Gaim - (Open Source)
Chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger and stay on an IRC channel at the same time is possible when using Pidgin software.
Pidgin is an email client that allows to chat with MSN, Google Talk, AIM, ICQ and other contacts, from a single interface. Available in several languages, this software offers convenient features to comfortably talk.
Pidgin software brings together in a single window the AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber / XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu- Gadu, IRC, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MXit, MySpaceIM and Zephyr contacts.
The application gives the ability to chat with multiple contacts at once even if they come from different networks discussion. It is even possible to make a conference if necessary.
Even if the icons of contacts for each account are already marked by their respective icons, it does not prevent the user to create customized friends, relatives, colleagues categories, etc.
Pidgin offers several smileys to liven up the discussion. As the software supports adding plugins, user can also download more smileys on the Internet to enrich the library.
* libpurple
o Fix --disable-avahi to actually disable it in configure, as opposed to just making the warning non-fatal.
o Fix using GNOME proxy settings properly. (Erik van Pienbroek)
* IRC
o Fix parsing of invalid TOPIC messages. (CVE-2009-2703)
* MSN
o Sending custom smileys in chats is now supported.
o Ink messages are now saved when using the HTML logger.
o Fix a crash when receiving some handwritten messages.
o Fix a crash when receiving certain SLP invite messages.
o Chats with multiple people should no longer spontaneously disconnect.
* XMPP
o Prompt the user before cancelling a presence subscription.
o Escape status messages that have HTML entities in the Get Info dialog.
o Fix connecting to XMPP domains with no SRV records from Pidgin on Windows.
o Fix typing notifications with Pidgin 2.5.9 or earlier.
o Fix connecting using BOSH and legacy authentication (XEP-0078).
o Adding buddies of the form "romeo@…/Resource" are handled properly. In addition, it is no longer possible to add buddies of the form "room@…/User", where room@… is a MUC.
o Don't crash when receiving "smileyfied" XHTML-IM from clients that don't support bits of binary (ie. when getting an empty <data/> in return)
o Fix bug where SSL/TLS was not required even though the "require SSL/TLS" preference checked when connecting to servers that use the older iq-based authentication. (CVE-2009-3026)
* Yahoo!/Yahoo! JAPAN
o Accounts now have "Use account proxy for SSL connections" option. This option force-overrides the account specific proxy settings for SSL connections only and instead uses the global proxy configuration.
* Finch
o Properly detect libpanel on OpenBSD. (Brad Smith)
o Remove IO watches in gnt_quit. (Tomasz Mon)
* Pidgin
o Fix the auto-personize functionality in the Buddy List.
o Set the window icon for the media window to an icon corresponding to the type of call (headphone or webcam).
o Customized sound files are no longer reset whenever opening the Preferences dialog.
o The buddy list should now immediately refresh upon changing the icon theme.