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

This beta adds the ability to manage your contacts from the unified contact list, which should further reduce the need to ever use the individual contact lists in iChat. Add contacts and groups through the plus button; remove contacts by selecting them and hitting delete. Also added is the ability to flip images when using the send camera snapshot feature. This flips snapshots so that objects appear naturally and text is readable.

Changes from Chax 2.2:

• Added the ability to manage groups and contacts to the unified contact list.
• Added an option to flip images when taking a camera snapshot (Buddies -> Send Camera Snapshot…)

Download Chax 2.2.1 Beta 1

The latest beta of Warp includes a couple minor bug fixes as well as a new floating pager that gives you constant access to your spaces. The pager shows you a live preview of each space; clicking on another space will switch to it. Visibility of the pager can be toggled with a hot key.

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.
• The Warp helper application now automatically relaunches when updating.

Download Warp 1.2 Beta 1

This has been a while in coming, but it should finally be usable enough for public testing:

Enable message history by enabling the option “Show previous message history in new message windows” in Chax’s general preferences. You may notice that message history will not immediately appear after enabling this option. Message history will only be displayed after you begin to chat with other people after you enable this option, so chat with some people for a bit before determining that it isn’t working.

There are also a couple of new options that aren’t currently exposed in the preferences. At some point in the future I’ll add a page describing all of the hidden defaults that Chax currently includes. SaveWindowFrames is an option ported from Chax 1.5 that saves the window position for each contact that you talk to. ShowSenderAccount shows what account you’re using to talk to someone with for those of you who use multiple accounts on the same service and want to know which account you’re sending a message from.

The syntax for enabling hidden options in the Terminal is as follows:

defaults write com.ksuther.chax SaveWindowFrames -bool YES

Changes from Chax 2.1.2:

• (New) Message history shows messages from the previous conversation in new chat windows
• (New) Added multitouch swipe gesture to switch tabs in message window
• (New) Hidden default SaveWindowFrames saves per-contact window positions
• (New) Hidden default ShowSenderAccount shows the active account in each conversation
• (Bug) Fixed parsing logs with some languages
• (Bug) New chat windows no longer steal focus when using auto-accept

Download Chax 2.2 Beta 1