ChatMaster - 0.5.1

iChat is great, we've made great use of it in our company and love it. There are two problems that we'd love to see shareware programmers/haxie writers tackle, or else Apple proactively fix in their next update.

First of all, sometimes (quite often in some cases) iChat AV (v2.0 or 2.1, and older version too) report that it was unable to connect to AIM. It then just sits there, displaying a dialog that will never be read because no one knows to click on the app and fix the problem (by quitting and restarting). Since IM is presumably being used by people who sometimes NEED to communicate quickly and accurately, it's not helpful for iChat to basically allow itself to be turned off permanently sometimes. Apple should fix this bug (?) or make iChat be smart enough to re-connect itself every 5 minutes if it goes offline; or else a third party should make a "keepalive" of some kind.

Next there's the problem with getting people to see messages. Many of my employees rarely use iChat and keep the volume on their computers turned down all the way, making any attempt to contact them impossible if they don't see the initial window popup. There needs to be a way to assign a status to some buddies; if they are important, or if they are your boss, iChat should jump and display sounds and other dialogues saying HEY YOU HAVE A MESSAGE FROM SO-AND-SO. If Apple thinks things are fine the way they are that's good -- I would love to see third parties tackle this in some way then.

And id be content, improving slowly, good work