Thinking about iChat...
I've been thinking a bit about instant messaging clients since I submitted my IM contacts to Buddyzoo. In order to upload my buddy lists I had to switch from iChat - my default messaging client - to AIM. For the first time in months I remembered how useful it is to produce groups of your contacts. I really miss that piece of functionality.
Anyway - around that point I started thinking about how iChat could handle groups like AIM, and I starting thinking about the power of having multiple buddy lists held in multiple windows. What would it be like if your AIM contacts could be picked up and dragged between multiple iChat windows - one for your friends, one for your co-workers, one for your family etc. You'd still only have one AIM account, of course, but it would be represented differently.
Perhaps - if you didn't like multiple windows for each semantic group - you could dock them together - producing bespoke metagroups like "Friends and Family" versus "Work". Maybe the places where the windows fused could become handles that allowed you to resize each pane individually.
And then I started thinking about the other effects that could have - what if each window handled login information separately? What if each one used the inbuilt AIM buddy-blocking system on-the-fly so you could spontaneously decide to disappear from the world of your work colleagues while staying online with all your friends and family. Or the other way around? It's surely just an interface tweak? What do people think?
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
I wish I had more time to mock this one up. I'd particularly like to be able to assemble an iChat window that used the resizable pane-dividers that you see used in NetNewsWire and iCal and to spend some time working out how you might show that one chunk was online while the other was off... I don't know if I've explained what I mean very well either. If anyone can think of a better way of representing what I'm talking about, then please feel free to link to it!
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at April 16, 2003 10:50 AM
GREAT ideas! You should submit these to the fire developers!
http://fire.sourceforge.net/
→ Posted by: Gabriel Radic at April 16, 2003 11:31 AM
Selective Invisibility shouldn't be too hard to go; ICQ has had "invisible" (I can see you but you can only see me if I talk to you) for years, but I don't think it could be assigned to individuals. What happens when contact groups overlap? Friends-who-are-at-work, say? You'd have to be able to set priorities ie "Friends" takes priority over "Work", but other than that, it's a good idea. I've often longed for selective invisibility, but the multiple tab/window/pane/whatever interface finally makes what's going on obvious through the UI.
→ Posted by: Tom at April 16, 2003 11:51 AM
I don't think you'd have to do that at all - if people were in two groups and one was visible and the other was not, then it would just default to the one that was open. That should be the easiest way to do it. Then you could easily make a group called 'acquaintances' or something that you kept mostly inactive unless you were feeling particularly social...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at April 16, 2003 2:17 PM
Hmn. I was just worried that defaulting to what's open/what's on top might get a bit confusing - not for when you have people in multiple lists, but just in terms of users. Unless, of course, it was only POSSIBLE to have one list open at once, it had to be an active task to change them, in which case you're right, that method probably is the best way of doing things.
→ Posted by: Tom at April 16, 2003 4:02 PM
Easy enough to do so: trillian ( http://www.trillian.cc ) allows all the fixes that you speak of. Trillian pro even has the group block feature, as well as being on away message but able to still talk, or being "idle" but still able to speak, so you could still talk to your friends whilst away and idle, and your co-workers wouldn't know the least of it. And it does this with 5 different messengers (as well as multiple accounts for each, if you wish) in a single interface (AIM, Y!IM, IRC, ICQ, MSN) -Simply brilliant, really.
→ Posted by: Lily at April 16, 2003 4:41 PM
Microsoft Messenger has the essence of this functionality too (group categories that can be expanded/contracted at the click of a button). "Group blocking" can easily be done with a plugin.
→ Posted by: Marcus at April 16, 2003 5:26 PM
Microsoft Messenger has the essence of this functionality too (group categories that can be expanded/contracted at the click of a button). "Group blocking" can easily be done with a plugin.
But yeah, Trillian is The Bomb for power user IMing.
→ Posted by: Marcus at April 16, 2003 5:28 PM
Trillian is good. Trillian is my friend; I don't have Pro but the plain one does for me. Sadly, it's not available on OSX for Mac-users like Tom. I think Fire and Proteus are the only multiple-protocol clients atm for OSX.
→ Posted by: Tom at April 17, 2003 11:14 AM
I use trillian and and have multiple screen names for mulitple groups (one for web friends, one for real friends, one for work)... I can log off from one group or another if I don't want to be bothered.
→ Posted by: Aaron at April 17, 2003 4:35 PM
One thing that I'm *dying* to see in iChat is the option *not* to integrate with the Address Book, at least as far as the names in the buddy list is concerned. I have a lot of people that have multiple AIM names, and depending on which name someone might be using, it might signal whether or not I should talk to them, and on which name I should talk to them. Say Joe Smith is my friend, and he has two names, one is "josephsmith50," and the other one is "beergod5000," I might want to know which name he's signed on as, so that I can tell if he's a work or home, for example.
I like the Address Book integration, because it means I can potentially email someone and get their correct contact information from the Address Book, but it causes some confusion. A simple preference that gave me the option of showing a user as their real name or their AIM name would be sufficient, but iChat has so many problems, and lacks so many features that I doubt I'd see this any time soon.
→ Posted by: Illtron at April 20, 2003 6:51 PM
Do you know if it is possible to use Trillian Pro phone/webcam comm with ichat users counting on the ichat-AIM compatibility? Gracias!
→ Posted by: garz at July 3, 2003 8:54 PM
Hmm.. I switched to iChat, but I agree with Illtron that it's lacking too many features. I don't care so much about the group thing (which is added in the update)... but I have a lot of friends with more than one screen name, so I'd like to see maybe a way to add several screen names on one address book card, and then some way to distinguish (sorry cant spell) between them on your buddy list. Some other things I'd like to see added are: 1) I want to be able to make a profile!! 2) I wish custom colors/fonts would show up when you're talking to people using AIM, because my friends all see black on gray in Times New Roman or Helvetica (blah!) 3) I think they should make it possible to change font size in a chat window.. and for that matter.. it would be great if you could change colors and font in the chat window too (maybe the background picture too?) I'm a big iChat fan, but i REALLY hope they make some of these changes soon... im not too big on the idea of switching back to AIM!
→ Posted by: Amy at July 9, 2003 2:53 AM
I got a new iMac computer for Christmas. My daughter logged into iChat and set herself up to connect with friends at school. When trying to set up my account - my Buddy List appears but it still has my daughter's name at the top of the list.
How can I change the "Log In Name" to my name?? I have looked everywhere!!
I'm concerned because I don't have her on my buddy list anymore - when I tried to add her as a buddy, there was an error message saying I use that as a log in name. I don't think I will be able to communicate with her once she is back at school.
Any help would be appreciated!!
→ Posted by: Pat Chase at December 26, 2003 4:18 PM
pleas mack it easyer to get an ichat iv ben triying to get one so i could talk to my friends and so know im sending u this so mabby u can mack it easyer
→ Posted by: pam at December 9, 2005 4:42 AM
Hey I would like to know if I have trillan messenger can I block someone without taking them off my messenger list first. Also when I sign on invisible can I be invisible to only certain users and not others?
→ Posted by: melody at March 6, 2006 5:25 AM