One of my friends had asked me about how to keep chatting or working on Facebook and show idle status on Facebook, and I didn't find any way to force Facebook's chat to go idle.
I know that in order to have your status Idle you must not use Facebook for at least 10 minutes, if I am not wrong. But, I think there should be some way to change the status for chat, right?
How do I to do that?
Note
Don't propose to go offline for a chat. He knows it already, but he doesn't want to be offline on a chat.
Best Answer
In short it is not efficient/possible for the Facebook team to deal with it.
The way I see it, idle is used to show that the user's attention is not in browsing Facebook. To elaborate, a user can be playing an intensive game (Bejeweled/Farmville) and end up in idle, but as soon as focus moves away from the game, online status resumes.
The best way is to go offline but for specific people using friend lists.
And here is an engineer from 2008 explaining why this is difficult
[Source - Facebook Engineering Notes - Facebook Chat ]