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]

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Source: http://www.ksuther.com/chax/

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Chax is one of those addons that makes you go "ahhh, at least someone's listening." This is a powerful, feature-packed and...

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mikal stevens

I just got notice that Chax has been updated to 1.3.1 and has several great new features including animation of users' iChat icons. Check out all the new features and download at http://www.ksuther.com/chax/index.php?p=history

February 15 2006 at 1:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mathew

Adium is HORRID at file transfers though.. its great for having a custom looking text chatting program....

but for files / video / audio - ichat on a mac is the way to go.. nothing rivals it

February 09 2006 at 6:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

merrickrider22

i'm in love....a must have

as far as the adium dealy goes....i'm pretty damn satisfied w/ ichat, but these plug-ins make it better (if tabbed windows are added, i see no reason why u'd use ne thing else)....i feel that the truer you stay to apple's software...the better it'll work w/ ur whole system (address book, ical, mail, etc) this is why apple "just works"

...u might have an invisible buddy list
but i'm gunna stay true

(apple knows what the user wants ...usually b4 we know we it...example...the mactablet)

February 09 2006 at 6:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Oliver

David, why didn't you just link to macosxhints? That's obviously where you got (the idea for) this post from..

February 09 2006 at 4:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Kevin

any idea if this works for panther? (10.3.9)

February 09 2006 at 4:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

steven

Well when Adium and Fire get audio/video conferencing, THEN they will be "far superior" to iChat. Until then, they're useless.

February 09 2006 at 4:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mike

umm....

ADIUM?

in my eyes, Adium is far superior to iChat. Even with all of the different plugins, iChat is still miles behind Adium.

February 09 2006 at 3:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brent

Wow, this is definately a must have for iChat. About 5 minutes in and I already noticed a difference.

February 09 2006 at 3:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ben

The auto accept incoming file transfers feature is one I've been missing in iChat. Several other IM clients have this feature. In a small (& serverless) office we are often sending files to each other via IM, this is a big lifesaver.

February 09 2006 at 2:29 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply