iChat 3 Pictures

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01 General Preferences

Oct 2008

1 General Preferences

This is the iChat 3 General Section of the Preferences.

The first item is very important. If you leave this Un-ticked then iChat will not fully log out of the AIM servers. You will display as being Away to many other AIM clients (Applications that can join the AIM service). For many clients this is used for Off-Line Messaging, but iChat 3, as with previous versions, cannot do this.

It can cause issues though if you have two computers and login with the same Screen Name on both. As you login on the second computer the AIM servers will send you a Text Chat message to say you are logged in twice and wanting you to type 1 and send it to log the first computer out. You can set yourself here to Set your Status as Off Line or use the Accounts section to Allow Multiple Logins to get around this. (You need to set the same on both computers).

Essentially the Shapes options is to help colour blind people although they still have the same colours. It changes the indicators (normally the coloured blobs) next to your Available or Away status and those of your Buddies.

The Show Status in Menu Bar adds a small speech bubble icon to the Menu Bar at the Clock end. This will be greyed out if you are Off-Line but will display the Status Messages you have created. Using one, whether Away or Available, will log you in.

When you are logged in but Away then the icon will then have a - (minus) sign in the middle and will be dark to show you are Active. The drop down will now show you the Status Messages and your On-line Buddies. When Available, the icon is or becomes just be a speech Bubble as it does when you are off-line but show the same listings as when you are Away.

The next drop down in the Preferences picture can be used to set what Chat does when you use Fast User Switching if you have different Mac User Accounts on your computer.

The following items control what iChat does or asks you if the computer Sleeps or the Screen Saver becomes active. (physically Away from your computer).

Files can be sent to you when you are not chatting. Where these are put can be stated in the bottom Drop Down item. By Default it is the Desktop but it can be changed. However during a chat it is always the Desktop no matter what you have set here.

The next page and picture is the Accounts Pane

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Information Block

This site is about iChat from Version 1 through to iChat 5.x.x
Mostly this is kept as an Historical Document. Some small tense changes have been made but the content is by and large untouched.

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

The sections below will change for Specifics about info on the page on view

About This Page

Control how iChat Logs out of the AIM servers, where incoming Files are put and what happend when you come back to your computer if the Screen Saver is active or the Computer has been Sleeping.

Also has some Display and Function assist options like a Menu Bar icon to access certain parts of IChat.

Compatibility

As mentioned above this has had a major Edit/Update in September 2024 moving towards being fully HTML 5 compliant 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) should/may only see a text-based page which, while not the prettiest option, is still entirely usable.

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