Chax
Warp
GlyphaChax 2.0 Beta 1
The first beta of Chax for Leopard is finally finished! A complete list of features is listed below. While not every feature that was available for Chax for iChat 3 is back, I believe the current features represents the most commonly used parts of Chax. Barring any significant problems, a final release should be available early next week. Chax 2.0 will use a standard installer package rather than the custom installer previously used. SIMBL is bundled in the installer, so Chax will now work out of the box.
Features:
- Growl notifications for incoming messages and status changes
- Activity log shows history of contact status changes
- Built-in log viewer displays past conversations sorted by person
- Customize contact list fonts
- Display status changes directly in message windows
- Automatically resize the contact list to fit visible contacts
- Display buddy icon of message senders in the dock
- Auto-accept text invitations
Fixes since alpha 3:
- Extra Growl notifications no longer appear
- Fixed possible visual bugs in the log viewer and contact list
- Now distributed as a package installer bundled with SIMBL
- Removed nonfunctional group font customization field
- Update checker is now functional
- Exporting logs from the log viewer works again
- Fixed AV chats not being received properly
November 9th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Kent, first, thank you so much for all your hard work. Your work does so much to improve the usability of iChat, Apple should put you on staff.
Secondly, a feature request: Can you please re-add the contact names displaying in the dock? The buddy icons are helpful, but not nearly as helpful as contact names for those of us who are blind as bats and can’t see the weensy icons.
November 9th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Thanks Kent!
I had to log out and log back in in order to get this update work with PlugSuit.
Secondly: Is this the version I should start localizing?
-jyrki
November 9th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Didn’t work for me even after log out and restart. I’m it can be worked out. Great program. Thanks
November 9th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I’m curious to know if there’s a way for you to patch/modify iChat in such a way that it you could pin the location of the chat window.
specifically I like to have the chat window in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, sadly this conflicts with my preference to keep the dock end-pinned on the right-hand side of my screen.
whenever my iChat chat window (or AIM list) changes size it moves itself leftwards so as not to overlap with the dock, much to my dismay.
thanks for all the work!
November 9th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
I can’t get Chax to load. The installer properly installs SIMBL and then the Chax plugin, but no go after that. This is on a Leopard upgrade installation.
November 9th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Didn’t work here, either!
Maybe didn’t work with foreign languages?
November 9th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
I had the same problem as described by Butch and Billy. Everything seems to be installed but no Chax in iChat. Also a Leopaard upgrade installation.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Yeah, mine didn’t work either. Logged out and on, etc… No go. Just letting you know cause I want it sooo bad. haha. I only tried it on my G4 mini, though.
November 9th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Mine still says Alpha 3 is installed…
November 9th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Okay I moved the bundle from /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins to ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins (i.e. from the root Library to the one in my home folder) and it appears to be working properly now.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
If you could bring back nicknames it would be cool. If you can’t it’s disappointing but I certainly can live with it.
So far no real issues. Had to disable PlugSuit to run the installer. (From what I can tell that is fair normal when dealing with PlugSuit.)
November 10th, 2007 at 4:32 am
I am also on an upgrade install and the installed didn’t work for me – even trying osxrulz trick didn’t do anything.
November 10th, 2007 at 4:35 am
Even removing the older Chax folder from InputManagers didn’t help.
November 10th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Hi, I installed the beta 1 onto an upgraded Leopard OS (after I deleted the old Chax installation for iChat 3.0), all German localization.
Nothing happened – be it in the root /Library/… or the user directory ~/…, Chax does not appear anywhere.
A fix would be great, I am using Chax since I switched from PC to Mac, great plug-in.
Michael
November 10th, 2007 at 8:52 am
I just tried to upgrade from Chax alpha 3 for Leopard to beta1. No luck either
I am running an upgraded, german Leopard.
I removed all alpha 3 remains.
Apart from my installation problems with this beta, I am very happy with Chax.
It makes iChat usable for me, because the out of the box iChat puts HTML into icq messages.
November 10th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Hello all. I had the same problem with Chax – it did not appear in iChat. I have installed PlugSuit (as far as I understand some GUI tool for SIMBL) , went to Preferences, run PlugSuit and _enable_ Chax plug-in. Now it works fine. From my point of view (I am not developer etc) it looks like some setting that enables this plug-in is missing somewhere in a system.
HTH.
November 10th, 2007 at 9:09 am
PlugSuit introduced some Problems with Terminal.app for me. (it crashed reproducable)
November 10th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Thanks for the hint Tragus – the PlugSuit fix worked nicely for me. Thomas: what issues are you having with Terminal?
November 10th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Terminal.app crashes if I have installed PlugSuit. If I remove it, it works as usual.
November 10th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Thanks for bringing it to Leopard. Many of the previous features in Chax have crept into Leopard’s iChat so I understand that you’re scaling down the feature set. However, you have left out of this beta the single most important feature i could possibly have: HIDE ATUOMATICALLY. When I’m at work, co-workers creep up on me all the time, my boss is very anti-IM, and I generally don’t like people to see my conversations… ever. Chax in Tiger allowed me to hide iChat faster than anything else on my computer. Click anywhere and — GONE. I miss that feature more than anything since Leopard arrived. Please don’t exclude it in the future.
November 10th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Moved the plugin to my user directory Library/Application Support/SIMBL directory, Installed Plugsuit, enabled the Chax plug in, and it’s working fine now. No apparently problems with Terminal.app, either.
November 10th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
First of all, thanks a lot for this great plug-in!
Second, a feature request: Is it possible to implement a option to choose encoding iChat uses (similar to Adium).
This option would be just great, becuase in its current state, iChat is totally useless if you speak Russian and chat with people who use Windows (most Windows IM clients don’t use Unicode, so instead of cyrillic letters you get just random symbols).
November 10th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Another feature I like to see re-added (one of the only features I use in Chax apart from Growl support) is auto-away when the screen saver is active, as well as customizable autoreply (pretty much all that’s on the “Away” tab in the Chax prefs).
Other than that, great work!
November 10th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Thank you!
*Cyber high-five*
November 10th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Another feature request, if you please – give us tabbed chats back. Apple’s “gather chats into one window” feature doesn’t quite cut it, as there’s no keyboard based method to alternate between them. Unless, of course, I’m completely insane and the option IS there… But after searching for ages, I still can’t find it.
November 10th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
“Unless, of course, I’m completely insane and the option IS there… But after searching for ages, I still can’t find it.”
It is there: Apple – Square Bracket. Left square bracket to go up, right to go down.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:20 am
loving the chax!
feature request:
when you are in a video chat, the incoming message alert doesnt sound….
ridiculous… so you dont know if some one else is sending u something (unless you notice their icon flashing in the dock bouncing repeatedly…thanks to CHAX!)
put that on the list pretty please.
did i mention i love the chax?
THANK YOU
PS – i changed my tab switch icons to be command+arrow keys to make it more rememberable (my apple spelling alarm didnt go off, so i guess that is a word!!!)
November 11th, 2007 at 2:48 am
i do not have chax in my preferences after install. I installed Plusuit, but it Chax does not appear in the plugins list. Any ideas?
November 11th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I also love it!
I would like to see features like this ones:
- Ability to keep alpha channels of the contact images.
- Ability to make background of a concrete colour and give it transparence.
- Bring bottom tabs back.
November 11th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Chax 2.0b1 was working under Leopard, and then I installed iChatUSBCam, Chax stopped working. There seems to be a conflict. I tried reinstalling Chax, but with no luck. It installs, but does not work. I love Chax, but I need my camera as well. I hope you can fix this conflict.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I just installed this but now I want to remove it. How do I do that?
November 11th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hi,
The feature I liked MOST about Chax, was how it would auto accept a download. I have editors work for me editing very large files of horses (300 meg) and they could iChat me the files throughout the night without my having to run to the computer to “accept” the download. Now I can sleep!
I’m not so great at this – I see the auto accept a chat seems to work – but not a file? Is this something you plan on doing?
Thank you very much – if you like, feel free to email me your thoughts? Thank you,
Larry
November 12th, 2007 at 7:31 am
I’m a bit reluctant to point the finger until I have done a bit more testing but I have a problem with my MacBook waking itself from sleep since installing Chax.
I put my MacBook to sleep using the Apple menu. After about 1/2 hour it wakes itself up. This happens whenever I leave iChat running when the Mac is put to sleep. If I quit iChat then the MacBook will stay asleep for as long as I leave it.
I will try removing Chax, leave iChat running and see what happens but in the meantime anyone else had any problems?
MacBook 2.16 Core 2 Duo, Leopard 10.5 and Chax 2.0 Beta 1
Paul
November 12th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Yes tabbed chats would be really wonderful – so much easier to keep track of what’s going on!!
November 12th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
neither the plugsuit fix, nor moving the bundle from the system library to my local library, nor a reboot after install made chax 2.0b1 show up in my ichat prefs. i have never used it before, so this is a fresh install of chax on a fresh install of leopard.
November 12th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Feature request:
I don’t know whether this is possible, but any way to enable up-arrow to recall the last sent message in a chat or room (e.g. like readline or command-line history)? A couple of use cases for this:
1) Useful in sending editorial suggestions. You type in the text to be corrected, and then use up-arrow to recall it, then edit and press enter to demonstrate the replacement text
2) iChat sometimes is slow to realize when you’ve lost connection, and if you’re typing in a message when down, it goes to oblivion. Having up-arrow recall would fix that.
Regardless, looking forward to trying the new Chax.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Would be nice to have option to remap the tabbed window keys to match Adium. Thanks.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Hello, and thank you for your hard work.
After installing chax on my macbook, i can no longer access my aim account or any other accounts in ichat. When i try logging in it tells me i have tried to log in too many times in too short of a time… this has never happened to me until i installed chax. Is there a way of uninstalling chax?
November 12th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Hi,
Had the same install problem and found I had to delete ~/Library/InputManagers/SIMBL and ~/Library/ApplicationSupport/SIMBL to get iChat to pick up the installed versions in /Library.
November 12th, 2007 at 10:20 pm
“Would be nice to have option to remap the tabbed window keys to match Adium. Thanks.”
You can do this in the keyboard pane of system preferences. No Chax required.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:13 am
I have been able to get ichat to see Chax (it saw it before and after plugsuit). iChat preferences puts Chax in the toolbar but Chax only shows a General & About tab???
November 13th, 2007 at 1:08 am
Thanks for the awesome program. I love chax. I only have one request: could you make it possible to NOT have to see the away messages of other people in the buddy list? I feel as though the away messages in the buddy list clutter things up. Thanks
November 13th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Great to have Chax back in Leopard!
Do I remember correctly that Chax used to expand and shrink, remaining fixed in place at the TOP of the window?
Now, it seems to be fixed in place to the BOTTOM of the window?
This means that my iChat windows, lined up at the top of a second monitor, gradually wander up and down the screen throughout the day.
It would be great if Chax explicitly offered you the choice of where you’d like that anchor point to be…
November 13th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Hi, Chax is great piece of software, I am using it for ICQ .. my question is, what encoding do you use for sending messages over ICQ? I have problem with send word with diacritics like čřčšě+ř – it brokes during the transfer…thank you for answer and thanx for Chax! Let me know, if I can help (I am Czech)
November 13th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Dave: Tried alt/option click on the desktop/any other application while iChat is the focused application?
November 13th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Thank you very much for this!
It would be easily possible to use Chax without SIMBL or PlugSuit. InputManagers aren’t dead, they have just moved from ~/Library/InputManagers to /Library/InputManagers. Saft and Inquisitor work fine here without PlugSuit or SIMBL, so it would be nice to have Chax running without those tools.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I’d really like to have the bottom tabs back also – that was my favorite feature!
November 13th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Love chax! Had problems getting it to work. Had to insall plugsuit then locate my old 1.5 install of chax and delete it before 2.0 would work.
One thing I’m really missing in this version is the auto-reconnect feature. My gchat always loses connection and I wish that feature were still around so I didn’t have to manually set my status to available every 15 minutes
November 13th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
still am unable to get it working in leopard…. moving the simbl plugins, or not…. nothing seems to work
Darrin
November 13th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Would it be possible for Chax to make the location of the chat accept window stick where the user puts it? Currently, all new chats appear in the upper-right corner of the screen. Auto-accept helps, but I really want new chats to appear where I want them to.
Thanks.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
I might be missing something but one favorite function of mine was that iChax could be set to automatically log back in if iChat were to get inadvertently disconnected. Any chance that will be implemented again?
Otherwise, thanks for the great software!
November 13th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
Another feature I miss is the ability to change the tab via keyboard shortcuts like Chax 1.5 allowed and Adium does. Would be great to see it back.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Howdy,
The latest SIMBL (get it at ) now lets me use Chax with Leopard. Thanks!
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz
November 13th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Thanks for the update, great add on for ichat.
2 points I have noticed.
1. Automatic hiding of ichat by clicking on the desktop is no longer there. I miss this feature.
2. Icon in dock sometimes contiues to flash incoming message even though you have received and answered the message.
Hopefu;;y a couple of minor points you can fix, Cheers and keep up the good work.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
The beta of Chax with SIMBL is working great … on my Intel iMac.
However, after installation I’m having the same problem as others with it not showing up in iChat … on my iBook G4.
Just a stab in the dark, but I wonder if the problem could be related to Intel vs. PowerPC? Just a thought.
November 14th, 2007 at 12:50 am
I second Jan-Carlo. I would really like a way for a keyboard short-cut for switching between tabs. Also like Josten, I liked the tabs at the bottom.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:06 am
had problem with video chatting with a friend on a new imac with leopard. we both have the same chax installed, and had to disable the plugsuit chax enabler to be able video chat….
odd.
still love chax…
thanks…
November 14th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Hi, the reason I used Chax in the past was for auto-receiving of files, which was incredibly useful for my work.
Although your feature list says this feature is still available, no option appears in my preferences.
Can you advise?
Thanks
Phil
November 14th, 2007 at 10:21 am
I was having issues too, moved the SIMBL folder.. nada. Until I installed Plugsuit… I found the old 1.5 chax plug-in, deleted that, and restarted ichat.. worked like a charm.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:30 am
I’d really like the ability to combine contact lists from both my AIM account and my gTalk account into one contact list window. Is this possible? Thanks and keep up the good work.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:47 am
I’m seeing the same as a few other people, where I ran through the installer and it still doesn’t show up in iChat Preferences. I tried moving the Chax and SIMBL folders from /Libarary/InputManagers to ~/Library/InputManagers, but still no dice.
I’m rockin’ 10.5 (as you’d expect) but it is joined to a domain. Let me know if you need any other information. Thanks for your work, dude. This program is indispensable, and I can’t wait to see the new version.
November 14th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Followed Zev’s post above, and it’s up and going. Rock.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I ended up getting it working without PlugSuit by reinstalling SIMBL after running the Chax installer. Most recent version of SIMBL can be found at http://www.culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php
November 14th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
okay, after reading all these comments, and trying to run this 2.0 Beta version of ICHAX, I have finally had it work properly on my laptop.
I figured I would share with everyone what I did, in hopes of it working out for you all that are having the same difficulties that I did.
-I have recently installed MAC OS X [LEOPARD].
-I have a MACBOOK laptop that i purchased within the past year.
-I had CHAX 1.5 installed in my system until I removed it today.
What I did to have CHAX work on my system:
-I searched in FINDER for any item entitled “CHAX 1.5.app”.
-Then I deleted this program from my system.
-I downloaded the 2.0 BETA CHAX package with SIMBL and installed it.
-I moved the files in your computer’s /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins to
your home library folder at: ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins.
-I then went to this following website to install PLUGSUIT into my system preferences.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/33346
-After installing PLUGSUIT, the CHAX application worked great. It showed up in my
ICHAT preferences and i was able to chat with it operating.
I really hope this helps people who were confused at first like me. But I want to say thanks to the creator of this program. Its awesome and I can’t live without it on my MAC.
Thanks and good luck with the work.
November 14th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
How about bringing back the Auto-Away function?
November 14th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
FWIW: My favourite features of Chax, in no particular order, are:
- Remembering chat window sizes and locations
- Auto-accepting text chats
- Auto-accepting file transfers
With those I’m good and iChat works the way it should, at least IMO. Thanks for all your work on Chax, it really is one of those “must have” downloads for any new Mac.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Bahamut: Yes, that works… but it still requires pressing a key AND clicking — as opposed to one click and BAM! you’re in the clear.
November 14th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Auto-resizing list!
Growl, WOOO!
Auto-away, please.
YAY!
November 14th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Log Viewer is the #1 reason I use Chax!
November 14th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Jan-Carlo and Chilli, and others:
You can set up custom keystrokes to change tabs within MacOS. Go to System Preferences –> Keyboard & Mouse –> Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down to the bottom of the list for “Application Keyboard Shortcuts” and select that. Now click the “+” button to add a new shortcut … Choose “iChat” for your application, type either “Previous Chat” or “Next Chat” as the menu title, and whatever keystroke you want to use … I used command-up and command-down, same as I had them set in the old version of Chax.
Until/unless Chax updates with more tab or keystroke options, this pretty much does the job.
November 14th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
If this has been asked before and cannot be done, I’ll accept the fact of course, but I wanted to ask, like Bodacious, is it possible to combine AIM and Jabber windows? Or at least be able to check on all the contacts in the menubar?
Thanks, and great work on Chax!
November 15th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
I had the same issues as everyone having Chax work… I took the advice of installing the latest Chax and that worked. Thanks for Chax. It appears that Apple found many of the features of the previous Chax significant enough to build them into the newest Ichat, but not all. Keep up the great work
November 15th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
OOps… I installed latest SIMBL and that worked…
November 15th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Thanks a lot, I’m really happy that you found time and energy to keep up with Chax development. One of the greatest OS X tools around!
November 16th, 2007 at 12:21 am
Wasn’t working originally…installed Plugsuit and now it works great.
Just Google “plugsuit” and you’ll find it right away.