iChat’s conversation bubbles capture the back-and-forth of chatting nicely by positioning you on one side, and the person you’re speaking with on the other side. The bubbles are different colors for the different parties.

But the status messages shown centered in the window really help the conversational flow, too. They tell about important events that occur during the conversation, like people leaving and changing status, and when these events occur. The limitations of the protocols iChat supports—AOL and Jabber—occasionally cause odd behavior, but iChat does what it can.

In this conversation, Boo starts things off, appearing on the right. A conversation always starts with a clear declaration of who you’re speaking with, including the other party’s address, which is important because, unlike online names, addresses can’t be faked.

Mike responds 17 minutes later, appearing on the left. iChat inserts a timestamp when a response occurs more than a few minutes after the previous one. Notice that Mike’s following post doesn’t have a timestamp, so you know he posted it right after the previous one.

When you leave a conversation window open overnight, iChat inserts a new day status message to let you know the conversation is now spanning multiple days. (It’s odd that the new day status messages appear formatted as “5/11/08″, while the normal timestamps appear in the format “May 11″. They should agree in format.)

You also see when encryption is enabled and disabled, although this is a bit buggy because, as shown below, you don’t always see when encryption has been disabled. If it’s enabled twice in a row as the screenshot indicates, it’s reasonable to assume it was disabled in between at some time—something you’d like to know.

iChat also tells you when a Direct Instant Message starts, though this is not only buggy, it’s confusing and seems unnecessarily technical in nature. Usually, when you’re chatting with someone, your messages are routed through a server somewhere. With a Direct Instant Message, your messages travel directly to the other party without passing through an intermediary. This is useful when sending files, for instance.

But it’s sometimes confusing why a Direct Instant Message starts. In the chat below, there was no file sent or anything else but normal chatting, yet a Direct Instant Message session was initiated. And apparently the Direct Instant Message session never ended, since no status message to that effect was ever added to the chat.

iChat also tells you when you leave a chat, whether by logging out or by being disconnected. It’s not clear why it can’t distinguish between the two, though it’s probably something to do with the AIM or Jabber protocols.

At any rate, despite a few very minor issues, using iChat is a delight. And it keeps getting better.

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008, 11:39 am    You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.