Chatting is something most of us indulge in. It serves as a great way to keep in touch, discuss things and communicate with our relatives and friends.

One of my favorite chat clients is Yahoo! Messenger. It comes equipped with a fantastic set of emoticons and audibles and usually I wouldn’t bother about getting anything else.

However, recently I came across Yahoo! Friend.

Yahoo! Friend is an open source addon for Yahoo! Messenger. The primary feature of Yahoo! Friend is to add a whole new set of emoticons to Yahoo! Messenger. While chatting with your friends, you can display these emoticons. It uses Windows fonts itself to display, so you’re friends don’t need to have Yahoo! Friend installed to view the emoticons.

Besides emoticons, Yahoo! Friend also adds text-to-speech using Microsoft Agent (you need to have this installed).

Another feature that is added is the ability to Auto-Reply. This becomes really useful if you leave your PC or don’t want to be disturbed and you still get messages. Auto-reply will save you the trouble of typing back in the case of the latter and let your friends know you are away in case of the latter.

Download Page at SourceForge.