The AIM Beta a.k.a. “Triton” has been out for a while and one thing I’ve noticed that bugs me is that the default AIM message is unreadable in iChat.

AIM beta-iChat issues, originally uploaded by tychay.

The first message is the default message coming in from Triton. The issue is that Triton’s default is a “transparent” highlight which iChat renders as a black text bubble so you get an unreadable black on black. Also notice the default font size is now 10pt which is too small on the Mac (10px) where on Windows it is more like 12pt.

One solution is to have Triton users change their background font and size when chatting with you. But that’s hard to implement.

What I do instead is go to “iChat > Preferences…” and click on the “Messages” tab and select “Reformat incoming messages.” You can mouseover the image to see it fixed.