Years ago when I was at university I used to waste away time between lectures on IRC taking about 3D graphics and stuff. These days I don’t spend nearly as much time chatting online. The one exception is probably Facebook chat because it’s a handy way of keeping in touch with people I don’t really get to chat to any other way.
Anyways, I’ve noticed that there are some (as far as I can tell) undocumented little features in there. Some of the old conventions and smileys that were used on IRC are embedded in there as more modern formatting and icons. So on the request of my girlfriend I did a bit of a search and put together a list of all the formatting and icons I could find…
Bold: Wrapping a word in asterisks like: *bold* will bold the word in question.
Underline: Wrapping a word like this _underline_ will underline it.
Bold Underline: Combining the two like *_this_* combines the two
Bog standard smiley
:) or :-) or :] or =)
Frowning
:( or :-( or :[ or =(
Tongue in cheek
:p or :-p or =P
Gasping
:O or :-O or :o or :-o
Glasses
8) or 8-) or B) or B-)
Sunglasses
8| or 8-| or B| or B-|
Upset
>:O or >:-O or >:o or >:-o
Chris Putnam (a Facebook engineer… perk of the job I guess!)
:putnam:
Thanks to http://20bits.com/articles/easter-eggs-in-facebook-chat/