Ralph Johns

iChat Menus

iChat In Pictures >> You are in Folder 2_iChat Menus >> Buddies Menu

5[8]

5 Buddies Menu

02-10-2006

The Buddies Menu is mostly active when the Buddy Lists are the front windows.

However when a Chat window is the front window and it involves just one other person the Buddies Menu offers a way to add the Buddy to the Buddy list "on the fly" so to speak without having to type their Screen name. It brings up the Add Buddy windows prefilled with the Screen Name

This menu also offers ways to start chats once a Buddy is highlighted in the Buddy List.

You can choose not to Chat with a Buddy (Ignore) and the Authorization option only works in with Jabber Chats/Buddies.

Back to the top of the menu:- Show Info opens the Info card of the Buddy. The Shift key (⇑) shown as part of the Keystroke is not needed if you Highlight a Buddy in the List then use Apple (/Command/⌘) key and i together like regular Finder Get Info. This opens a window three tabs in later versions.

From iChat 4 onwards there is a new item about showing your own Profile. The AIM servers can hold a Profile about you. iChat initially did not have an ability to Add or write you Profile in the App; you needed to use a Third Party app to do so. In iChat 3 you could write as you can see. In vers 4 you could then view it and it had a place higher in the Menu.

Further down are the greyed out Invite items and the Send items. The Invites oone are obvious. Send Instant Message is to send an SMS message as opposed to text in a chat. Send Direct Message was effectively a more secure way to Send a Text Message and also ws the text method once you sent a File or Picture to your Buddy. However if the chat continued for a while without Files of Pictures then the chats would revert to an ordinary chat. It seems that Apple followed the idea from other chat methods that a DM or Direct IM was more of an aside to chatting rather than the Main thing.

Although there is a Send Email option I can't say I ever used it. Partly as late gained @mac.com names were just iChat names issued after MobielMe started and did not have any Apple Account abilities. They were older Apple accounts that were Trial or Lasped Accounts and again no longer working email Addresses. Very few of those using an AIM name had ones that looked like an email and Jabber IDs follow the email format but again don't have those sort of abilities to a Jabber account with the exception of GoogleMail IDs.

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© 2005 Ralph Johns: Edited 24/9/2005, 5/5/2006
Updated September 2006
Updated October 2008. Reviewed and Updated to HTML 5 October 2024

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