No, unfortunately Steam hasn't yet been able to do that. I think it would be great though, just treat the Steam ingame thing as an overlay that you would put over the game. I don't know.

You could just use alt-tab. But it's for people who want to chat ingame, as well as web browse and things like that. If you're saying you should just alt-tab, xfire isn't for you.

This seems like it would be a waste of time to put in for Cortex. The game happens too fast for you to be able to type messages or browse web without pausing, so you might as well alt-tab after you've paused. And if you're using a voice chat solution, you can just use the command keys if you don't set it to voice-activated.

If I'm talking to someone it's in vent or skype, and if I'm in a text conversation with someone I'm not going to stop my game to talk to them.

I can see how it's helpful to some people but personally it's not that hot.