There seems to have been a bit of confusion regarding exactly what Chax as an application means. All the Chax application does is serve as a gateway into iChat. It isn’t a tricky reimplementation of iChat or anything wild, it just allows Chax to insert itself into iChat at launch time.

Since Chax now uses Sparkle, you should be able to upgrade from alpha 1 directly from iChat.

Changes from Chax 3.0 Alpha 1:

• Added auto-accept options
• Added activity window
• Added DisableFocusRing hidden default
• Fixed the unified contact list not remembering its position across launches
• Fixed contacts from appearing stacked up on each other in the contact lists

Download Chax 3.0 Alpha 2

I’ve received a lot of emails asking about Chax on Snow Leopard, and I’ve been promising information about Chax as soon as Snow Leopard is released. So here’s that information, along with the first build of Chax for Snow Leopard.

As many people have already found out, Input Managers do not load into 64-bit applications. They still function in 32-bit mode, but forcing everyone into 32-bit is obviously a subpar solution. Instead of using a passive system such as Input Managers, I’ve switched to using an application loader. This change has its pros and cons, but I believe this is the best solution for now.

You’ll immediately notice after downloading the Snow Leopard version of Chax that Chax is no longer an Input Manager, but a full-fledged application. To use Chax, simply quit iChat and launch Chax instead. You can treat Chax as if it were iChat, you don’t need to keep iChat in the Dock anymore. If you’d like to switch back to running iChat without Chax (who would ever want to do that?), just launch iChat as usual. One nice benefit of being a full application is Chax now uses Sparkle for updating, making updates much less annoying.

So what’s in this first build? Growl, the unified contact list, the log viewer, dock icon notifications, warn-before-quit, camera snapshot, always on top, auto-removal of successful file transfers, contact list auto-resizing, and custom contact list fonts are included. What isn’t in this build? Everything else, unfortunately. More features will be making a reappearance as time allows, but I feel that the most important features have been included

The reincorporated features have some minor changes also. There is no longer a preference to enable or disable Growl notifications — they are always on. You can use the Growl preference pane to enable and disable individual Growl notifications as you see fit. The log viewer is currently functionally identical, but it has been completely rewritten using blocks in an attempt to make it faster and more responsive.

Feel free to leave a comment saying which features you’d like to see come back the most. Chax is strictly a free-time enterprise for me, so it may take some time for some features to reappear, if ever. However, knowing which portions of Chax people actually use day-to-day is helpful in prioritizing.

Please keep in mind that this is an alpha and not yet feature complete. Depending on feedback and time, some more features may make it in before I release a final version of 3.0.

Enjoy!

Download Chax 3.0 Alpha 1

Chax 2.2.2 is now available. A couple minor very minor issues have been fixed, and there is now an option to automatically clear complete file transfers. Barring any absolutely huge problems, this is in all probability the final release of Chax for 10.5.

Changes from Chax 2.2.1:

• (Note) The preference for “Show Text Status” in the View menu has been reset for improved compatibility for future releases
• (New) Option to automatically clear successful file transfers
• (New) Can now remove individual items from the activity window with the delete key
• (New) Added a hidden preference to always send Growl notifications even when iChat is active (defaults write com.ksuther.chax AlwaysShowGrowlNotifications -bool YES)
• (Bug) Activity window dates now use the system-defined date and time formats
• (Bug) Fixed the unified contact list position not saving for some localizations
• (Bug) Reduced log viewer load time
• (Bug) Suppressed warnings related to Chax when launching garbage-collected applications

Download Chax 2.2.2
Download Chax 2.2.2 Source

Warp 1.2 changes the behavior of Spaces wraparound to mimic Apple’s default Spaces behavior. If you’d like the old behavior back, type defaults write com.ksuther.warp OldWrapStyle -bool YES in the Terminal and disable and re-enable Warp.

The new Warp pager also has an alternate display style that displays application icons rather than the live window preview. You can enable this by typing defaults write com.ksuther.warp PagerStyle 1 in the Terminal. Swapping the 1 for a 0 will switch back to the default display style.

Warp 1.2 should also play nicer with upcoming system releases.

Changes from Warp 1.1.1:

• Added a floating pager that allows rapid switching between spaces.
• Click-to-warp floating window no longer appears when dragging items.
• Fixed wrapping around a single row or column of spaces.
• Improved modifier key check so that the exact modifier keys specified must be pressed for Warp to activate.
• Changed wraparound to behave similarly to when using Spaces from the keyboard.
• The Warp helper application now automatically relaunches when updating.

Download Warp 1.2

The week before WWDC, I spent a few days porting a classic Mac game for just kicks, and I got around to submitting it to the App Store a couple of weeks ago. It went live earlier this week, so Glypha is now available for your iPhone or iPod touch for free!

Glypha on the App Store