NOV
23
Cool iChat Tips that You've Forgotten
Posted by Wendy
In Leopard, iChat has come with greater user experience and perhaps user-friendly. This makes some forgot the old small yet useful tips. Today, we will try our best to refresh your iChat's skill.
Playing Around with Buddy's Info
To open iChat Buddy's Info, click on the name of your buddy on Buddy List and then hit keystrokes 
I
Check Buddy's Capabilities
There it is, under Profile and below your buddy's display photo, you can see your buddy's chat types that are available.
Change Buddy's Display Photo
Under Address Card, where you can clearly see your buddy's detailed information, there is Picture section in which your buddy's display photo stands. Are you getting sick of the display photo? If so, open your favorite image collection and drop one of the best into the photo frame. Then here you go, you got a brand new buddy's display photo.
Revealing Text Field Secrets
Illustrate with Image
It's also known that an image worths thousand of words. For iChat, drop the image, that you want to attach, to the text field and the image will be sent to your buddy, which you've conversation with.
Unlimited File Attachment
With iChat, you won't be troubled by file size limit when you wanted to send files. In other words, it's unlimited. To attach file, simple drag-and-drop will work.
Define Line Breaks
In iChat, 
Live Links for Your Buddy
You can attach link and let your buddy click the link you sent directly from iChat. You only need to type the format for the link, which you don't need to add "http".
Quick Change the View
Do you like to view the instant messages Balloons? If not, you can try other view option, such as Boxes and Compacts. 
Clck
Customize Background
Apple Menubar ▸ View ▸ Set Chat Background... and then choose image for your background.
Re-Defining Preferences
There are many preferences you can define for your own sake, which will successfully build your procrastination mood. These settings, which can be done under iChat Preferences, are :
Always Stay Tuned
Inside your iChat Preference, under General and at the Settings section, tick the "Show status..." checkbox and don't tick then "When I quit iChat..." checkbox. Therefore, you still can receive instant messages from your buddies even though you've quitted your iChat.
Change Balloon and Set Font
Still inside iChat Preference, under Messages, you can see clearly where you can change those colors. Lemon is not bad.
Save Chat Transcript
Under Messages, tick the checkbox labelled "Automatically save... to" then select your destination folder. This way, you won't lose any precious data or lame jokes from your buddies.
New Feature for Leopard
Screen Sharing and Video Effects
These two features, which are quite popular and quite useful to improve procrastination rate, can be navigated from contextual menu (
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Additional iChat Video Effects can also be found at : and .
Warning...
We will not take any responsibility for procrastination caused by iChat. Experience it for your own risk.
COMMENTS
Ed
November 24th, 2007 at 05:27 AM
Got any good ways of getting round the famous -8 error message for video chat? I was hoping the update to Leopard might have solved this, but no joy :(