Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Mountain Lion Edition

Text Chatting

A typed chat works like this: Each time you or your chat partner types something and then presses Return, the text appears on both of your screens (Figure 12-20).

Messages displays each typed comment next to an icon, which can be any of these three things:

• A picture the other person added. If the buddy added her own picture—to her own copy of Messages, a Jabber program, AOL Instant Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger—it will be transmitted to you, appearing automatically in the chat window. Cool!

• A picture you added. If you’ve added a picture of that person to the buddy list or Contacts, you see it here instead. (After all, your vision of what somebody looks like may not match his own self-image.)

• Generic. If nobody’s done icon-dragging of any sort, you get a generic silhouette icon.

To choose a graphic to use as your own icon, click the square picture to the right of your own name at the top of the buddy list. From the pop-up palette of recently selected pictures, choose Edit Picture to open a pop-up image-selection palette, where you can take a snapshot with your Mac’s camera or choose a photo file from your hard drive. Feel free to build an array of graphics to represent yourself—and to change them in midchat, using this pop-up palette, to the delight or confusion of your conversation partner.

Tip

When you minimize the Messages message window, its Dock icon displays the icon of the person you’re chatting with—a handy reminder that she’s still there.

Figure 12-20. As you chat, ...