Adium 2.0!! Err, I mean "Adium X 0.50"
This ain't your daddy's Adium. 
Back before iChat was released, I routinely switched between Adium and Fire for my chatting needs. I couldn't stand AIM's interface; so, just about anything else would do, even if it was feature-starved. Adium and Fire were both pretty weak clients back then. Fire has since added file transfer, buddy icon support, and other goodies. Adium went seemingly untouched for a long time.
I still loved Adium 1.x's clean, minimalist interface, but with iChat's arrival, I had grown too dependent on the "oscar" feature set: file transfers, proper away message checking, etc. iChat's video and audio conferencing was a fantastic new set of features too, but I rarely use it and can easily live without it (or just fire up iChat when necesary). Meanwhile, Fire had added these features (minus the AV), but its interface had grown even uglier (of course, it wasn't quite a beauty queen to begin with).
Enter Adium 2.0.
Some time ago, development on a new Adium revved back up. Adam Iser began working on an all-new plug-in driven code base for Adium and promised new features that would match the other chat clients and make Adium much more expandable. Months passed as new developers jumped into the Adium project. Features were gradually added in and the Adium developers started looking at Gaim as a way to develop the protocols quicker.
Fast forward many more weeks and builds later. Gaim hit a milestone at version 0.76 and developers were pouring its features into Adium. Now a multiple-protocol app, Adium supports AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, MSN, Napster, Trepia, and Yahoo. File transfer is implemented and works well (but there's no GUI indication of transfer success/failure/progress yet -- it just sends).
On top of the new protocol support, developers have totally rewritten the interface. It maintains Adium 1.x's simplicity, but it adds features and customization galore. It has themable buddy lists...
New Mac OS X-friendly preferences with new options for sound sets, emoticon sets, and icon sets (all of which are double-clickable bundles)...
and an awesome new WebCore-based chat view...
That's my own message view I've been tinkering with. There are plenty more that other people have designed...
It is ready? Alpha? Beta? Adam Iser decided that "Adium 2.0" sounded too official, too complete to post for download anywhere. So, the developers decided to do a temporary rename to "Adium X 0.50" and increment the number with weekly builds. This less-than-1.0 title does a better job of conveying Adium's actual status. Something to keep in mind is that Adium X is a whole new app under the hood. It's not an incremental update to Adium 1.6.2. On top of that, it's still under a state of heavy flux.
Things *will* break and features will come and go in the coming weeks and months. The developers label Adium X in an "alpha" state. It should be treated as such and you shouldn't expect it to to everything properly just yet.
That said, I'm using it full-time now and have been for a couple of weeks.
The update to the new Gaim core with proper file-transfer sealed the deal for me.
How is it? For me, Adium X works beautifully. It'll hang or crash occasionally every couple of days, but otherwise it's as stable as iChat and many other titles I use regularly. I am very happy to see Adium progress as it has.
My 2 cents.
Your thoughts? You can get information and download from Adium X's home page, adiumx.com.
Note: I am not the same Brad Smith as that name-stealing "Brad Smith" on the Adium forums.
Back before iChat was released, I routinely switched between Adium and Fire for my chatting needs. I couldn't stand AIM's interface; so, just about anything else would do, even if it was feature-starved. Adium and Fire were both pretty weak clients back then. Fire has since added file transfer, buddy icon support, and other goodies. Adium went seemingly untouched for a long time.
I still loved Adium 1.x's clean, minimalist interface, but with iChat's arrival, I had grown too dependent on the "oscar" feature set: file transfers, proper away message checking, etc. iChat's video and audio conferencing was a fantastic new set of features too, but I rarely use it and can easily live without it (or just fire up iChat when necesary). Meanwhile, Fire had added these features (minus the AV), but its interface had grown even uglier (of course, it wasn't quite a beauty queen to begin with).
Enter Adium 2.0.
Some time ago, development on a new Adium revved back up. Adam Iser began working on an all-new plug-in driven code base for Adium and promised new features that would match the other chat clients and make Adium much more expandable. Months passed as new developers jumped into the Adium project. Features were gradually added in and the Adium developers started looking at Gaim as a way to develop the protocols quicker.
Fast forward many more weeks and builds later. Gaim hit a milestone at version 0.76 and developers were pouring its features into Adium. Now a multiple-protocol app, Adium supports AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, MSN, Napster, Trepia, and Yahoo. File transfer is implemented and works well (but there's no GUI indication of transfer success/failure/progress yet -- it just sends).
On top of the new protocol support, developers have totally rewritten the interface. It maintains Adium 1.x's simplicity, but it adds features and customization galore. It has themable buddy lists...
New Mac OS X-friendly preferences with new options for sound sets, emoticon sets, and icon sets (all of which are double-clickable bundles)...
and an awesome new WebCore-based chat view...
That's my own message view I've been tinkering with. There are plenty more that other people have designed...
It is ready? Alpha? Beta? Adam Iser decided that "Adium 2.0" sounded too official, too complete to post for download anywhere. So, the developers decided to do a temporary rename to "Adium X 0.50" and increment the number with weekly builds. This less-than-1.0 title does a better job of conveying Adium's actual status. Something to keep in mind is that Adium X is a whole new app under the hood. It's not an incremental update to Adium 1.6.2. On top of that, it's still under a state of heavy flux.
Things *will* break and features will come and go in the coming weeks and months. The developers label Adium X in an "alpha" state. It should be treated as such and you shouldn't expect it to to everything properly just yet.
That said, I'm using it full-time now and have been for a couple of weeks.
The update to the new Gaim core with proper file-transfer sealed the deal for me.How is it? For me, Adium X works beautifully. It'll hang or crash occasionally every couple of days, but otherwise it's as stable as iChat and many other titles I use regularly. I am very happy to see Adium progress as it has.
My 2 cents.
Your thoughts? You can get information and download from Adium X's home page, adiumx.com.
Note: I am not the same Brad Smith as that name-stealing "Brad Smith" on the Adium forums.
Comments
Thus, I have not tried .51, but how is theme handling going to work in later versions, because in .5 it did not seem very user friendly, and it seemed like something a dim-wit could do.
Does it have Rendezvous support? I know it has Address Book support, which is great. The standard emoticons are not super.
I wonder if it would be possible that people have their own user set themes, so that when you talk to them, you get their theme, and vice versa. Like, if I was talking to some dude who loved golf, I would be looking at his golf set theme. That would have to be a custom setting, because it would just confuse some users.
As much as I like Adium, it's not ready for public consumption. That said, if you love Adium, you might love Proteus. But they cater to different crowds.
Originally posted by kim kap sol
That said, if you love Adium, you might love Proteus. But they cater to different crowds.
True, but since I'm never going to pay for Proteus, I'll gladly take the free and open source Adium any day.
Originally posted by ast3r3x
How do you make your own themes? I haven't read anything yet, or looked too hard, but I didn't see anything sticking out at me on how to do it. Is it easy?
If you know CSS and HTML, it's pretty easy once you figure out how the files go together. Since the WebCore viewer is still under heavy development (and because there are no visible options for it yet), it's not the default view. To switch it on, Get Info on Adium in the Finder and uncheck the box for "Standard Message View.AdiumPlugin" and relaunch Adium. You'll now be using the "Smooth Operator" theme.
Changing the WebCore theme is still quite rough at the moment. You have to edit the actual plugin in the Adium bundle and you have to relaunch Adium for changes to take effect.
The path to the files it uses is:
Adium.app/Contents/PlugIns/Webkit Message View.AdiumPlugin/Contents/Resources
There's no real documentation yet for redoing the WebCore view because, as I mentioned before, it's going to be changing a lot in the near future. Support for user-selectable background colors (among other things) are on the to-do list and will require modifications to any existing themes. If you just peek through the files, though, I don't think it's too difficult to figure it out.
Originally posted by Brad
True, but since I'm never going to pay for Proteus, I'll gladly take the free and open source Adium any day.
On the other hand...if Proteus proves to be the better software, I'll gladly pay for Proteus and support a student programmer.
I'll need to make a sound file with no sound though, as I only like sounds to tell me I got an IM from someone the first time. I also like that the buddy list tells you if they are typing or whatever...perhaps it shows I haven't used it forever?
Originally posted by ast3r3x
I'll have to learn CSS, but I like it a lot.
Well, you don't have to use CSS. You could hard-code some tables and FONT tags in there, but you don't have as much flexibility that way.
I'll need to make a sound file with no sound though, as I only like sounds to tell me I got an IM from someone the first time.
Easy fix:
Preferences: Sound: Sound Set: Custom.
Now, simply select and delete any events you don't want to hear.
Originally posted by ast3r3x
Any way you can tell me how to stop the dock icon from showing people who are signing on and off?
masking tape?
naw, I bet there is a preference, just dig through the preference panels.
Originally posted by Nebagakid
will someone tell me why ADIUM X keeps on crashing when it tries to connectionation?
The people at the Adium forum would probably be better suited to answer that question. Alternatively, you could post a new thread here about it so this one doesn't get derailed into a discussion of a technical support issue.
I'm no real expert, but here are some ideas: Are you using Mac OS X 10.3? There are some bugs with the implementation when running on 10.2. Are you behind a firewall or proxy? Gaim (and thus Adium) doesn't support proxies. Try disabling any firewalls. Have you deleted all of your preferences? This includes ~/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/, ~/Library/Preferences/com.adiumX.adiumX.plist, and ~/Library/Caches/Adium/.
Originally posted by ast3r3x
I have the custom thing set up, but it still does whatever.
then, i bet it is a bug... it is not at 1.0 yet, although somehow at X.
But, does X represent a variable, or doe sit represent 10. Like X could be the every man, the unknown......
Originally posted by ast3r3x
Any way you can tell me how to stop the dock icon from showing people who are signing on and off?
Works for me:
Preferences: Dock: Sow Contacts: uncheck Who connects and disconnects
Originally posted by Brad
The people at the Adium forum would probably be better suited to answer that question. Alternatively, you could post a new thread here about it so this one doesn't get derailed into a discussion of a technical support issue.
I'm no real expert, but here are some ideas: Are you using Mac OS X 10.3? There are some bugs with the implementation when running on 10.2. Are you behind a firewall or proxy? Gaim (and thus Adium) doesn't support proxies. Try disabling any firewalls. Have you deleted all of your preferences? This includes ~/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0/, ~/Library/Preferences/com.adiumX.adiumX.plist, and ~/Library/Caches/Adium/.
Not to fill this place with junk, but I am not behind a firewall or proxy, and I am on Panfther, i have deleted all those files and folders, twice. It worked fine yesterday, but not today...
Originally posted by Nebagakid
Not to fill this place with junk, but I am not behind a firewall or proxy, and I am on Panfther, i have deleted all those files and folders, twice. It worked fine yesterday, but not today...
Please stop using
Originally posted by kim kap sol
Please stop using
He has 2203 posts, and it's likely that over 2000 of them have that face in...NOW is not the time to tell him to stop using that face, that time has come and gone, and that face is no longer the smokey face, but a symbol of him. It makes you feel better if you print out pages of them, rip one off the page, throw it in the toilet, and try to piss on it while your going
For Adium, one thing I don't like is that there is no border on the Buddy List window, which I have gotten used to on the iChat, the fatness of the window... also,where do i set buddy icon?