Download

growliChat 1.02 (for OS X 10.4 Only Universal)~1.5M. Number of downloads so far is 19495 . If you like it, please make a donation(it will make the donation tab in prefpane go away). The problem with firefox and camino was fixed. Thanks, Garrett and Alex. Also, if you love growliChat you might want to check out Chax which gives you another level of customization also. Finally, after I bought a MacBook, I can test it :).

growliChat 0.71 (for OS X 10.3 Panther)~90KB If you have earlier versions, please remove iChat ticket in growl prefpane before running this program. However, I strongly suggest you to upgrade to Tiger. Performance improvement and Dashboard alone would worth your money.

Features

• displays alerts when buddies on buddy list in iChat become online, away, idle, or offline
• turns on and off notifications as you wish from growl prefpane
• shows a display picture in the notification
• shows away messages when accounts change to away
• distinguishes between jabber account and jabber transport so it displays the right name
• windowless and dockless with preference pane
• best of all, it's free you can make a donation if you wish

Screenshots(outdated: submit one to show off your alert)

FAQ(Frequently Asked Questions)

growliChat is an iChat plugin. It manage to display a notification whenever an iChat buddy change status. The applescript version(0.71 and below) is based on the script that comes with growl(less than 5% of 0.71 comes from the original code). The obj c version(0.8 and above) was written from scratch.

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First you need to install growl. Follow the instruction given on this site. Then follow the instruction on the dmg file. If, for some reasons, the background of the dmg file doesn't show up, just copy growliChat.app to the Applications folder and double click growliChat.prefpane. For 0.81 and earlier, just unzip and double click it.

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As you may guess, just delete the program (if it's running, quit it first). For 0.9 and later, find the file called growliChat.prefpane in ~/Library/prefpane or /Library/prefpane and delete it. For information on how to uninstall Growl see here

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For 0.9 users, just go to the perference pane and click stop. For 0.81 and earliers, there are two methods you can close it

• open activity monitor in /application/utilities then find the process called growliChat and press quit button on the upper left hand side.
• open terminal.app and type "ps -cx"(without quotes) and find the pid associated with process called "applet" then type "kill pid" where pid is the pid associated with process called applet described earlier

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The donation button is on the side bar. You don't need paypal account to donate. Just tell it that you don't have one it'll redirect you to credit card page. The key will be sent to you within 48 hours. Usually, If I'm awake and online, it'll take about 1 hour or less. If you have donated but didn't receive the key, please check your junk mail folder. If it's not there feel free to e-mail me for the key. If you are a student or an open source software developer, the key is yours for free. see details here.Sometimes, hotmail put your mail into my junk mailbox and sometimes, you e-mail provider put the key in your junk mail box. Feel free to bug me again when you do not receive key within 48 hrs.

For the latest version the key does absolutely nothing except for you own amusement so... here your go.. a reward for reading this

Exactly, the key doesn't do anything :) it's just something you can do for fun
Here is the way to get rid of making a donation reminder.
1) open growliChat prefpane
2) click on Jabber Tab
3) click on Bonjour Tab 
4) click on General Tab
5) click on Jabber transport Tab
6) click on Donate Tab
7) click on Bonjour Tab
8) click on AIM Tab
9) click on General Tab
If everything was done correctly, the Donate tab will disappear. 

If the key doesn't seem to work, 1) make sure you pressed Jabber Transport not Jabber in 5).
And, if the reminder still appear try close prefpane and open it again and restart growliChat.

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Just add it like a normal program. Go to preference pane and choose account and add growliChat.app to startup item.

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Please post it in the forum. Feedbacks/ complaints are always appreciated.

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The key is free for students and open source software developers. For students, just use you academic e-mail(ex: we_need_some_sleep@andrew.cmu.edu) and sent an e-mail to piti118 at hotmail dot com. For open source software developer, just use an e-mail that appear on your project site and send and e-mail to piti118 at hotmail dot com. The key will be sent after I verify it. Sometimes, hotmail put your mail into my junk mailbox and sometimes, you e-mail provider put the key in your junk mail box. Feel free to bug me again when you do not receive key within 48 hrs.

For the latest version the key does absolutely nothing except for you own amusement so... here your go.. a reward for reading this

Exactly, the key doesn't do anything :) it's just something you can do for fun
Here is the way to get rid of making a donation reminder.
1) open growliChat prefpane
2) click on Jabber Tab
3) click on Bonjour Tab 
4) click on General Tab
5) click on Jabber transport Tab
6) click on Donate Tab
7) click on Bonjour Tab
8) click on AIM Tab
9) click on General Tab
If everything was done correctly, the Donate tab will disappear. 

If the key doesn't seem to work, 1) make sure you pressed Jabber Transport not Jabber in 5).
And, if the reminder still appear try close prefpane and open it again and restart growliChat.

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As pointed by medicine in growl forum, that activity monitor shows that growliChatMSN accumulatively eat up RAM. I spend several hours tracking it down but in vain. There was nothing wrong with the program nor OSX 10.4. It's just my misunderstanding of what "real memory" in activity monitor means. according to this Activity monitor, count all the ram this program has asked the kernel for (malloced for those of you who know C) although some of then has been freed already. This happens because of beauty and smartness of what's beneath OSX; the kernel won't bother swapping free memory out from application until some program actually ask for it since it's just a waste of time for no good. So, be cool when you see this program takes up hundered megs of ram(they probably need about 5-6Meg to load all applescript library). By the way, thank you very much, medicine, for pointing this out. I really appreciated it.

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see here

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Version History

• version 1.02 May 18 2005 for Tiger only 19495 here
• Universal binary. Sorry for having you guys waiting so long.
• version 1.01 Jan 18 2005 for Tiger only 5004 here
• added an extra tab in the preference pane. You can set the available message to be whatever you want(foreign languages are also supported).
• version 1.00 Nov 3 2005 for Tiger only 5508 here
• Fix coalescing in jabber transport
• No more nag message. It's now completely free :)
• Work around: Available messages were shown incorrectly for windows AIM users. It only shows the word Mobile now.
• Fix extra end of line when user doesn't have away message
• version 0.99 August 21 2005 for Tiger only 3538 here(Warning: this may crash if you don't have growl 0.7.2 or later)
• Add coalescing support(you may need growl 0.7.2 or later to do that). That is when a user changes status many times in a short period, growliChat will display those status change notifications on a single growl notification.
• version 0.98 July 16 for Tiger only 2900 here
• Show status message for online buddy. So that you know that your friend is on mobile.(as requested by jak4700 in the forum)
• version 0.97 June 10 for Tiger only 2282 here
• bug fix: growliChat crash few minutes after show some is selected
• version 0.96 June 4 for Tiger only 1583 here
• now, you can turn on or off badge via prefpane
• a little bit bigger badge
• turn off specific protocol via prefpane
• version 0.95 June 2 for Tiger only 1405 here
• show little status badge with the notifications
• version 0.94a May 31 for Tiger only 1653 here
• Prefpane setting not saved fixed
• random crash when prefpane is open fixed(hopefully)
• version 0.94 May 31 for Tiger only 1310 here
• Now you can choose whose notification you want to be shown
• less frequent nag: now, it's about 1/10.
• use growl 0.7 framework with installer.
• version 0.93 May 26 for Tiger only 1665 here
• Now it can display pictures from Address book.
• version 0.92 May 23 for Tiger only 1906 here
• fix status message delay problem
• fix display pictures aren't correctly displayed problem
• version 0.91 May 20 for Tiger only 1627 here
• change the default picture
• add progress indicator beside stop button. So, you don't feel like it's halting.
• fix some texts in prefpane
• version 0.9b* May 14 11.45pm am for Tiger only here
• add a preference pane
• change url of the site in the prefpane to the new one
• version 0.81 May 14 11.45pm am for Tiger only here
• fix a teeny tiny mem leak bug.
• add get info text in the app. so you can find out the version by get info(suggested by jedik)
• version 0.8a May 14 11.45pm am for Tiger only here
• prebind Growl framework. Now it works with Growl0.7 beta. If 0.8 works with you you don't need to download this one :).
• version 0.8 May 14 6.49pm am for Tiger only here
• Highly recommended upgrade
• no new feature, just big big big big performance improve
• now written in obj c instead of applescript
• instead of polling the result I actually control the event
• version 0.71 May 13 4.55Am am for both Tiger and Panther here
• Highly recommended upgrade
• no new feature, just performance improvement
• consume much less resource
• bug fix: racing problem making the program send false notification
• version 0.7 May 12 7.02 am for both Tiger and Panther here
  • support all protocol iChat support(aim, jabber(Tiger), Bonjour/Rendezvous now in but please report any successful/unsuccessful story)
  • now you can turn on and off notification for specific event
  • distinguish between real Jabber and transport account. so it display the right name
  • now offline message support for jabber transport. it now displays the right name.
  • performance improved but it does much more work than it did in the previous version(planing to do fancy things in the future)
  • display default account picture for buddies who don't have display picture
  • iChat version auto detect
• version 0.6 and 0.6a May 6 05 1.30am for 10.4 here and for 10.3 and earlier here
  • offline notif now shown(only for aim)
  • display picture for jabber !!!
  • display away message with away notif for aim account
  • more on alleviate send everyone bug(Thanks Ben for reporting)
  • code restructured
• version 0.53 and 0.53a May 5 05 afternoon for 10.4 here and for 10.3 and earlier here
  • just change icon of the program. nothing more. Sorry for my photoshop skill. I'm a theoretical physicist :P.
• version 0.52 and 0.52a May 4 05 night for 10.4 here and for 10.3 and earlier here
  • much faster respond time(that also means a little more work for CPU)
  • fix bug: as reported by benjamindaines in growl forum that this program can cause iChat to relaunch when iChat is closed. It's now fixed. Thanks a lot ben. :)
• version 0.5 May 4 05 very early morning for 10.4 here and for 10.3 and earlier here
  • fix a bug(typo) in aim alert.
  • now has two version 0.5 and 0.5a. accounting for iChat in panther does not have jabber support
  • change the name from confusing growliChatMSN to just growliChat
• version 0.4 May 3 05 evening here ~34 k
  • Add correct behavior to AIM account
    • display name of the account for AIM instead of formerly blank
    • Yes!!! display picture(only for aim account)
  • register in growl as iChat instead of growliChat if you had former version you may want to remove growliChat from growl prefpane
  • cleaning up the code and optimize the code a little bit(you won't see the different)
  • since the program now does support almost type of account in iChat not only MSN should I change the name? suggestion anyone? (send it to piti118 at hotmail dot com)
  • chage zip file name from capital G to lowercase g
• version 0.3 May 2 05 afternoon. here ~27KB
  • --fix connection error when shutdown(hopefully)
  • --alleviate the bug when the user log off and log on and the program send notification for all users.(I can't get the status whether the list is fully loaded or not from iChat applescript interface. I only know when you are offline or online)
• version 0.2 May 1 05 late night. here ~27KB
  • --ignore work around method. Who cares when someone goes offline
  • --fix bug when the user log off and log on again and send unknown status to growl.
• version 0.1 May 1 05 afternoon here ~26 KB
  • --change theName from name to status message to account for msn messenger display name
  • --workaround (blank) went offline bug this happened because when the user is offline the status is set to blank. The workaround was done by using name instead of status in the case where the user went offline