growliChat is an iChat plugin. It manages to display a notification via growl whenever an iChat buddy changes status.

So, you like iChat but hate that iChat doesn't show notification when iChat buddy changes status. growliChat will do the job for you. growliChat prepares all the information and tells growl to notifiy you.

It comes with a preference pane where you can set many configurations. First, you can set the names in the notifications; firstname and/or lastname from address book or the buddy name. Moreover, you can choose the display picture in the notification either from buddy icon or from your own address book. growliChat supports every service iChat supports: aim, bonjour, and jabber. Not only that, growliChat supports jabber transport(do you know that you can use msn, icq, yahoo etc in iChat via jabber transport?). It can distinguish a jabber account from a jabber transport account. So, it displays the right buddynames and service icons for these jabber transport services.

Since there are only some people who we care to see status change notification, you can set whose notification and which kind of status change you wish to see. Lastly, since you want to grasp what the notification is trying to say quickly, growliChat displays status badge with the notifications. So, you know that someone is online by noticing the green dot that comes with the notification.

Requirements:
OS X 10.4-10.5
Growl
Universal Binary

Limitations:
Project has been abandoned.