Editing ChitChat (section)

== History ==

ChitChat was an offshoot of "miChat!", a Yahoo! Chat program for Macintosh computers written by J. Seth Lowe in the REALbasic programming language. In late 2000, Seth publicly asked for other REALbasic programmers to join the project, in the hope that it would spawn a number of competing Yahoo! Chat clients and enrich the Macintosh experience. A programmer by the name of Tomis Erwin responded to this query. After collaborating on several features, Seth encouraged him to take free rein in creating his own client from the miChat code base.

The new program, dubbed "ChitChat", went through several major interface overhauls throughout its existence, seemingly in perpetual beta or pre-release, though it was available publicly. Finally, "ChitChat 1.0" was released in early 2004 with versions for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, and Windows 98.

Over the years ChitChat had picked up a rather large feature set. In an effort to deflect [[feature creep]] without crippling the program, "ChitChat Lite" was introduced in late 2005. The Lite version, a simplified no-frills release, never picked up as large a user base as its predecessor.