Google Talk Tips

BigBlueBall has a good feature on Google Talk. While technically interesting, these tips are most useful:

* You can change the font size by focusing your mouse cursor either on the message window or input box, holding the control key down, and spinning the scroll wheel.

* Use the keyboard: Pressing Tab cycles through conversations in each stack and the main window. Ctrl+Tab or Shift+Tab cycles backwards.

* When you see a message notification, you can right click it to close it without focusing the conversation window.

* To make something bold, you must place an asterisk before and after the area you want to bold: *example* turns to example

* If you want to italicize something, you must place underscores around the area you want to italicize: _example_ turns to example

* Between one set of '*'s or '_'s, you can have up to and including 100 characters. If you exceed this number of characters, the effect will not take place and you will get normal text with the * or _ symbols visible at either end

* Typing a smiley like :) and :D in an IM window will make it turn bold blue like: :) and :D. Other valid smileys are :( :P :O :| :'( :x :-) :-D :-( :-P :-O :-| :-x.

* Preceding text with a symbol from the hebrew alphabet, such as ? and ?, makes text bold and large

* Surrounding text with \\ and // makes text clickable like a link but does not lead to any url.

Download Google Talk here

Full article:
Google Talk Center at BigBlueBall - Everything About Instant Messaging and Chat