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
- Actually emit the hold signal for media calls.
- Fix building the GnuTLS plugin with older versions of GnuTLS.
- Fix DNS TXT query resolution.
- Don't send Proxy-Authorization headers to HTTP proxy servers until we've received a "407 Proxy Authentication Required" response from the server. (thecrux)
- Added "MXit" protocol plugin, supported and maintained by the MXit folks themselves (MXit Lifestyle (Pty) Ltd.)
* General
- New 'plugins' sub-command to 'debug' command (i.e. '/debug plugins') to announce the list of loaded plugins (in both Finch and Pidgin).
- Always rejoin open chats after an account reconnects.
* AIM and ICQ
- Better rate limit calculations and other improvements. (Aman Gupta)
- More detailed error messages when messages fail to send. (Aman Gupta)
- The simultaneous login account option is respected when using the clientLogin authentication method.
- Fix offline message retrieval (broken in 2.6.3)
- Fix handling of markup on some messages (broken in 2.6.2)
- Fix SSL when clientLogin is enabled.
- Fix sending and receiving Unicode characters in a Direct IM
* MSN
- Don't forget display names for buddies.
- Fix a random crash that might occur when idle.
- Fix more FQY 240 connection errors.
- Fix a crash that could occur when adding a buddy.
- Fix an occasional crash when sending message to an offline user.
- Fix a random crash that might occur when idle.
- Fix a crash when logging in with some long non-ASCII passwords. (Shaun Lindsay)
- Cache our own friendly name as the server no longer does that for us. Users of older versions may need to re-set their friendly name as it has probably been reset.
* XMPP
- Users connecting to Google Talk now have an "Initiate Chat" context menu option for their buddies. (Eion Robb)
- Fix a crash when attempting to validate an invalid JID.
- Resolve an issue when connecting to iChat Server when no resource is specified.
- Try to automatically find a STUN server by using an SRV lookup on the account's domain, and use that for voice and video if found and the user didn't set one manually in prefs.
- Fix a crash when adding a buddy without an '@'.
- Don't show the option to send a file to a buddy if we know for certain they don't support any file transfer method supported by libpurple.
- Keep the avatar on the server if one is not set locally.
* Yahoo
- Fix sending /buzz.
- Fix blocking behavior for federated (MSN/OCS/Sametime) service users. (Jason Cohen)
- Add support for adding OCS and Sametime buddies. OCS users are added as "ocs/user@…" and Sametime users are added as "ibm/sametime_id". (Jason Cohen)
* Finch
- The TinyURL plugin now creates shorter URLs for long non-conversation URLs, e.g. URLs to open Inbox in Yahoo/MSN protocols, or the Yahoo Captcha when joining chat rooms.
- Fix displaying umlauts etc. in non-utf8 locale (fix in libgnt).
* Pidgin
- The userlist in a multiuser chat can be styled via gtkrc by using the widget name "pidgin_conv_userlist". (Heiko Schmitt)
- Add a hold button to the media window.
- Fix a bug where the conversation backlog stops scrolling in a very busy chat room.
- In the Conversation "Send To" menu, offline buddies appear grayed out (but are still selectable). Previously, only offline buddies on accounts that do not support offline messaging appeared grayed out.
* Pidgin Preference and Preference Window Changes
- Removed the "Use font from theme" and "Conversation Font" preferences for everyone except Windows users. The font can be controlled from the Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control plugin.
- Tabs in the Preferences window are now on the left side.
- The Browser tab is now visible for GNOME users.
- Added a Proxy tab shown no matter what environment Pidgin runs in.
- The Browser and Proxy tabs show appropriate GNOME-specific messages and allow launching the correct applications to change the relevant GNOME preferences if found. These were previously together on the Network tab.
- Moved the port range spin buttons on the Network tab to be beside the checkbox that enables/disables them.
- Reorganized preferences on the Status/Idle tab to have one less "section."
- Reorganized preferences on the Sounds tab to have one less "section."
- Renamed Smiley Themes tab to Themes.
- Moved Buddy List Theme and Status Icon Theme selectors from Interface tab to Themes tab.
- Moved Sound Theme selector from Sounds tab to Themes tab.
- Changed the Smiley Theme selector to be consistent with the other theme selectors.
- Rearranged tabs such that Interface is first and all remaining tabs are alphabetized in English.