70. Start a Text, Audio, or Video Chat Session  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 67 Set Up Your AIM or .Mac Account 69 Add a Buddy
 SEE ALSO 71 Send a File 72 Set a Custom Status Message
You can start a chat session with anybody in your Buddy List or Bonjour or Jabber lists who's availablein other words, anybody who has a green dot next to his or her name in the list. (You cannot send messages to people who are offline.) When you send a message to an online user and the other person replies, a chat has begun.  TIP The difference between a Direct Message and an Instant Message, either of which you can send to any online user in your Buddy List, is that an Instant Message is relayed through a central server on the Internet, whereas a Direct Message is sent straight from your computer to the other person's computer. Use a Direct Message (choose it from the Buddies menu) if you are concerned about the risk to privacy that comes with sending your messages through the central server.
You can start chatting using plain text (which appears in your iChat window surrounded by glossy balloons), audio (using your Mac's built-in microphone or the microphone in your video camera), or video (using an external FireWire camera, such as a DV camcorder or Apple's iSight camera). You can even chat with multiple partners , regardless of whether you're using text, audio, or video, making iChat a very capable groupware application. If you choose, you can have your text chats saved as transcripts; each time you chat with another person, the entire session is saved in a file in the iChats folder inside the Documents folder in your Home folder. Simply double-click a chat file to open it for review. Each individual chat transcript is saved at the time that you close a chat window; the transcript files are named according to the person you were chatting with and the date and time when the chat took place, for orderly sorting. TIP You must enable chat transcripts for them to be saved automatically; you can do this by selecting the Automatically save chat transcripts check box in the Messages pane of iChat's Preferences , which are accessible through the iChat menu.
70. Start a Text, Audio, or Video Chat Session 
You can start a chat immediately with any active person on your Buddy List by using the iChat System Menu, a cartoon word-balloon in the menu bar; simply select the name of the person under Available Buddies to send a message. You can turn the iChat System Menu on and off using the Show status in menu bar check box in the General pane of the iChat Preferences window, which is accessible through the iChat menu. | 1. | Start a Text Chat The simplest kind of chat, a text chat, can be initiated simply by double-clicking the name of the buddy you want to chat with in either the Buddy List or Bonjour window. (Alternatively, select the buddy from the list and click the A button at the bottom of the window.) An Instant Messages window appears in which you can type your message; press Return to send the text you've typed. Your message appears on the right side of the chat window. When your chat partner replies, his messages appear on the left side of the window. A cartoon bubble with an ellipsis ( ) in it indicates that your partner is typing a response. TIPS To save your chats for future perusal, open the iChat Preferences and go to the Messages tab; select the Automatically save chat transcripts check box. The Open Folder button opens a Finder window showing the contents of the iChats folder inside your Documents ; this is where a transcript of each chat session is stored, named according to the name of the chat partner. To review any stored chat session, navigate to this folder and double-click the session you want; it will open in an iChat window. When chatting with a Bonjour or Jabber partner, the text you type is sent immediately as you type it without waiting for you to press Return (your buddy can see all the typos you make and when you backspace over them). If you'd rather iChat wait until you've fully composed your message before sending it, you can turn off this behavior in the Messages pane in iChat's Preferences . To insert a carriage -return into your message (that is, to break one line and start typing on the next line) without sending the message, press Option+Return . To begin a chat with multiple partners, choose New Chat from the File menu; then drag participants from the Buddy list into the Participants drawer next to the chat window. | | 2. | Start an Audio Chat If you have a microphone and the other user is capable of an audio chat, a green "telephone" icon appears next to her picture in your buddy list. Click this icon or select the user from the list and click the Telephone button at the bottom of the window. NOTE If the other user doesn't have a microphone, you can still set up a one-way audio chat, in which she will be able to hear you, but not vice versa. To do this, select the user from the list and then choose Invite to One-Way Audio Chat from the Buddies menu. A small window appears, with the name of the buddy you are trying to contact in the title bar. The window displays your audio input gain along with status messages showing whether the audio chat is properly set up yet. When the chat is initiated correctly, the status messages disappear and you should be able to talk and hear the other person. To monitor the quality of your connection, use the Connection Doctor (available in the Audio menu). The Connection Doctor panel shows you the frame rate and bandwidth (bit rate) used by the connection, as well as a meter showing the connection's quality. This information can be useful in diagnosing network problems that arise. Add more audio chat partners by clicking the + icon at the bottom of the window; select the person from the window that appears. You can audio-chat simultaneously with as many as nine other people. | | 3. | Start a Video Chat If you and your chat partner each have a video camera hooked up and turned on, you can start a video chat. Click the green camera icon next to the user's picture, or select the user and click the Camera button at the bottom of the window. NOTE If the other user doesn't have a camera, you can still set up a one-way video chat, in which he will be able to see and hear you, but not vice versa. To do this, select the user and then choose Invite to One-Way Video Chat from the Buddies menu. A window appears showing your moving image as your camera sees it, with a connection status bar at the top showing whether the chat is set up or not. When the chat starts, the status bar disappears, and the other user's image takes up the whole window. Your image shrinks to a small "picture-in-picture" view, which you can drag to another position in the window or change its size (by dragging its corner). Add more video chat partners by clicking the + icon at the bottom of the window; select the person from the window that appears. Each new person in the video chat appears in a three-dimensional panel in the video chat window, arranged with other video panels so as to suggest that you're all sitting around a shiny black table facing each other. You can video-chat simultaneously with as many as three other people. TIP Click the Full Screen button at the bottom of the video chat window (it's labeled with arrows pointing to the corners) to expand the video chat to your entire screen, making the conversation seem even more face-to-face. You might have difficulty starting a chat with other users on your local network using Bonjour if your firewall is enabled. To allow iChat traffic to get through the firewall, open the Firewall tab in the Sharing Preferences (click Sharing in the System Preferences ), then enable the exception rule for iChat Bonjour (ports 5297 and 5298). For more information on working with the firewall, see 134 Add or Remove Firewall Rules . | | 4. | Reply to Another User's Chat Request If another person invites you to a text, audio, or video chat, you will see a message pop up in the upper-right corner of the screen telling you about the invitation . (A sound effect plays, too; for text chats, it's a soft "pop" sound, whereas for audio and video chats, it's a "ring" sound.) Click the translucent message to turn it opaque and see its contents; the window also has buttons you can use to accept the chat, refuse it, or block the user from contacting you in the future. If you click Accept , the chat session will start. To end any chat session, simply close the chat window. To turn off iChat altogether, quit the application. However, iChat still launches to accept incoming messages even if the application isn't running, unless you select the When I quit iChat, set my status to Offline check box in the General tab of the iChat Preferences. TIP To make sure incoming messages can't reach you, choose Offline from the iChat System Menu (or from the menu under your name within iChat if it's running); you will then appear "offline" to other iChat and AIM users, and they won't be able to send messages to you. Also be sure to explore the more powerful options in the Privacy tab of the Accounts pane of the iChat Preferences . | | 5. | Contact iChat Partners from Mail Open the Mail application (click its icon in the Dock) and view your Inbox. If any messages in it were sent to you from someone in your Address Book who is currently using iChat, a green dot appears next to his or her name in the message listing and in the headers of the message itself. Click the dot to begin a direct iChat session with that person. Alternatively, click the down arrow next to the person's name to access the iChat With Person command as well as several other communication options. TIP Update your Address Book to make sure that the email address for each of your contacts is the same as the one that he uses for iChat! Remember that you can enter multiple email addresses in Address Book for each person. | | 6. | End a Chat Session
When you're done chatting with the other person, simply click the Close button on the chat window to end the session.
Set your status to Offline (using the menu under your name) if you wish to stop receiving new messages from other users.
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