Chax - Add new features to iChat
Feb 09, '06 07:05:00AM
Contributed by: robg
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 9 out of 10]
- Developer: Kent Sutherland / Product Page
- Price: Donationware
I use iChat quite a bit. OK. I use it a lot. It's my primary interface for reaching the far-flung members of Macworld's editorial team, and it keeps me in touch with friends and family who would otherwise have to wait for me to write a letter or email (yea, right!) or pick up the phone. As such, I'm always looking for ways to make iChat better -- and yes, I've tried the various replacement options, but keep coming back to iChat for its great audio and video chat support.
One such enhancement is Chax, a donations-accepted plug-in for iChat. Installation is a simple double-click and relaunch of iChat, after which you'll find a new Chax section in iChat's preferences. Without covering everything Chax does, here are a few of the features I find especially useful:
- Change the font face and size of a user's name or status message. Unfortunately, the row height doesn't change with a smaller name font, but decreasing the size of the status font will let you see longer status messages. You still can't, however, override iChat's 45 (I think) character limit on status messages; that's all the characters you'll see of anyone's message, regardless of font size.
- Automatically reconnect after disconnection. This one's important to me, as my iChat connection drops when I connect or disconnect from the VPN at work.
- Automatically accept text chats. No more annoying windows that require a response (which I can't select without the mouse) to initiate a simple text chat.
- Hide the Smiley button on the text input line.
- Show unread message counts (or the sender's names) on iChat's dock icon. This is particularly useful with the auto-accept feature enabled.
- View chat logs within iChat. While you can't search them, as you can with Logorrhea, it's great being able to quickly open an archived chat directly within iChat. Unlike using File: Open, the log viewer groups all chats by person, so it's much easier to find a specific conversation.
Chax does a lot more, too -- Dan Frakes covered it in detail in a Mac Gems writeup a month or so ago. Read his review for the scoop on everything it offers, or visit the Chax web page for a full feature list. Just be aware that there's no real documentation, and not every new feature is found in the Chax preferences screen. For instance, hiding a given buddy's status line is in the View menu, and the log viewer is in the Window menu.
These minor quibbles aside, I love this addition to iChat!
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2006020907052268