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Adium 1.2 beta sneaks out for Christmas

Chances are, some of the Christmas switchers are just now realizing that they've got to find a way to stay in IM-touch with the MSN, Yahoo and other chat service users out there in PC land. Sure, you could run separate clients for each service (or iChat alone for AIM, .Mac and Google Talk/Jabber), but what fun is that? Enter the duck: Adium, the open source and free multiservice chat client.

Adium's latest beta, 1.2b5, quacked out the door just before the holiday and is available for download now, as is the 1.1.4 stable release. The 1.2 milestone adds improvements for AppleScript, Bonjour, XMPP, group chat and more; with only a few bugs listed it's probably going to be finished pretty soon (assuming the dev team isn't over-wassailed this week).

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Open Source Beta Beat

Chances are, some of the Christmas switchers are just now realizing that they've got to find a way to stay in IM-touch with the MSN, Yahoo...
 

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David

Lets not forget that Adium makes a perfect ICQ client as well

December 27 2007 at 6:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mangrilla

I have been a long-time adium user and I've always loved it. The customization, the look, the ease of use, and the integration of multiple networks have always been really useful.

However, I have NEVER been able to transfer files, no matter where I've been. When I was at school, no go, when I used RCN, no go, when I'm at home on the local cable internet, no go, and using Time Warner in NYC, no go. I've just gotten leopard and have decided to stick with iChat for a while, just because I now have this dandy camera for some video chat every once in a while, and because I'm tired of never being able to send files...

December 27 2007 at 12:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to mangrilla's comment
Chris

Have you filed any bugs about the file transfer issues you are seeing?

-Chris, Adium Project Manager

December 27 2007 at 10:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Olivier

Been using adium since the first betas (back when Adam Iser was the ony working dev.)

and i'm LOVING IT !!!

December 26 2007 at 10:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kenty

I love Adium ^_^
To my knowledge there isn't an IM client for Windows that's as nice to use. Well, if there is then I don't know anybody that uses it. All of my windows using friends are really impressed when they see Adium running on my powerbook

December 26 2007 at 10:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Kenty's comment
Jon Niola

Closest thing on Windows is Pidgin which is very nice as well.

December 27 2007 at 11:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jon Niola

Chris,

Don't let the negative comments and jabs get to you. Many people, myself included enjoy using Adium regularly and appreciate the effort you guys put into it.

Keep up the great work!

--Jon

December 26 2007 at 8:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PSM

I appreciate the great work that the Adium devs have done with no budget, but for me I finally had to give it up. Adium is by far the best IM client if all you do is straight IM. It's not just about video, I was also frustrated to discover that file transfer via Bonjour doesn't work, for example (I don't know if it does lately).

I just got frustrated having to keep up with two IM clients -- Adium for just chatting, and iChat for video, audio, and all the little details that Adium couldn't get working, like file transfer. In the end, improvements to iChat, using Chax, and the fact that I don't know a single person who uses a client other than AIM led me to realize that as great as Adium is, it's just easier to stick with iChat because I don't keep running up against incompatibilities.

But I still look forward to seeing what future updates will bring.

December 26 2007 at 7:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to PSM's comment
Chris

If you filed any tickets about the problems you were having, I'd be interested in taking a look. We can't fix problems we aren't having.

-Chris, Adium Project Manager

December 27 2007 at 10:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PSM

@ Chris:
On the subject of the file sharing problem: this was over a year ago, and at that time it was stated by the devs on the forums that this was a known issue, and while it might be fixed someday, at that time Adium did not support Bonjour file sharing. As I said, I have no idea if that's still true. But my complaints were not with bugs per se, just things that the devs knew didn't work and hadn't had time to implement.

December 28 2007 at 8:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Richard

Chris,

File transfers are all fine and dandy when you open the appropriate ports, but one is not always able to configure the wireless router they're connecting to, particularly in public places or at the office.

I'm just stuck behind NAT most of the time, which is why AIM has proxy transfer. iChat does it flawlessly and instantly. libpurple's reverse engineering of it leaves something to be desired. It either takes a small eternity for the proxy connection to be negotiated, or it doesn't happen at all.

I haven't opened a ticket because your own FAQ gives the impression of file transfer issues being a blanket "known issue." I believe the wording is thus: "Adium's file transfer is not complete and may work sometimes and not others. We are very aware of these issues and the importance of file transfer support, but unfortunately the complicated and varied nature of file transfer means that libpurple's file transfer support is limited. These issues affect many applications (all those based upon libpurple, including Pidgin) and if they were simple to solve we can guarantee you they would have already been. We appreciate your understanding."

I read this is as "If it works, it works. If not, oh well." I don't blame you, since this is more libpurple than you guys, but still. I hope you can see why this discourages the opening of tickets.

For me, reliable file transfers are even more important than voice/video because I like the simplicity and speed of simply dragging and dropping a file into a conversation versus waiting for an upload to a web host to get an URL that you can then paste into the conversation. Or using e-mail which more times than not chokes on larger files.

iChat does it perfectly every single time. Adium will work intermittently, delay for upwards of 15 minutes before starting the transfer or just refuse to do so in the first place. That's a huge difference.

I'm sure you guys are working on it, but again, reading that section of your own FAQ gives the impression that it's not that high on the list.

December 26 2007 at 6:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Richard's comment
Chris

Actually, that wording says thanks for understanding, it doesn't say not to file a ticket for issues.

Also, ft works fine for me behind nats that are sketchy at best. When I said it just works for me, that's what I meant.

December 26 2007 at 8:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ralph

Nothing to do with this post; for heavens' sakes, please get rid of that backdrop, TUAW. Page loads often slow to a crawl waiting on that. (Not always, but it happens enough for me to stop visiting as often.)

December 26 2007 at 6:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to Ralph's comment
Urien Aeson

I find comments like Richard and Fevida's laughable.

iChat (especially w/Leopard) is a decent chat client, don't get me wrong, but Adium blows it out of the water.

Your biggest complaint about Adium is the lack of video chatting and file transfer -- Adium is a IM client.

Just continue to ignore dozens of *better* ways to both transfer files and video/audio chat with people ... iChat/MSN/Yahoo are by far the worst ways to do those tasks.

December 26 2007 at 5:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
5 replies to Urien Aeson's comment
ernie.

AND the biggest problem (for me) YOU can't talk when you are invisible!

December 26 2007 at 5:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to ernie.'s comment
Chris

That works for me fine. Have you filed a ticket?

-Chris, Adium Project Manager.

December 26 2007 at 6:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ernie.

No.. not yet.. when I set it to invisible, and then I send a message, it tells me "Message could not be sent, not allowed while invisible:" this is on MSN.

December 26 2007 at 6:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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