Many people have been having problems with issues on how buddies are shown in the Buddy List. Rather than answering them in a Q&A format, I thought it would be better to cover the Buddy List View menu in more detail.
The Buddy List View menu looks like this:
After the jump you will see an item by item description along with some tips and recommendations.
I got “Blog-Tagged†by Greg in his blog at aimInfo. Thanks Greg! So, the rules are that I have to mention five things you might not know about me and then tag five other people. So, here they are in no particular order:
And now I get to tag others. Here are some people I work with or have referenced something on my blog: Casual Penguin, Help -> About AIM, Just Suppose, Kevin Farnham, and Shawn Christopher. Happy “Blog-Tagging”…
In this post I will cover some the icons in the Buddy List window and what happened to the IM Catcher in AIM 6.0. I derived these questions from some of the search queries people used to get to my blog in the past.
Q: What is the exclamation point icon on buddy list in AIM 6.0?
A: This icon, a circled i or upside-down exclamation point: 
, appears when you hover over a buddy. You can click on it to view the buddy’s profile and “Buddy Updates†information. The icon will appear automatically whenever your buddy has made a change to his/her profile, made a new journal post, change to AIM Pages, or changed any other RSS feed that your buddy has associated with his/her screen name since the last time you read it. Clicking on the icon will let you view the changes and make the icon go away when not hovering over your buddy.
Q: What does a red sign mean next to a name on the buddy list?
A: This icon (
) means that you have blocked this buddy. That buddy cannot see if you are online or send you IMs. Go to the Settings window [F7], then select the “Privacy†tab to make changes.
Q: Where is the IM Catcher in AIM 6.0?
A: This feature was improved in AIM 6.0. Rather than having a separate window that showed all the caught messages, this was combined with the Grouped IM window. When you go away, the Grouped IM window opens and shows the yellow “Away Status†tab on the top right. The IMs received will be grouped and you can see the names of the buddies that have sent you IMs while you were away in the tabs on the left. You can click on those tabs to see their IMs without having to return from away. The “Away Status†tab has some useful options that you can invoke after you set your away message. There you can set the options to let you send IMs while you are away and to suppress sounds and pop-ups while away. You can also click on the “Hide IMs†button to hide all your IM windows. Double-click on the system tray icon to show the buddy list and hidden IMs when you return. You can clear your away message from the “Away Status†tab by clicking on the “Return From Away†button. IMs from unknown senders will appear with a prompt window over them warning you that they are from an unknown sender and letting choose the appropriate course of action.
I will answer more questions in future posts. E-mail me or add your own question in the comments and I will answer those as well.
I was looking at some of the search terms used to reach my blog the other day. Most searches involve “plugins†in one way or another which I have covered in many posts. However, there are a bunch of them from people looking for answers on AIM. Today, I thought it would be interesting to answer some of the questions that may not have been answered specifically on my blog. Here are a few of them:
Q: What happened to AIM Triton?
A: The simple answer is that AIM Triton is now AIM 6.0. AIM 6.0 was built from AIM Triton. It is designed to be faster, easier to use, more stable, and has a number of new features like: Sending IMs to offline buddies, IM logging, hide IMs while away, etc. You can get AIM 6.0 here. Note: AIM 6.0 will import your settings from AIM 5.x at install time while AIM Triton does not. The future is with AIM 6.x.
Q: How do I create an AIM 6.0 or Triton launch shortcut?
A: I have updated my IM Control Panel software to let you re-create these at the push of a button. It also does a few more things. You can read more about this tool here and download it here.
Q: How can I change the AIM 6.0 install directory?
A: You cannot change this at this time. It is fixed at “C:\Program Files\AIM6â€.
Q: How to import buddies on AIM 6.0?
A: I suggest you install the AIM Gadgets plug-in and use the “Buddy List Load†and “Buddy List Save†options from the “Actions” button in the Buddy List window.
I will answer more questions in future posts. E-mail me or add your own question in the comments and I will answer those as well.
Today I am releasing an update to this software, the first since I started it back in March. This release adds support for AIM 6.0. You can use it to independently start and stop all the processes associated with AIM 6.0 and Triton. This tool also lets you create the AIM shortcut on your desktop, in case you accidentally deleted it. I also provide one-button access to the various install and data folders for AIM 6.0 and Triton.
As a plug-in developer, I am always using this tool to quickly kill and re-start AIM while compiling my plug-in in between. That is practically 99.9% of its value to me.
The Triton support also applies to any shared OCP application like OpenRide. The only parts that are specific to Triton are the shortcut and launch buttons; those will only work if you have Triton installed.
You can register and download this version here.
Here is a screen shot:
This plug-in is a visualizer of sorts—in a “green-matrixy” sort of way. It logs all the calls that come from the IAccSession event source interface in the Open AIM SDK. This is a great way to learn about the Open AIM API and see how it works. It is also a great tool to help you debug your own clients and plug-ins.
All the enumerated types are decoded and shown using their symbolic names. The current state of some of the relevant objects like: BART items, messages, users, alerts and plugin information are also shown under certain conditions.
You can open the plug-in’s settings window from your client’s plug-in manager. It can also be opened it from the right-click context menu of the plug-in’s log window which is available in the actions menu on the buddy list as “Open CoreWitness Windowâ€.
Here are two screen shots (click to see larger images):
You can download this plug-in here. Please give it a try and let me know if you have any suggestions on how I could improve it. Thanks.
Here are some screen shots of the new “Last Seen” feature in Gus Verdun’s RX-Plugin which is now available for download. See my previous post and the release notes for more information.
You can get the “Last Seen” information in an existing IM conversation with a buddy by sending “/ls” or “/lastseen” in an IM message as shown here (the message does not get sent to your buddy):
The information can also be shown in a live window (i.e. It gets updated automatically as the data changes.):
Here is how to show the “Last Seen” window for the buddy in an IM conversation:
You can also open it by right-clicking on a buddy as shown here:
Enjoy. As always, I am open to suggestions on how I can improve this or any other feature in this plug-in. Feel free to leave me a comment or e-mail me your ideas. Thanks.
I will be releasing a new version of Gus Verdun’s RX-Plugin tonight. I have some final testing to go through before I run it through my “Deploy Gauntletâ€.
This build will have a new feature called “Last Seenâ€, which reports the current state (online, offline, idle, etc.), time since last seen, and what your buddy last said to you. You will be able to see this information in an existing IM window by sending “/ls†or “/lastseen†and also from the “People†menu in the IM form and the right-click context menu on a buddy. In the first case, the results will be shown in the IM conversation and from the other two menu options you will see this information in a window which will be updated automatically while it stays open.
In other news…
I will be posting a new plug-in this weekend. This one is geared more for plug-in and client developers and anyone interested in how Open AIM works.
See you back here tonight.