I am not very fond of using browser based applications to chat with friends and family over the web.  In chatting with my Facebook family and friends, which most of whom are not OS X users, I found the Facebook user interface to be poor.

An alternative presented itself in the form of OS X’s iChat program.  As of February 2010 iChat users gained access to create a generic Jabber account to chat with Facebook users as a result of Facebook’s chat being powered by Jabber/XMPP.

To set up iChat to interface with Facebook follow these steps.

1. Open iChat
2. Click on Preferences and go to the Account Tab
3. Click on the plus sign and add a new account
4. Select a Jabber account from the Drop Down Menu
5. Enter the following yourusername@chat.facebook.com.  (Your user name can be found via Facebook’s Account settings page.)
6. Enter your password
7. Finally in the server box type “chat.facebook.com,” then configure the port to 5222 and make sure to un-check the box for “Use SSL.”

From there sign-in and start chatting away with your Facebook friends.  Please note several third party applications on both Mac and PC support this feature as well.