21.7. Text Chatting

If the buddy added her own picture—to her own copy of iChat, a Jabber program, or AOL Instant Messenger—it will be transmitted to you, appearing automatically in the chat window.. To ch

21.7 Text Chatting

A typed chat works like this: Each time you or your chat partner types something and then presses Enter, the text appears on both your screens (Figure 21-6) iChat displays each typed comment next to an icon, which can be any of these three things:

• A picture they added If the buddy added her own picture—to her own copy of iChat, a Jabber program, or AOL Instant Messenger—it will be transmitted to you, appearing automatically in the chat window Cool!

• A picture you added If you've added a picture of that person to the Buddy List or Address Book, you see it here instead (After all, your vision of what somebody looks like may not match his own self-image.)

• Generic If nobody's done icon-dragging of any sort, you get a generic icon— either a blue globe (for Mac people), a light bulb (for Google Talkers), or the AOL Instant Messenger running man (for AIM people)

Figure 21-6 As you chat, your comments always appear on the right If you haven't yet created a custom icon, you'll look like a blue globe or an AOL running man You can choose a picture for yourself either in your own Address Book card or right in iChat And Web links your pals paste into messages are perfectly clickable— your Web browser leaps right up to take you to the site your friend has shared

To choose a graphic to use as your own icon, click the square picture to the right of your own name at the top of the Buddy, Jabber, or Bonjour list From the pop-up palette of recently selected pictures, choose Edit Picture to open a pop-up image selection palette, where you can take a snapshot with your Mac's camera or choose a photo file from your hard drive Feel free to build an array of different graphics to represent yourself—and to change them in mid-chat, using this pop-up palette, to the delight or confusion of your conversation partner

Tip: When you minimize the iChat message window, its Dock icon displays the icon of

the person you're chatting with—a handy reminder that she's still there

21.7.1 In-chat fun

Typing isn't the only thing you can do during a chat You can also perform any of these stunts:

• Open the drawer Choose View Show Chat Participants to hide or show the

"drawer" that lists every person in your current group chat To invite somebody new to the chat, click the + button at the bottom of the drawer, or drag the person's icon out of the Buddy list window and into this drawer

• Format your text You can press -B or -I to make your next typed

utterance bold or italic Or change your color or font by choosing Format

Show Colors or Format Show Fonts, which summons the standard Mac OS X color or font palettes (If you use some weird font that your chat partners don't have installed, they won't see the same typeface.)

• Insert a smiley When you choose a face (like Undecided, Angry, or Frown) from this quick-access menu of smiley options (at the right end of the text-reply box), iChat inserts it as a graphic into your response

On the other hand, if you know the correct symbols to produce smileys—that :) means a smiling face, for example—you can save time by typing them instead of using the pop-up menu iChat converts them into smiley icons on the fly, as soon

as you send your reply

Send a file Choosing Buddies Send File lets you send a file to all the

participants in your chat

POWER USERS' CLINIC Getting Animated in iChat

Most people find the text that scrolls by quite dynamic enough But if you need more activity in the iChat window, you can also add moving icons to liven up

your Buddy List Such an icon, an animated GIF file, is actually built of several individual frames that are played in succession, creating a crude sort of

animation

To find an animated GIF file worthy of representing you or your buddies, look online, where thousands are available online Search for them with Google, or

visit sites like www.gifanimations.com or www.gifs.net

Once you've secured a good animated GIF, add it to your iChat profile (as

described on the previous page), then choose iChat Preferences General, and turn on "Animate buddy pictures."

You can even make your own animated GIF icons in Photo Booth (Chapter 10) Take a four-frame picture using the 4-up photo option, taking care to make four different crazy faces as the camera snaps four times

When the four shots show up in the Photo Booth photo tray, click the Buddy

Picture button to make that shot your new iChat photo

You can assign a Photo Booth animated GIF to another buddy, too; choose File

Export from the Photo Booth menu Save the file to your Mac and add it to your Address Book card for that pal (Whether or not you tell your friend what

image you've associated with his screen name is up to you.)

Better yet, just drag the file's icon from the Finder into the box where you normally type (This trick works well with pictures, because your conversation partner sees the graphic right in his iChat window.)

This is a fantastic way to transfer a file that would be too big to send by email A chat window never gets "full," and no attachment is too large to send

This method halves the time of transfer, too, since your recipients get the file as you upload it They don't have to wait 20 minutes for you to send the file, and then another 20 minutes to download it, as they would with email or FTP

Note, though, that this option isn't available in old versions of the AOL Instant

Messenger program—only new versions and iChat

If you have multiple conversations taking place—and are flinging files around to a bunch

of people—you can keep an eye on each file's progress with the File Transfer Manager Choose Window File Transfers (or press Option- -L) to pop open an all-in-one document delivery monitor

Tip: If you've opened the Participants drawer, you can drag files from the Finder onto

individual participants' names in this drawer to send files directly to them

• Get Info on someone If you click a name in your Buddy list, and then choose Buddies Show Info (or Control-click someone's name and choose Show Info from the shortcut menu), you get a little Info window about your buddy, where you can edit her name, email address, and picture (If you change the picture here, you'll see it instead of the graphic your buddy chose for herself.)

If you choose Actions from the Show pop-up menu at this point, you can make iChat react when this particular buddy logs in, logs out, or changes status—for example, by playing a sound or saying, "She's here! She's here!"

• Send an Instant Message Not everything in a chat session has to be "heard" by all participants If you choose Buddies Send Instant Message, you get a private chat window, where you can "whisper" something directly to a special someone behind the other chatters' backs

GEM IN THE ROUGH The Chat Transcript

Every now and then, you'll wish you could preserve a chat for all time—a

particularly meaningful conversation with a friend, lover, or customer-service

agent

On the iChat Preferences Messages panel, you can turn on

"Automatically save chat transcripts." From now on, the text of your

conversations is automatically saved in your Home Documents iChats folder To view a chat later, double-click its icon It opens within iChat, compete with all colors and formatting

Even if you don't turn on this "Automatically" checkbox, you can save

individual chats in progress by choosing File Save a Copy As

•

• Send a Secure Message Fellow Mac members can engage in encrypted chats that keep the conversation strictly between participants If you didn't turn on encrypted chats when you set up your Mac account in iChat, choose iChat Preferences Accounts Security, and then click Encrypt

• Send Email If someone messages you, "Hey, will you email me directions? "you can do so on the spot by choosing Buddies Send Email Your email program opens up automatically so you can send the note along; if your buddy's email address is part of his Address Book info, the message is preaddressed

• Send an SMS message to a cellphone If you're using an AIM screen name or Mac account, you can send text messages directly to your friends' cellphones (in the United States, anyway) Choose File Send SMS In the box that pops up, type the full cellphone number, without punctuation, like this: 2125551212

Press Enter to return to the chat window Type a very short message (a couple of

sentences, tops), and then press Enter

Tip: If iChat rudely informs you that your own privacy settings prevent you from

contacting "this person," choose iChat Preferences, click Accounts, click your chat account, and turn on "Allow anyone."

Obviously, you can't carry on much of an interactive conversation this way The only response you get is from AOL's computers, letting you know that your message has been sent But what a great way to shoot a "Call me!" or "Running late—see you tonight!" or

"Turn on channel 4 right now!!!" message to someone's phone

On the other hand, if you're going to be away from your Mac for a few hours, you can have iChat forward incoming chat messages to your cellphone Choose iChat

Preferences Accounts and click Configure AIM Mobile Forwarding In the resulting window, fill in your own cellphone number, so the incoming messages know where to

go

Just remember that some wireless carriers charge you by the message So if a lot of

buddies are constantly pinging you, you may want to switch to a plan with more (or unlimited) SMS messages each month

21.7.2 Popping the Balloons

The words you might have for iChat's word-balloon design might be "cute" and

"distinctive." But it's equally likely that your choice of words includes "juvenile" and

"annoying."

Fortunately, behind iChat's candy coating are enough options tucked away in the View menu that you'll certainly find one that works for you (see Figure 21-7)

You can even change iChat's white background to any image using View Set Chat Background Better yet, find a picture you like and drag it into your chat window; iChat immediately makes it the background of your chat To get rid of the background and revert to soothing white, choose View Clear Chat Background