Bruno Miranda's Notebook

Although iChat has awesome support for video, sound and screen-sharing on the mac, I had reluctantly put off using it as my IM client for a while because it was missing some functionality I couldn’t do without. Particularly combining IM services into the same contact list.

I decided to do a little search and stumbled upon a great add-on to iChat which adds most of what I wish had otherwise been built into iChat (apple should take a hint from this).

Chax is a collection of minor modifications and additions that make using Apple’s iChat more enjoyable.

Here are some of the features

• Unified contact list shows all contacts from all accounts in one window
• Growl notifications for new messages and users changing status
• Automatically resize the contact list to fit the number of visible users
• Built-in log viewer
• Activity log that displays your contacts’ status changes
• Auto-accept file transfers, AV chats, and screen sharing requests
• Toggle text status visibility of users
• Always on top option for contact list, message windows and AV chats
• Set font of names, status messages, and group separators
• Option to auto-accept text chats, skipping new message notification window
• Show status changes directly in the message window
• Additional unread message notifications in the Dock
• Automatically go away when the screensaver activates
• Properly use ICQ accounts without sending text formatting in messages

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