Facebook Chat++

Inspiration

We want to bring the Facebook chat experience to a whole new level by introducing dynamic features on top of simple text messages.

How it works

This is a chrome extensions that adds new features on top of facebook chat. Currently we offer 3 useful features for Facebook chat.

• "Nudge" feature will let users send a nudge, shaking others' screens. Reminding them of important conversation.
• "Stickers" feature will let users search for stickers and send the gif to other users (Giphy API: http://giphy.com/).
• "Encrypt" feature will let users send encrypted messages to each other, which will not be understood by others and even Facebook. The messages can only be decrypted by using the password set by the users.

Challenges I ran into

Since We would like to send messages directly to Facebook (plain text and GIF stickers), we had to reverse engineer how Facebook messages work. Cross examining the HTTP headers and form data for Facebook message request is a long and tedious process but we were able to successfully simulate the same payload and send an AJAX request for new messages without having the user to press enter.

What's next for Facebook Chat++

What we have so far is only the beginning and there is so much more potential for Facebook chat ++. The extension turns regular plain text in Facebook messages into actionable and dynamic items. Using similar model, we can easily build more features that would completely change how Facebook chat works.

Built With

• backbone.js
• chrome
• giphy
• jquery
• marionette
• underscorejs