The iChat Smiley Theme is useful if you use Pidgin to chat with iChat users. Without it, most of the smileys you both type will show up at the other end as boring text rather than fun icons.
To use this Pidgin theme, just download and save the file. Open Pidgin’s Smiley Themes preference window and drag the zip file into the window. Now you can chat with your iChat friends and family without any smiley miscommunication. (Very important when chatting with a 3-year-old.)
My 3-year-old son likes iChatting with me. He types a lot of gobbledegook (mixed in with the odd word, “BOO” being a favourite), but he also likes sending me smileys. I got tired of the smilies showing up as even more gobbledegook in Pidgin, so I created the iChat theme by copying the icons from iChat 4.0 and packaging them into a Pidgin theme file. It’s helped me (and Jay), so I hope it will help you too.