ichat agent?

mountaindracula · #1 March 3rd, 2007, 05:37 PM

i was looking on activity moniter to figure out why all of a sudden everything was running slowly, and i saw "ichat agent" what is that?

bobw · #2 March 4th, 2007, 11:10 AM

"ichat agent" is used by iChat.
If you don't use it, quit it from the Activity Monitor.

mountaindracula · #3 March 4th, 2007, 07:10 PM

ok... but what does it do? i looked all over the place trying to figure out what it was doing, but couldnt find it anywhere

bobw · #4 March 5th, 2007, 11:40 AM

An agent is a special type of application designed to help the user in an unobtrusive manner. Agents typically run in the background, providing information as needed to the user or to another application. Agents can display panels occasionally or come to the foreground to interact with the user if necessary. User interactions should always be brief and have a specific goal, such as setting preferences or requesting a piece of needed information.

An agent may be launched by the user but is more likely to be launched by the system or another application. As a result, agents do not show up in the Dock or the Force Quit window. Agents also do not have a menu bar for choosing commands. User manipulation of an agent typically occurs through dialogs or contextual menus in the agent user interface.

The iChat application uses an agent to communicate with the chat server and notify the user of incoming chat requests. The Dock is another agent program that is launched by the system for the benefit of the user.