Chax 2.1 Beta brings unified contact lists

On-the-ball readers will know that whilst Leopard brought us tabbed iChats, it was Chax - Kent Sutherland's excellent & free iChat enhancer - that initially brought us the feature in earlier versions of Apple's IM client. Avid Chax fans wondering "What's next?" will no doubt be happy to see that Kent has just released a beta of Chax 2.1. The main feature in this release is the introduction of unified contact lists, eliminating the need to have more than one window open (instead of up to 3 with AIM, GTalk and Bonjour chatting) for all your contacts.

Other features include auto-accepting of file-transfers, screen-sharing invites and AV invites, along with some other fixes and enhancements. It goes without saying that as a beta you should only install it if you understand that funky things might happen to your Mac, but if you're a die-hard iChat user you might want to head over to the Chax blog and grab the beta right now.

Thanks Ryan!