Now that the new Xfire release has become an integral part of our daily life, it's time to continue the look at Xfire's options dialog. This time I'll show you the settings found from Chat tab:



The first section here is Messages which controls the general settings regarding sending and receiving messages.

The first option is Show time stamp in chat window. When this is enabled you can see the time next to each message you send and receive in Xfire. The effect of this setting is clearly seen in this little screenshot part I took of me chatting with myself:


The next option you can select is Create incoming chat windows minimized. This setting is effective when someone sends you a message and you do not already have a chat window open for that person. If this is not enabled, then the chat window will pop in front of you; if this is enabled, then the chat window will be created minimized and the only sign of a new message will be a flashing titlebar button (unless you have sounds enabled).

The third option is Enable chat logging which as it says, enabled all chat you do to be logged so that you can later view what you were discussing with other people. The chat logs are saved as text files under %appdata%\Xfire\chatlog but can probably easier be accessed by right clicking your friend's name and selecting "View chat log" from the context menu.

Remember that you cannot magically make chat logs available of chats you had when this option was not enabled. Unless you have a very slow hard drive or little free space, I would recommend enabling this option. You might need to see your former chats at some point. And you can always clear the chat logs yourself if the need arises.


The next part is Xfire In-Game. Here you can select whether the Xfire In-Game system is available at all or not. Typically you want to leave the Enable Xfire In-Game option enabled since the best part of Xfire is that you can use it while playing games. (not supported in all games)

You can also customize the in-game Key Bindings here. First click the button with the feature name, then as instructed, press the key combination from your keyboard to tell Xfire you want to use those keys from that point on to activate the feature while playing games. Note that the first key binding, for Xfire In-Game is the main keybind to toggle between the whole Xfire system and the game; it's the most important of them all!

If that is the most important hotkey, then I would say the least important one is Chat Windows. I have yet to find any use for this and I doubt you want to use it either, as all it does is toggle the visibility of the main chat window in the game, but does not toggle you out of the Xfire In-Game interface back to the game. Well, one possible use for it would be using the Web Browser in a game with low resolution and you don't want the chat window to be visible in background.

Note that you can access all the other features with just the Xfire In-Game button, although it might not be practical for Screenshot function since usually you want to take a screenshot of the game and not the Xfire In-Game interface (even though it is kinda cool and worth a few screenies)


The last element is Font Size that controls the text size in Xfire's windows on desktop. You can choose between 5 choices from very small to very large. Note that this does not affect Xfire's In-Game elements at all; their text size is controlled by the skin only.


Let's see what the Sounds tab has... next week! I'm going to enjoy myself a free weekend. And this enjoyment of course includes playing games with Xfire!

Joonas

PS. By the way, did you notice that just a few days ago there was an update to the website that added new features to Xfire Communities forums? First there was a little error that caused forum topics to disappear mysteriously, but now it's fixed. Go ahead and read a few topics if you are in any community that has forums here in Xfire. You might notice something interesting there