Chax 1.4.1 is mostly bugfixes to tie up some loose ends that I missed in all the changes I made in 1.4. Some minor additions are addition Growl notifications, a couple of tab options, and the oft-requested auto-resizing contact list.

Changes from 1.4:

  • (New) Growl notifications for when a user comes online, goes offline, goes idle, goes away, and becomes available
  • (New) Options to have the tab window come to the front when receiving a new message
  • (New) Option to disable the close buttons on tabs
  • (New) Option to have the contact lists automatically resize to fit the number of visible contacts
  • (Feature improvement) Contact list row height will now adjust itself according to the size of a custom font as long as user icons are hidden (the two line view will not resize)
  • (Feature improvement) Default iChat floating window notifications now work with tabs
  • (Feature improvement) Clicking on a Growl message notification will bring iChat to the front and select the originating message window
  • (Bugfix) Lock badge when using now appears properly in the tab window
  • (Bugfix) File transfer progress windows should display properly now when using tabs
  • (Bugfix) Fixed a crash when double-clicking on a status icon in the activity window.
  • (Bugfix) AppleScript commands work again with tabs
  • (Bugfix) "Add Hyperlink..." command now works properly with tabs
  • (Bugfix) "Attach File..." command now works properly with tabs
  • (Bugfix) New message tab status color overrides offline status color
  • (Bugfix) Activity window now uses locale-specific date formats
  • (Bugfix) Fixed minor cosmetic issues with tabs
  • (Bugfix) Fixed an issue that would prevent installation for users who changed permissions on the InputManagers folder
  • (Bugfix) Dragging tabs to the trash no longer causes problems

Download Chax 1.4.1

16 comments:

Dario at 2006-05-03 05:25:36 -0400

Can't you use Sparkle to get automatical update? http://www.andymatuschak.org/pages/sparkle

jason at 2006-05-03 09:30:40 -0400

I upgraded to 1.4.1 this morning and when I joined my usual jabber chatrooms I was logged in but couldn't view the rooms. Downgrading to 1.4 fixed the problem.

Lucien at 2006-05-03 12:04:11 -0400

I am seeing the same problem with joining chat rooms, the window does show up.

F. Hahn at 2006-05-03 12:58:19 -0400

Wonderful work with the Growl-notifications. I used growliChat before on my PPCMac, but there is no universal versions. Chax 1.41 solves this, thank you. Still one problem: when buddies come online the Growl-notification is something like "growl_online", when buddies go offline the right text (name of the buddy...) appears. Maybe it is a problem with the german localization. Config: Macbook Pro, OS X 10.4.6. Thank you!

Terrence at 2006-05-03 18:54:02 -0400

Any way you can add some features to help with Mobile contacts? It would be cool if they could be grouped, or may be add a custom status icon next to them? It really bugs me that they are displayed almost identical to online users.

Bill at 2006-05-03 19:05:25 -0400

Argh... the lock icon for encrypted chats has disappeared again. It showed up in one of the 1.4.1 betas, but now it has re-disappeared. Okay that's no a real word ;-)

Alex at 2006-05-03 20:32:17 -0400

bug report on 1.4.1: Installed it on a Powerbook G4/10.4.6. Install went fine, however when attempting to join a chatroom no window appeared. The chatroom was listed under the Window menu but no physical chat window was to be had. I started a chat with someone in the room who said I was there. Tried a repair permission and a reboot, neither worked. Unistall was the only fix. Exactly the problem since the 1.4.beta 1. Nothing changes this (deleting the Pref files doesn't help and now I can't find the install for 1.4 :(

Alex at 2006-05-03 20:54:43 -0400

Kent, can you please give a link to version 1.4 because I really need to group chat using tabs and neither 1.4.1 beta or stable work for this (only tabs with individual persons). I think this is a common issue for others.

Alex at 2006-05-03 21:16:41 -0400

Never mind. I got the link: http://www.ksuther.com/chax/downloads/Chax_1.4.dmg

Chase at 2006-05-04 12:50:14 -0400

I had the same problem with group window. Backed down to 1.4 and it is working fine.

Thomas at 2006-05-04 14:18:58 -0400

"notifications for when a user comes online, goes offline, goes idle, goes away, and becomes available"

Thomas at 2006-05-04 14:20:07 -0400

Sorry, messed that up.. Meant to say that as nice as that is, it would be VERY nice to be able to customize which messages you want. I love seeing when people go or leave, but simple status changes happen all the time and it's extremely distracting, so I've had to disabled growl notifications completely for now.

Bill at 2006-05-04 16:26:23 -0400

"(New) Growl notifications for when a user comes online, goes offline, goes idle, goes away, and becomes available" I'm finding this _incredibly_ annoying. I mean, I can imagine it being really nice for some people, and I can even imagine that I might want it if I were on a really stable network, and all my friends were as well, but it's just making Growl do screen-pops every couple of seconds. So I'd _really really_ like a way to turn it off. Thanks for adding it, but please make it optional.

Daniel at 2006-05-04 16:54:21 -0400

Those of you with issues where you don't want all the default Growl notifications (Thomas and Bill): The usual way of dealing with this is to go to the Growl preference pane (in System Preferences) and click the Applications tab. You'll see a list of your applications that support Growl. If you click Chax, you'll get the opportunity to customize which notifications are displayed.

matthew at 2006-05-05 08:40:22 -0400

I've got a feature request: When you get kicked off (and have Chax set up to automatically reconnect), it reconnects with an "available" status. Instead, the status should be the same as when you got kicked off. (For example, if you have an away message up, it should put up that same away message when you reconnect.)

Jon at 2006-05-05 09:35:54 -0400

I don't see an email address for you anywhere, so I will post my feature request here. Could you make it so that iChat has the ability to add people to your ban list based on their initial message? I have a rather huge ban list that has been manually created, but I realize that it would be very useful to have a similar system as email, where spam is filtered fairly automatically based on message content. This feature would also have to have a whitelist feature as well, as I would most likely add "Hello" to my list of bannable words, but don't want my friends to be banned. Anyhow, this has been a wish of mine for some time, as I have an AOL account without any numbers in it, and have had it since 1994, meaning that I am on just about every spam list around.