Changes from Chax 3.0 Alpha 3:
The issue where iChat would open instead of Chax if you stay logged in when iChat is quit has been mostly resolved in this build. The caveat is that you need to kill iChatAgent and relaunch it through Chax. The easiest way to do this is to log out and back in, but you can also type “killall iChatAgent” in the Terminal or terminate iChatAgent from the Activity Monitor. The iChat menu extra will also direct its calls to Chax as long as Chax isn’t running already. There’s a bug where it will continue to attempt to launch iChat once Chax is open.
ICQ users should also be happy to see that ICQ messages are sent in plaintext once again. This also required some trickery in iChatAgent, as Apple has rewritten significant parts of the backend of iChat. So as above, you need to kill iChatAgent and relaunch with Chax in order for your friends to stop seeing HTML-pollued messages.
Lastly, some people requested a way to hide the badges that Chax adds to its menu items. You can now turn these off by entering the following command into the Terminal: defaults write com.ksuther.chax HideMenuBadge -bool YES
Changes from Chax 3.0 Alpha 2:
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:
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!
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:
Chax
Warp
Glypha