Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 12 iCHAT
General
• Change the default IM application, allowing you to use iChat to facilitate not using iChat.
• Optionally show your iChat status in the menu bar by adding a miniature version of iChat
to the menu bar as a menu bar extra, from which you can monitor and change your status,
watch your buddy lists, and launch chats.
• Set options to auto-reply when you are away, which basically functions as an answering
machine for iChat. You can let people know what you’re doing, and they can continue
chatting, effectively leaving you a message for when you get back.
• Set “Animate buddy pictures,” which will restore one of the more polarizing features of
AIM: the use of animated GIFs as buddy icons. This was absent for a long time in iChat,
because a lot of people find them annoying.
• Automate your status changes, such as changing your status to “available” when you wake
your computer from sleep, automatically logging out of iChat when you use Mac OS X’s
fast user-switching feature, and keeping IM accounts logged in even when iChat is closed.
Accounts
• Add and remove accounts, as well as activate and deactivate accounts without actually
removing them from the list.
• Allow iChat to automatically log in to your accounts when you open iChat.
• Allow your account to be logged in to from multiple machines. If you log in to an account
from a second machine (or session or client), AOL will prompt you to log out of the
existing session remotely.
• Use a special “recent buddies” group to remember people who chat with you but are not
in your buddy list.
• Configure mobile forwarding to receive instant messages on your phone, as discussed
previously.
• Set privacy options, including the ability to block specific people, preventing them from
seeing you online or sending you messages.
• Enable encrypted chats, so people cannot access private information by intercepting your
chats. This option is only available with .Mac accounts.
Messages
• Change the color of your word balloons and the font used in your text chats. You can also
override other people’s word balloon and font choices.
• Set a keyboard shortcut to immediately bring iChat into focus, which is handy if you
always keep iChat running in the background so people can get in touch with you. This is
particularly useful combined with iChat’s Dock icon, which will display a badge showing
you the number of pending unread messages.
• Automatically save chat transcripts to a folder, which is handy if you need to remember
things you talk about in your chats. This is discussed in more detail in the “Nifty iChat
Features” section later in the chapter.