Ordering the Buddy List

So you have added a few Buddies and you want them to appear in a different order.

Within certain limits this can be done from the View Menu. There are also Buddies Groups in iChat version 4

As with other items in the iChat menus, the correct window within iChat has to be the front one. Is this case you want the Buddy List as the Front window and for the Picture grab it was. You need the second section mainly although Show Groups and choosing Not to Show Off Line Buddies may also play a factor

You can see that it says "Sort By Availability" with a tick next to it. You can also apply a two pass method of selecting one of the Alphabetical options then the "Sort By Availability" to have an Alphabetical List with the Available ones at the top.

Buddies can be in one of 4, visible to you, states. Green as Available, Amber (orange) as Idle, Red as Away and greyed out as Not on Line. There is an additional selection to decide whether to display Off-Line Buddies or not at the top of the View menu items.

Notes: Idle is when a Buddies computer is on and iChat is logged in but they are not touching any input device such as the Mouse or Keyboard, and will show after 10 minutes of non input even if their computer is rendering a video clip for example.

By default iChat will be set to the Available setting although you can change this in the iChat menu > Preferences > General and Accounts Sections based on 1). Whether an Account/Screen Name should Log in in the accounts section and 2). What iChat should do at Start Up in the General Section.

Notes: You can not drag the Buddies into the order you want - you are constrained by the choices in the View Menu and in iChat 4 by the way you have the Groups displayed.

iChat version 4 does allow you to order your Buddies into Groups. It is no longer a choice of turning off some Buddies as iChat did but Buddies are displayed in Groups within the Buddy List

Group names can be Edited via the Plus symbol at the bottom of the Buddy List where you also Add Buddies. This also allows you to Add new Groups.

 Changed From. I mention Editing the Group names as they themselves are displayed alphabetically by default but Characters like * (star) and ~ (tilde) and even . (dots) display very small and make the Groups order differently based on those characters ASCII codes. You will notice in the Picture on the right I have "Tests" at the top by virtue of a * followed by a space to place it above the "*Family" one.

 Changed to. However in iChat 4 the group Title bars can be dragged in to any order you want so that you do not have to rely on the ASCII codes method listed above. The Plus button and Edit Groups and dragging that list works as well

By default Buddies tend to be in only one Group and dragging them one to another moves them. However if you hold down the ALT (⌥) key before clicking and dragging a Buddy they will be copied to the second group (Providing the ALT (⌥) key is let go last).

Using the Reveal Arrow to the right of the individual Group name bar opens or Closes that Group from view. Other than placing the Buddies in different Groups the other formatting of Available, Idle or Away is set from the View Menu.

Next - How-to Start a Chat

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Created October, 2008 Major Update/Edit October 2024.

 ©  Ralph Johns. Created October 2008

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

Ths page is about ordering the Buddies in the Buddy Lists.

The simplest is to use the Sort Buddies option in the View menu. You can Sort Alphabetically. You can Sort by Availablity. You can in effect sort twice and you can get Alphabetically by Availability. You can also choose not to show those that are listing themselves as Off Line to you. Part of this process is to decide whther to show the Off Line Buddies.

The next step in Ordering the Buddy Lists is to use Groups. New groups can added via the + button at the bottom of the Buddy Lists. Adding symbols like the ~ (tilde) or the * star and using spaces as well can reorder the list to some extent. However iChat 4 changed to allow you to grab a title bar in the Buddy List and drag them into the order you want without the use of extra characters.

After that the page describes using the ALT (⌥) key to drag a Buddy to a second (or more) group.

Finally the page describes using the reveal arrows to open and close the Groups which hides you from your BUddies as you then appear Off Line.

Compatibility

As mentioned above this has had a major Edit/Update in September/October 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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