Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 12 iCHAT
you are online and accepting IMs; a red dot means you are online, but you are not accepting
incoming IMs; a faint gray circle means you are online, but are invisible (people can’t see you are
online); and no dot means you are offline.
Below the name is your online status message. Your status message and current online status
will be visible to anyone (unless you limit the visibility of your status in the account’s security
preferences). To change your status or message, click the status message and select a new status
from the pop-up menu. You can set a custom status message by selecting Custom Available... or
Custom Away... from the menu, and then typing in anything you want. Selecting Edit Status
Menu... will open a sheet where you can create, edit, or delete the status messages that appear in
the pop-up, and change whether and how iChat remembers your custom status messages.
To the right of your name is your picture, also known as your buddy icon. Your initial picture
is the same icon you have associated with your account and your contact info in Address
Book. To change your picture, drop an image on the current picture, or click it to bring up a list
of recent pictures. From the Recent Pictures sheet, you can also select Edit Picture... for more
options, including taking a snapshot with iSight.
If you have audio or video chat enabled, a green audio or video icon will also be visible.
Adding and Managing Buddies
Each account maintains a buddy list to keep track of friends, family, and associates who have IM
accounts. To add a buddy, click the + button at the bottom of your account window and select
the Add Buddy... option or select Buddies ➤ Add Buddy... (Shift+Cmd+A) from the menu bar.
This will open up a sheet for you to fill in
information about your new buddy, as
shown in Figure 12-4.
Address Book is integrated with iChat.
If your buddy is already listed in your
address book, iChat will autocomplete the
Add Buddy form as you type. Clicking the
blue disclosure button to the right of the
Last Name field will expand the sheet into a
people picker. Selecting an Address Book
card will associate it with that buddy. You
Figure 12-4. The Add Buddy sheet in iChat
can also drag contacts from Address Book
into your buddy list to add them.
To help you keep track of your buddies, you can organize them into groups. To create a
group, click the + button at the bottom of the account window and select the Add Group...
option. A small sheet will open up and ask for the name of your new group. Enter the name and
click Add to add the group. To change or delete groups, select the Edit Groups... option from the
Account + menu.
When you add a buddy, you are asked what group you’d like them to be in. If you’d like to
change the group, simply select and drag your buddy into a new group. If you’d like to rearrange
the order in which your groups appear, grab their headers and drag them around.
In iChat’s View menu, there are a number of options about how to display offline buddies.
You can hide them, display them in their regular groups, or coalesce them into a special offline
group.
The View menu also lets you choose whether to use groups at all; whether to display your
audio or video status; whether to display buddies by full name, short name, or handle; and
whether to sort buddies by name, availability, or not at all.