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!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-07-2007 @ 9:57AM
mingistech said...
After I upgraded to Leopard and got tabbed chatting in iChat I thought there would be no use for Chax anymore. But.... this feature is exactly what I was looking for. I can't believe Apple would think users would want multiple buddy lists in a single app. Adium, Trillian, Meebo, Ect... then all use a single list.... C'mon Apple!
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 9:58AM
Pete said...
My favorite thing about Chax is that it will re-size your chat window to show only the buddies that are online. That keeps it incredibly clean.
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 10:11AM
neil said...
something I would love Chax to do is the ability to hide groups with no users online.
What's the point of managing groups if half your screen is filled with empty ones?
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 10:12AM
sterling said...
Unified contact list, finally. Chax is amazing. Apple should be throwing cash this guy's way. He is adding great features to iChat.
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 10:34AM
John Kenneth Fisher said...
This feature and this alone was keeping me on Adium. Time to go back to iChat :-)
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 11:00AM
Mo said...
A unified contact list would be a godsend—you can (I think) end up with more than three lists, because you can have multiple accounts in Leopard.
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 1:41PM
Quine said...
Does this still use SIMBL in any way?
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 3:18PM
Chris D said...
Fantastic!
I always have AIM, Bonjour and Jabber contacts online together and 3 windows is REALLY annoying. Can't believe this wasn't in Chax before - thinking it was there was the reason I originally downloaded it - glad it's arrived now!
Reply
12-07-2007 @ 4:51PM
Ed said...
Been running the beta since yesterday and I'm satisfied.
Reply