Use AIM Express with Safari

Jul 30, '04 09:49:00AM

Contributed by: rgovostes

If you want to access your AOL Instant Messenger account at a computer without iChat, AIM, or one of the various third party clients installed, you can always use AIM Express. However, according to its website, Safari isn't supported, and therefore cannot launch the applet.

I did some investigating, mostly by disguising Safari as MSIE 6.0 and bypassing the JavaScript checks. It turns out that AIM Express does work in Safari, and pretty much flawlessly. You don't even need the Debug Menu activated. Here's how to (hopefully) get AIM Express running on an unsupported browser, in three (easy?) steps.

Note: I didn't test this with .Mac screennames. I don't imagine it'd be any different, but somewhere along the line it might reject the @ symbol in the screenname. Furthernote that this has only been tested on Safari.

  1. Head on over here to log into your AIM account.

  2. After a few redirects, you'll be sent to a seemingly blank page with a lengthy URL starting with http://aimexpress.oscar.aol.com/aimexpress..... View the source of the page (Command-Option-V in Safari). In the middle of the source, you should see a big chunk like this:
    mWin.document.location = "http://aimexpress.oscar.aol.com/
    aimexpress/launch.adp=&siteId=aimexpressprod&siteState=&mcAuth=
    z%252Bq7hML2MDhdtBF8AdILpQ%253D%253D%2ddiAxLjAga2lkIDIwMDQwNzI5M
    DEwMDAzMDQADXCw%253D%253D%2dxUwMcVB%252FvVFhKk1lzV9uNpj49DFnX8qJ
    8QpkjlsF5bZidYuHXqQMIDsT1KbozsG6E59PDqwQ6SacbV5J%252ByOrTHZ8lmD2
    ekF8tdjVxt%252BIK68DgV%252B7DY8AztbR%252B7gycpB55dP5otdLrVChUJ%2
    52Bk7rA%253D%253D&interWidth=270&interHeight=180&"
    
    Note that if you see any errors, some of them must be closed with the red "close" titlebar widget -- hitting the OK button on these troublesome errors simply makes the message pop up again.

  3. Copy the URL, starting with http:// and ending with 180& (don't grab those quotes). Paste it into a browser window to load AIM Express. You'll be asked to log in a second time. At the end of this step, you should be viewing a page which says "Closing this window will disconnect you from the instant messaging system." Not only is this true, it also goes for opening a new tab in that window -- open a new tab, and poof, you're disconnected.
Although unsupported, the interface works well. The brushed metal is about the same color as the gray it uses in some parts of the background, and some buttons blend perfectly in.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20040729200648505