It's time to set up your buddy list now. Ask your friends what their screennames are so you can add them to your buddy list. If you would like someone to chat with, there are numerous people that allow you to test your camera or audio. here are just a few. If you'd like to chat about a specific subject or want to find people with the same interests as you, try MyiSight.com, iChatters.com, iChatFinder.com, or iChatClub.org. Note: if you have your privacy settings to allow only those on your buddy list, specific people, or block everyone, you will not be able to talk to any of the users on these websites without adding them to your buddy list first.
So how do you actually add a person to your buddy list? It's pretty simple. On the bottom of the iChat AV window there is a "+" sign. Clicking it will bring up a contextual menu that says "Add Buddy" or "Add Group." You'll want to choose "Add Buddy." See the image below as a reference. The red super-imposed arrow is the "+" sign discussed in the above description.
In the resulting dialog box, you'll see all of the contacts in your Address Book. If the buddy is not listed in your Address Book, click the "New Person" buddy and add his or her name, screenname, and any other information you wish to add. Once you're done, click OK to add the buddy to your buddy list. Repeat this as necessary.
Once you've added some buddies to your buddy list, you can now begin to chat with them. You have a few options when it comes to chatting with your buddy. You can text chat, audio chat, or video chat. If your computer supports it, you may be able to multi-person audio-chat (up to 9 persons) and/or multi-person video-chat (up to 4 persons). To see if your computer supports this, go to Apple's webpage and scroll to the bottom of the page.
To begin a standard text chat, double-click your buddy's name in the buddy list. This will bring up the standard text window which looks like the image below:
But what if you want to do an audio-chat? In the same fashion, click your buddy's name in the buddy list window, but only single-click their name, effectively highlighting their name in the buddy list window. Go to the bottom of the buddy list window and click the phone icon. If you don't see a phone icon, their computer doesn't support audio-chats. Alternatively, you will need to go to the "Buddies" menu and select "Invite to Audio Chat." The same method applies for video-chatting, except you'll click the video icon or select "Invite to Video Chat" in the "Buddies" menu. The screenshot below shows where the phone and video icon are in the buddy list.
