chax
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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!
Chax returns to Leopard, brings back Growl
Long ago, way back in the days before Leopard, the Chax plugin was a necessity for any serious iChatter. But then lo came the new cat, and iChat 4.0 brought with it many of Chax's headline features already built-in: chief among them the tabbed chat interface. But yet some things are still lacking in the shiny new iChat, perhaps most importantly Growl support. So it was with some satisfaction that I see that Chax 2.0b1 is out and returns the flood of iChat Growl notifications to my Leopard desktop. Though its feature list is, per force, shorter than in the old Tiger days, Chax still adds a handy chat-log viewer (organized by buddy), buddy icons in the Dock, and various other little tweaks to make iChat 4.0 feel like home.Chax 2.0b1 is a free download (donations requested) and is a SIMBL based Input Manager.Update: For those of you having trouble getting Chax to work properly, you may need to reinstall SIMBL. Be sure to uninstall any previous version (particularly any from a previous Tiger install living at ~/Library/Input Managers).[via Infinite Loop]
Leopard Axing Input Managers?
There's a disturbing rumor floating around the Mac web today. According to this article at Infinite Loop, Leopard will no longer support Input Manager hacks. Input Managers allow programmers to insert code into cocoa applications, thus allowing the addition of new functionality. etc. These are somewhat controversial as some claim this is a potential security hole. Nonetheless, Jon Hicks brings this up in connection to my absolute favorite input manager plugin, Saft for Safari, which will presumably be rendered non-functional in Leopard. As Hicks notes, its not clear yet whether this also affect the widely used SIMBL plugin architecture (whose author, Pith Helmet developer Mike Solomon, says he won't be sure until he can play with Leopard). If, like me, you're a big fan of Saft and SafariStand and Chax, etc. this is cause for concern.It is to be hoped, of course, that the authors of the various plugins will find some other way of implementing their feature enhancements, even if Apple does close the Input Manager route. The best thing would be for Apple to implement an open plugin architecture for doing this sort of enhancement, but I won't be holding my breath on that one. In any case, this is a potential concern for those of us sure to upgrade to Leopard right after it launches.
Chax updated to version 1.4.6, source code now available
We're fans of Chax 'round these parts. It's one of those free iChat enhancement apps that makes iChat infinitely more usable. I am so accustomed to it that I can't remember life before iChat tabs anymore...As promised last month, Chax 1.4.6 brings us some bug fixes, a handful of new features and freely available source code.Here's the scoop from the Read Me: (New) Tear-off tabs allow for quick separation of chats through drag-and-drop (New) Options to show the AIM/Jabber/Bonjour contact lists when clicking the iChat dock icon (New) Activity log data can now be exported as an HTML table (Feature improvement) Tab overflow menu now animates when a new message has been received that is not visible (New) Polish localization, thanks to Piotr Chyli??ski (Feature improvement) Activity log now periodically saves to disk every hour (Bug) Log search results now sort properly (Bug) Using nicknames while sorting by availability and first name now works properly (Bug) Tabs now close in the correct order after being rearranged (Bug) Fixed visual problems when disabling close buttons on tabs (Bug) Improved iChat quit speed (Preference change) Confirm quit option moved from the General preferences tab to the Chats tab (Removed) "Move to Window" and "Move to Tab" options removed in favor of tear-off tabs You can download the free update from the Chax website and the source code from Kent Sutherland's Chax blog. Kent says he'll continue to release updated source along with new releases. The source is licensed under the MIT license, which he says gives some flexibility to anyone interested in using parts of Chax in other projects. He'll also work to merge in any good patches that he receives. Thanks for your contribution to my Mac Life, Kent :)Thanks, Brandon!
New Chax beta with tear-off tabs, will be open sourced soon
Chax, the handy iChat plugin that offers tabbed chats and much more, has a new beta available that offers tear-off tabs for those times when you don't want to put all your eggs chats in one basket. Announced on the author's blog, this new version also allows exporting activity log data as HTML. Of course, various bug fixes are also included in what is technically 1.4.6 beta 2.The author is also going to release the complete Chax source code once 1.4.6 goes official, offering iChat hackers and other Cocoa-hopefuls a little more help in their quest for creating the next killer __________.You can download your copy of the beta from this latest blog entry.
Chax 1.4.1 released
One thing I love about Chax, the vital iChat plug-in, is that its developer has been reliably rolling out a good handful of new features and fixes, even with a .0.x update like this one. New features in 1.4.1 include: Growl notifications for when a user comes online, goes offline, goes idle, goes away, and becomes available Options to have the tab window come to the front when receiving a new message Option to disable the close buttons on tabs Option to have the contact lists automatically resize to fit the number of visible contacts Contact list row height will now adjust itself according to the size of a custom font as long as user icons are hidden (the two line view will not resize) Default iChat floating window notifications now work with tabs Clicking on a Growl message notification will bring iChat to the front and select the originating message window You can check out the full list of new features and bug fixes in Chax's release notes, and grab your own copy from Kent Sutherland's site.
Chax 1.4 - iChat now has tabs
No, that headline is not a typo: at long last, after hoards of OS X users have cried out to Apple in vain for a feature to be added to iChat that other clients have had for what seems like a millennia (I'm Irish. I exaggerate. Sue me) - iChat now has tabs, thanks to the latest Chax update to v1.4. You have the option of placing tabs at the top or bottom of a chat window (or not using them at all, of course), and you can also chose colors for the text in the tab based on whether there is a new message, the user is typing or they've gone offline. I know I speak for many, many iChat users when I say: thank you, Kent Sutherland.Another handy new feature in the update is a set of (optional) Chax menu badges to designate which iChat menu features belong to Chax. Of course, there are various bug fixes and tweaks, but what are you waiting for? Go grab the latest Chax update for tabbed iChatting goodness, and while you're at it: leave a donation for Kent's hard work.
Chax updated, adds Growl support
Remember Chax, the free, feature-packed iChat plugin we found a couple weeks ago? It's received a couple of minor updates and tweaks since then, and one I thought worth mentioning was Growl support. Previously, the only way I knew of getting iChat to play with Growl was GrowliChat, a separate app that was more or less a one-trick pony.Other new features in Chax's tiny bump to version 1.3.2 include: Automatically set status to away when the screen saver is activated Show animated user icons in the contact list Hide iChat and new message windows when iChat is inactive French localization Check out the version history of changes for the full skinny on what's new, updated and fixed. Chax is a free plugin, but donations are always welcome at the developer's site.
Spice up iChat with Chax
Chax is one of those addons that makes you go "ahhh, at least someone's listening." This is a powerful, feature-packed and altogther necessary preferences plugin for iChat. The developer's site offers a lengthy list of features this fantastic plugin brings to the table, but for now, here's a short rundown to get your mouses clicking: Save and restore window positions for individual screen names (To Kent Sutherland, the developer: I cannot thank you enough for this. The fact that iChat doesn't already do this is just plain silly.) Display Address Book nicknames instead of full names Option to auto-accept text chats, skipping new message notification window Option to open images sent through direct connect directly in Preview (thank you!!) Unread message notification in the dock Change the delay of or disable auto-away (thank you!!) New message windows cascade properly instead of always appearing on top of each other Built-in log viewer There are over 25 features that Chax enables, all wrapped up in its own clean, easy to use preference pane that is simply added to iChat's preferences. Kent also offers a list of upcoming features on his site, but I'd like to echo one of his requests: please don't ask him for tabbed chatting. Developers like him are (usually) under enough pressure as it is, which brings me to a request of my own: this plugin is free, but please consider donating if you wind up appreciating it even half as much as I do. Great stuff like this really deserves some love, and PayPal for some reason doesn't do hugs yet.[via MacOSXHints]
