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Instant Messaging: Other IMs

Inside the iChat Buddy System

by Rich Testani

The Buddy System

Rich Testani is our resident Mac guru. He's been using Macs since the first generation PowerMac and AOL 2.5.  Rich is an illustrator and designer for Big Enough Clothes, and also runs the Mac-related Apple-Sauce web site.

In this age of networking and instant communication it seems there are lists of names for everything you use: Personal Information Managers (PIM); email addresses; address books, and buddy lists. It’s all too common that you would need to maintain the same pieces of information in each individual application, making management virtually impossible if not at least very boring.

Apple has helped with this situation bringing your information together in a seamless fashion. By tying iChat’s buddy list to the Address Book application, you get an experience that is simply Mac.

Overview of your Buddy List
IChat’s Buddy list works much the same as any IM, it simply shows a list of who you consider is your friend, sorted by who is online. Contrary to AIM, which shows you who is online by groups, iChat lists anyone who is online and moves the most active to the top.

The top portion of the buddy list window shows your full name and status as well as your custom icon. Oh, you want to add a custom icon? Simply drag a .gif , .jpg or .pdf file to the empty square at the top of your buddy list. Upon releasing, a crop window appears allow you to set the crop of your image. Great, Now you your friends can see you! If you do not supply an icon, a generic AOL running man is your avatar.

Drag the slider to change how much of your image will be shown.

You can tell users availability by the ‘traffic lights’ status to the left of each name. Green is available, Yellow is idle and red is unavailable or away. You can display custom available or away messages by clicking your status just below your name in the window. IChat’s implementation allows users to create or set away messages on the fly rather than through extra windows.

Working with your Buddies
Icons representing settings, add, info, mail and chat allow you to quickly change the display of your list or contact a buddy.

This is the part where the simple management I mentioned earlier comes into play. Clicking the plus (+) sign allow you to add users to your list (Shift+Command+A or choose the Buddies->Add a Buddy menu command). This will bring up the Address Book sheet showing which contacts are eligible to be added to your Buddy List.

Since we are creating a new contact, we will click the New Person button. This will bring up yet another sheet with blank fields for you to fill out. Then click Add and you are good to go. All of this information has been added directly to the Address Book application. Don’t believe me? Fire up the system app and see for yourself.

Although adding a buddy isn’t as simple as dragging a name from the Address Book (which is something that should be implemented), this method keeps your contacts and buddies all in the same place.

If you had an existing buddy list and are setting up iChat with an AIM account, you will need to manually add contacts to the Address Book, as they will not automatically import.

Related iChat Links

• Introduction to iChat - Rich Testani
• Download iChat
• Discuss in the Forum

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