Auto-accept for file transfers is back in this version, along with auto-accept for AV chats and screen sharing. There is also more fine-grained control for auto-accept, allowing you to accept files or AV requests only from specific contacts or on specific accounts. Other features returned from Chax 1.5 are auto-away controls, a quit warning, and the ability to go away when the screensaver activates.

Also new is the inclusion of a unified contact list, which displays all contacts from all logged-in accounts. It will appear automatically at startup on first run, but it can also be shown from the Window menu. You can't yet add or remove contacts from this list, but it will immediately reflect changes made to the original contact lists.

I'm still getting a few reports of people unable to get Chax to work on their upgraded 10.5 installs, although the new installer with Chax 2.0 solved most issues. If you're still having trouble getting Chax to work, ensure that you've removed any old versions of Chax from ~/Library/InputManagers. Anyone still experiencing trouble should take a look at Allan Odgaard's write-up on setting permissions correctly so that Input Managers will load.

Changes from Chax 2.0:

  • (New) Unified contact list displays all contacts from all connected accounts
  • (New) Contact list pops to the front after a short delay when dragging a file onto a contact
  • (New) Options to control auto-away and auto-away delay
  • (New) Automatically go away when the screensaver activates
  • (New) Auto-accept for file transfers, AV chats and screen sharing
  • (New) Option to warn before quitting iChat when there are open message windows
  • (New) Reimplemented hidden BlockAOLSystemMessage default
  • (New) Option to display message sender names in the Dock icon
  • (Bug) Fixed encoding problem with status changes in message windows
  • (Bug) Export icon in the activity monitor now shows a text document

Update: An additional feature readded to this version is the ability to show message senders in the Dock icon.

51 comments:

TJ Draper at 2007-12-06 13:51:10 -0500

AWESOME! One single contact list... It's such a step in the right direction I could hug you! Works great here. The only thing I could wish for is that if one of my contacts has two accounts (AIM and Jabber) that they show up as one contact (like Adium). iChat 4.0 already has the little drop down menu to choose which account to send messages to that contact with... Keep up the good work, this is AWESOME!

Cooner at 2007-12-06 17:23:58 -0500

Ooh, new beta. One question, tho ... in either 2.0 or 2.1 ... is there an option to have new auto-accepted messages appear in a new tab BEHIND the current tab? Frequently I'll be in the middle of typing to someone when someone else's chat will pop up and at best interrupt what I'm typing, at worst have the tail end of the message sent by accident to the new person. If that's not an option, is it something that could be looked into? :) Thanks!

Ben Perry at 2007-12-06 17:30:02 -0500

Fantastic.....nice new combined contact list....only thing missing from it is the Invisible option....not sure what the best way to do it considering that the other protocols don't all have it as an option. Oh well. Keep up the great work.

ignite at 2007-12-06 17:33:28 -0500

How long before we see the "Auto-Hide" feature? That's my favorite one. I like to cmd+tab away from iChat and have it auto-hide then when I cmd+tab back it appears again, ready for the conversation to continue. Also, is there away to make it so that auto-accept feature doesn't automatically switch to the iChat? I'd rather auto-accept the chat and not switch to ichat right away... sometimes I'm finishing up something and it auto-switching to ichat is really really annoying. With that said great work :-) This beta seems to work well on 10.5.1. Thanks!

rgp at 2007-12-06 19:36:01 -0500

You're doing awesome work. Keep it up. My only problem with it is that when I get growl notifications, I get weird symbols on the 2nd line of the message.

Chris at 2007-12-06 19:48:23 -0500

Great work, new beta works well! I'm glad to see you've added the auto-accept screen share, a great addition for automatically tidying my parents' macs without them needing to be around. With one great request down, the only other 2 major Chax feature additions that would make me a full time iChat user is a dockable/autohiding buddy list and sorting the list by handles! I really don't know where Apple was on the latter one, but not including that feature seems almost ignorant of Apple to leave out! Thanks again! You're making SO many people iChat believers, Apple should hire you.

zerock at 2007-12-06 21:36:24 -0500

Awesome! now all i need is to find a good jabber transport for msn and i'm set with iChat.

clint hime at 2007-12-06 23:03:30 -0500

I can confirm when a user becomes available it shows there status as this: "ÿb"

ljun at 2007-12-07 03:12:36 -0500

About the unified buddy list ..... is there any way to disable this feature? I would really prefer to have them all separated ..... thanks :) ??

Stu at 2007-12-07 10:26:34 -0500

I also get the get growl notifications display issue (yb), I get weird symbols on the 2nd line of the message. Also When I select auto resize and a new contact comes online, the list opens all the way to the bottom of the screen.

ignite at 2007-12-07 10:41:04 -0500

clint said: 'I can confirm when a user becomes available it shows there status as this: “ÿb”' - I've seen this as well. @Ijun - Simply close the unified buddy list and go to "window" and select the individual buddy lists you want.

n3il89 at 2007-12-07 10:47:53 -0500

Thanks so much for a unified contact list! Is there any way to keep the unified contact list but still have support for groups like in Adium? I have about 5 groups of contacts in AIM and then one in Gtalk. If I could keep all 6 in one unified contact list then that would be perfect.

Will at 2007-12-07 10:50:50 -0500

I've wanted a unified buddy list for sooo long. I'm still running 10.4 though, so is 2.1b compatible or is 10.5 required? I tried running hte installer and it immediately crashes. iChat isnt' running. I tried removing the Chax InputManger folder rom /Library/InputManagers (by dragging it to the desktop) but the installer still crashed immediately. Perhaps I need to log out/in to really kill the input manager? I sure hope I don't have to wait till I eventually upgrade to 10.5. :-( Email me if you want the crash log.

John Kenneth Fisher at 2007-12-07 11:33:57 -0500

lack of a unified contact list is what drove me to Adium. Thank you for letting me come back to iChat. :-D

Mike at 2007-12-07 11:37:19 -0500

Great work, unified contact lists have been a long time in coming but its so nice to have them finally here. Your patches for iChat are the only things that make it a viable alternative to Adium for me. Thanks so much!

meatleg at 2007-12-07 11:50:06 -0500

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!

Derek Kerl at 2007-12-07 12:06:07 -0500

Thank you so much! I have been look for this feature for a long time.

Parasite at 2007-12-07 12:40:03 -0500

Congratulations. Very nice work so far. I offer myself for spanish localization if help is anytime needed. Greetings.

Dave at 2007-12-07 12:50:47 -0500

Still desperately seeking AUTOHIDE. But supercool nonetheless! Thanks.

MG at 2007-12-07 13:45:09 -0500

THANKS SO YOU SO MUCH FOR UNIFIED CONTACT LISTS!!!

Josh at 2007-12-07 14:08:06 -0500

I've got AIM set up through Gmail as well, which is always on. I'm curious about "(New) Reimplemented hidden BlockAOLSystemMessage default" now though. How about giving users that preference back, to automatically accept/suppress this message?

Allan at 2007-12-07 15:16:07 -0500

Just another user that can confirm the ÿb thing as the online status when either I or other buddies become available. Super job on the combined contactlist, Kent! I would like the combined contactlist to become the first choice when clicking the Dock icon. Can that be done? Thanks!

Miky at 2007-12-07 15:26:21 -0500

hi... when you enable auto accept files it works well, but I am unable to UPLOAD files bye

Miky at 2007-12-07 15:27:13 -0500

hi… when you enable auto accept files it works well, but I am unable to UPLOAD files for upload files I need to disable auto accept Bye...

Paul at 2007-12-07 16:37:25 -0500

So, let me add the whole 'network user' complication to InputManager use in Leopard. I'm logging in as an ActiveDirectory user, supposedly promoted to local administrator on the workstation. Chax will not load for me in iChat. If I login as local account (only tested with local admin account), Chax is picked up by iChat just fine and appears to be completely usable. This is larger defect in Leopard. Looks like I'm filing a bug/support case. Anyone else trying this?

Murray at 2007-12-07 17:00:21 -0500

Hey Guys. You guys seem to be the most knowledgeable about iChat outside of Apple. I would truly appreciate (and buy) a plug-in that allows MSN/Yahoo to be incorporated into iChat. In Australia (in my case and in parts of Europe as I understand) MSN Messenger is the dominate Chat app (sad I know). It would be great if (like Adium - but I guess you hear this alot) other Messenger app protocols could be included into what is an awesome chat app. They wouldn't need to video or voice, as Chat would be acceptable. I hear the Yahoo/MSN are moving to a new protocol standard and I hope this will mean that iChat will work with this shortly but I'm not holding my breath. Guys I hope you will consider this so that I can breath sooner than later. Cheers

Owen Jones at 2007-12-07 20:39:55 -0500

This is a great improvement - the unified contact list is something I have wanted for a long time. One other request though - is it possible to add the ability to block people on the Jabber contact list? Apple provides a nice set of security options for the AIM list, but for some reason these are missing for Jabber. I keep getting a lot of junk email notifications from Yahoo and Hotmail that would be great to suppress.

Curtis at 2007-12-07 23:27:16 -0500

I think you're doing an awesome job and thank you so much for bringing Chax to Leopard! I love the new unified contact list in 2.1b1 (I always HATED having more than one list, I can't believe Apple didn't implement this feature). I also cannot stand the fact that iChat requires me to accept each new text chat invitation, so thank you for making that an option in Chax. One request. I noticed that when I get a new text chat request from a person who is NOT on my buddy list/in my Address Book it will auto accept it as desired, but it will not display the message that the person sent to me. I don't know how to get around this other than to close that chat window and look at the Log Viewer and to add the person to my buddy list/Address Book so that it will not happen again. I don't always want these people on my buddy list (it might be a one time chat). Is there any way that this feature could be fixed for a new release of Chax? Or is it a problem with how iChat handles those initial text invitations? Thanks again so much for Chax!

Kyle at 2007-12-08 12:19:34 -0500

Thanks for Chax! The unified contact list is great. By the way, I'm using groups to keep my Jabber and AIM buddies separate in this new window. Several of my buddies have 2 accounts, so this is a great way to keep them organized. In the original contact window, just rename a group AIM or Jabber or whatever and it will show up in the new unified contacts list. Thanks again!

Peter at 2007-12-08 13:49:14 -0500

The same as Miky autoaccept files work properly, but sending files stop working. Thanks for chax its a little gem.

Will at 2007-12-08 14:18:24 -0500

Love the new updates in this beta! Between the combined contact list and the new message showing the name in the dock, I can use ichat without shame. Now if only apple would iron out the MS Word copy/paste and file transfer...

meatleg at 2007-12-08 23:46:54 -0500

n3il89, groups will work on the unified contacts list. bring the UCL to the front and then click on use groups....

meatleg at 2007-12-09 00:08:56 -0500

I am having trouble sending files since i installed this new version. anyone else have that problem. i try to send and it always says FAILED on my end, and it says that SENDER CANCELED the file transfer on the other end....

Mike at 2007-12-09 17:06:17 -0500

Awesome enhancements, I've made iChat my default IM program now. Only thing I wish is that when you click the iChat Dock icon, my AIM-only list shows up rather than the awesome unified list. Is there a way to change that?

babyfett at 2007-12-09 22:28:09 -0500

Mac noob here. I have a love hate relationship with iChat and I think Chax is the answer. But I'm also a computer dummy and don't know much about Betas. Aren't they experimental and unstable? Am I better off downloading the final version of 2.0 or is the Beta the way to go? And what about that disclaimer about screwing up your computer? Thanks!

Bill at 2007-12-09 22:49:31 -0500

Hey, you take a feature request? A few of my buddies are always using the invisible status... they just like it. So they never show up on my buddy list. It's always a pain to IM them first. Is there a way you could get them to show up anyhow? Perhaps a check-box option in the User Info for any specific buddy to "always show in buddy list, even if status not online?" That would make my day. Anyone else agree?

DAVE at 2007-12-09 23:38:24 -0500

BUG ALERT- if auto accept transfers is on, you cannot send files!!!!

Jessica at 2007-12-09 23:49:50 -0500

I have an idea for another cool feature, and I wasn't sure where else to post it. Its pretty minor but it would be nice. Currently, new message notifications show up in the dock, but if you have the dock set to hide, then you can miss them easily. Is there a way to make new message notifications show up in the little ichat menu bar thing?

Mike Vitoroulis at 2007-12-10 00:06:52 -0500

Solid beta for me so far, my only complaint is that there is no mute iChat while away option. I really miss this. :(

Jeff Byrnes at 2007-12-10 00:53:13 -0500

Only thing I'd like to have is on the unified contacts list, the ability to sort my groups manually, like I can with the individual contact lists. Thanks!

Larry at 2007-12-10 02:48:08 -0500

I'm confused - my contact lists are not unified. What am I missing here????

Dr. J at 2007-12-11 03:10:05 -0500

Also having issues SENDING files - I'm getting the same error msg that everyone else has. Question - Is it possible to enable sending files to ppl who are invisible. I saw this work on a friends computer (running AIM on a PC). Even if i have their window open - i can't send a file to an invisible buddy. Finally, does anyone know how to get the tabs back on the bottom, if so how? Thanks...great build.

Jamie Phelps at 2007-12-11 12:45:17 -0500

I, too, would like to see the "When clicking dock icon show..." option come back with an option to show just the unified contact list. Thanks so much for your work on Chax. It is the fourth most useful add-on I have on my Mac (after Quicksilver, Growl, and Saft). That's pretty damn good company! And I have a lot of add-ons. :)

Brad at 2007-12-11 18:15:49 -0500

Just got a new MacBook Pro so I'm running Leopard w/ iChax 2.1 beta but I can't seem to find the "enable tabs" that I used to have on 10.4 with my old MacBook Pro? Help.

Steve Major at 2007-12-11 19:57:29 -0500

The unified contact list rocks, I too am seeing the same strange characters for Growl. Also, there needs to be some way to show which service is which in the list. I have a buddy on Jabber and AIM, so I have: John Doe John Doe in my list with no (easy at-a-glance) way to tell which is which. :)

Jeff at 2007-12-11 20:10:16 -0500

After closing the unified list, how do I get it back? I don't see an option under the Window menu, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling to see if it would show on a first run, but it looks like I might need to ditch my preferences to get the list back?

Jeff at 2007-12-11 20:11:22 -0500

nevermind. duh! :)

Dustin at 2007-12-12 01:25:16 -0500

Personally, other than all the improvements, Id like to see an a buddy list view with 3 different subdivisions. first criteria would be sorted by availability, identical to leopard, second would be within the availability alpha ordered last names, and lastly, within the last names, alpha ordered first names. should be possible... but im no programer.

Charles Fultz at 2007-12-12 12:11:34 -0500

Paul, how did you narrow it down to network users? I seem to be having the same issue. I'm using LDAP authentication for users, and I too can't get Chax to work. Do you have any evidence that supports your claim? I'm just frustrated by this and have been trying to figure out why it's not working. I'm glad someone has figured it out. Have you filed a bug report? There are a few other things I've noticed broken with 10.5, such as a timing issue with the startup of com.apple.nis.ypbind.

calvin at 2007-12-12 14:17:01 -0500

the message sender in the dock!!!!! i missed this the most, thanks for putting it back :D this is sexy.

Urbankato at 2007-12-13 08:02:49 -0500

I'm having an issue with Chax 2.1b1 on Leopard 10.5.1 which is file transfers are failing when i send (receiving is okay). I subscribed to a .mac account and it worked fine with that but not with any of my AIM accounts. As soon as i un-installed Chax 2.1b1 i can send files again. Has anyone else experienced this? Would love to get this problem solved as Chax is still very useful even with the improvements Apple has made to iChat in Leopard and unfortunately this issue means i've had to uninstall it for now :(.