1 How Theme Files Are Accessed
Chat Messages Theme Files Accessed
Brian: Hey man, are you around? Outgoing\Content.html Brian: I have a question for you. Outgoing\ContentNext.html Brian: I have a favor to ask … Outgoing\ContentNext.html Roy: Yeah, what’s up? Incoming\Content.html Roy is now set to available. Status.html
Roy: Need more money? Incoming\Content.html Roy: Cause you still owe me Incoming\ContentNext.html from yesterday!
Brian: Yeah :( Outgoing\Content.html
These files contain basic HTML text that outlines the display of informa- tion. Although most of the content stays static, it does utilize two variables:
%sender% and %message%.The %sender%variable contains the screen name of the sender of the message, whereas %message% contains the message itself.
Each file relies heavily on HTML DIV and SPANtags and their respec- tive CSS coding. For those of you not familiar with DIV and SPAN, they are simply methods to divide off a blocks of text separately from the rest of a page.The DIV tag is used to designate an entire block of information, whereas the SPANtag normally refers to a string of in-line text within that block.These tags allow for certain areas of text, or certain words, to be modi- fied apart from the rest of the data. In the world of Google Talk, each chat message is broken out as a DIV block. Within this block, you can specify multiple SPANs for individual words or lines. Whenever a DIV or SPANis called, it is normally associated with a particular “class.” Classes are CSS- defined content that specifies how text should be marked, with different
The following is an example of the Incoming\Content.html from the PHP theme:
<div class='chat in'>
<span class="blue"><?php</span>
<div class='msg 1st'>
<span class="blue">$%sender%</span>
<span class="green">=</span>
<span class="red">'%message%'</span>
<span class="green">;</span>
</div>
<div id='insert'></div>
<span class="blue">?></span>
</div>
In this file there is a general <div> for the incoming chat, which is
defined by the “chat in” class. Within this is the first line of text, colored blue, that writes <?php. Another <div> is created for the actual message received.
The first set of text is $%sender% in blue, followed by a space, a green equals sign, and the actual message in red.
Immediately following this is a <div id=’insert’> that references where all further incoming messages should be displayed, using
Incoming\NextContent.html.The last part of the content is a third line that writes >;, the typical closing to PHP code.This last span comment is a footer that will not be printed until Google Talk senses that the communication ses- sion has ended, such as when the other person responds or changes his or her status. In practice, this will cause a message to appear as:
<?php
$Brian = 'Hello, World!'
>;
Incoming\NextContent.html
The Incoming\NextContent.html file is used for additional messages received from a friend. It is referenced any time a friend sends a series of messages, without interruption, to your client.The following is an example of the Incoming\NextContent.html from the PHP theme:
<div class='msg Nth'>
<span class="orange">
// add to the incoming user's message</span><br>
<span class="blue">$%sender%</span>
<span class="green">=</span>
<span class="blue">$%sender%.</span>
<span class="red">'%message%'</span>
<span class="green">;</span>
</div>
<div id='insert'></div>
This file is structured very similarly to the Incoming\Content.html file in that it will display the sender’s name and message. However, it has been modi- fied to be appended onto the previous text received from your friend. In practice, this will cause a message to appear as:
// add to the incoming user's message
$Brian = $Brian.'Are you there?';
Outgoing\Content.html
The Outgoing\Content.html file details the information to be displayed the first time that you send a message to a friend. Similar to the
Incoming\Content.html file, it is used only for the initial message in a string of messages and doesn’t get accessed again until the text is interrupted by a status change or someone else’s conversation. The following is an example of the Outgoing\Content.html from the PHP theme:
<div class='chat out'>
<span class="blue"><?php</span>
<div class='msg 1st'>
<span class="blue">$%sender%</span>
<span class="green">=</span>