Ralph Johns

iChat Information Pages


iChat Icon

These iChat (Version 1) pages are coloured Blue and have the iChat (1) icon on them that was in use at the time, so you know where you are. The icon differs from later ones by having the Running Man.  

These pages have sat here since 2008 with no update. In that time the AIM servers have been closed down (2017) and iChat has been superceded by Messages. That effectively make this a sort of Historical Document of how it worked.

iChat 1 Pictures

You are In:- iChat >> Versions >> iChat 1 >> iChat 1 Pictures Index >> iChat 1 Menu Index >> File Menu
2[7] 02 File Menu Oct 2008

One of the menu places to start a Chat.

Create a Group Chat

New Chat opens a Group Chat window with the Participants Drawer out. Dragging Buddies (Click and hold during move to Drag) from the Buddies List to the Participants Drawer will then bring up a dialogue box to type an Invite.

 

one to one Chat

New Chat With Person is a 1-1 chat with just one Buddy. The Chat window opens ready but a Dialogue box appears over the top to enter a Buddy's Name.

You will have to type the Screen Name in full so if they end in @mac.com (or any email ending that AIM allows as Apple ones are not the only ones) then that bit has to be typed as well.

 

 

Go to Chat

Go to Chat is the Chatroom or Group chat option of a chat. This one is about joining a room or a Group chat that is already running. It can join an AIM chat room or the Drop Down can select Rendezvous.

On the whole the New Chat and Go to Chat tends to lead to the distiction of Public Chatrooms that are on the go all the time that you might discover in a Web Search and those created by you and your Buddies where an invite is likely to be sent to join the more personal room/Group chat.

The next section of the Main picture below the dividing space is about Opening Saved Chats. In the Preferences you can get iChat to Save every Chat as it ends. Open can open those and Open Recent can reopen those that you have viewed before.

These are not means of restarting a Text Chat or a Group Chat that you have ended.

The Save A Copy As is a way of Saving the Current Chat or Group Chat at the point it is at. It can also be used to save a Chat with a more useful. name

The next Menu is the Edit Menu.


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Information Block

These pages have sat here since 2008 with no update. In that time the AIM servers have been closed down (2017) and iChat has been superceded by Messages. That effectively make this a sort of Historical Document of how it worked.

This 2024 Edit/Update does make some tense changes to the Contents but mostly it stands as written. The general purpose of the update was to move, as much as possible to HTML 5 compliance where I could.

This site is about iChat from Version 1 through to iChat 5.x.x

It has a mixture of basic info and problem solving help.

This Information Block will change for Specifics about info on the page on view

About This Page

The FIle Menu. Like most applications it is where the "New" items are for creating new chats of Various sorts.

I have shown here the three dialogue boxes that pop up with each choice.

Compatibility

As mentioned above this has had a major Edit/Update in September 2024 meaning that the Browsers listed below are likely to no longer work.

I have tested in Safari 18.1, Firefox 130.x and 131.0, Vivaldi 6.9.3447.48 and iCab 6.2.3 (All Mac Browsers) I don't have access to a PC let alone multiple browsers to test on.

The original pages worked with Win/IE 5.5 and later (should work in 5.0, but not confirmed), Firefox 2, Safari 3, Opera 9, iCab 3.02 and later, Mac/IE 5, Netscape 6 and later

Old browsers (IE version 4 or earlier, Netscape 4 or earlier) would only see a text-based page which, while not the prettiest option, is still entirely usable.