Slashdot Mirror

I just wish it was better-known...

Miranda. Choice is good. :)

I quick look at the screenshots and perusal of the plugins would have answered most of your questions.

I quick look at the screenshots and perusal of the plugins would have answered most of your questions.

I agree. Jabber is a terrific protocol and server.
Miranda is the best Jabber client I have used (for Windows), GAIM for Linux.

Why is it that Trillian has such enormous mindshare over Miranda?

Use Miranda with SecureIM and you can encrypt your messages in ICQ, AIM, MSN, YAHOO, Jabber.. whatever protcol you want to use...

Use Miranda with SecureIM and you can encrypt your messages in ICQ, AIM, MSN, YAHOO, Jabber.. whatever protcol you want to use...

I don't know if you're on Windows, but i am, and i find that Gaim (for Windows) is a pretty poor client. I mean, it's OK, but compared to other things, it needs a lot of work. It seems to me like the Windows version of Gaim was nothing more than an after-thought. I can't get work done (I'm paid to sit around instant-messaging my friends all day -- true story.) using an after-thought. ;_;

So... i use Miranda. Needs a lot of work also, but it's much better off than Gaim, i find, and it's just as open.

In short, scs.yahoo.com:5050 is no good.

In Miranda you can set "Hide contact bar after it's been idle for X seconds". You can also set the transparency of the contact bar when active and when inactive (I run 0%/25% -- very practical being able to read through the window when it isn't in focus). In addition, you can set it to FADE OUT on going from active to inactive.

Result: The window fades out after having been inactive after X seconds (user defined). Activate Miranda again, and it fades back in.

I guess the question is "how far" is the leap from timed fading out to what Apple describes -- which includes a threshold of fading where the overlaying windows stops recieving events.

In my mind, that's not a great leap, but rather a necessity if/when you set the fade-out to be very slow. The main difference is that current apps fade quickly, while Apple seems to describe a situation where it's very gradual. Is manipulating 't' -- thereby being forced into chosing when to stop accepting events, novel? I'd say, not very.

I'm not sure when miranda got this, but I guess it's been there since 2001-2002, possibly earlier.

I use trillian on windows, and ayttm (formerly everybuddy) on linux. Have any of you tried miranda? Opinions, please.

When I installed NT4 with SP6a there was a big improvement! Getting all the right drivers was a pain, and until I got that there was some instability, but now it's rock solid. Explorer is amazingly fast. (The "desktop upgrade" that you can get with IE4 makes it slower but it's still faster than Win98SE. I uninstalled it.) IE seemed to run faster. Applications in general don't crash, and if something crashes it won't mess anything up and can be run again without a reboot.

I ended up IERadicating IE and installing Opera and then web browsing was fast. For IM I installed Miranda IM and that is fast too. It's almost like I never needed to upgrade from a 133 MHz Pentium. NT4 may be a pain to install but it's fast and quite usable.

The only bad things about NT4 are the poor DirectX support and worse support for DOS games than Win9x. In this case I can live with that. That computer is too slow for most DirectX stuff anyways, and I don't care about old DOS games nowdays.

1. Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition
   
2. Symantec Norton Internet Security
   
3. 7-zip
   
4. Miranda
   
5. The Bat!
   
6. Mozilla
   
7. EmEditor
   
8. MagicTweak
   
9. Ad Muncher (Never surf without it.)
   
10. foobar2000
    

• Miranda IM - Free beer and speech IM client with support for all the protocols. Miniscule footprint.
• ObjectDock - Mac OS X-like dock for WinXP. Good riddance to the toolbar.

1. GeoShell - I find the Explorer shell to suck and GeoShell is rather stable, quick to install/configure, and highly usable.
   
2. Firefox
   
3. Thunderbird
   
4. Winamp - I enjoy that 5.x comes with Milkdrop standard.
   
5. Miranda-IM - I used to have stability issues with older builds of Miranda but after that went away I haven't looked back at Trillian or the stand-alone apps.
   
6. Zoom Player - I don't quite like Winamp for movies, Zoom Player is excellent.
   
7. PowerDVD - for the codec.
   
8. MSYS and MinGW
   
9. SciTE - I used Editplus for some time until I found this.
   
10. WinRAR - I like the interface, for the most part, and it handles most formats.

Besides what was stated in the news story, and what is grabbed on Windows Update...

Miranda
Lightweight ICQ/IM app with plugin support for IRC/Jabber/etc..

FilZip
Free zip, rar, etc... util

PuTTY
Best SSH client for windows, and it's free

WinSCP
SFTP/SCP Client, free

Crimson Editor
Text Editor / IDE, supports color-coding source code and such. Very handy.

Mozilla
FireFox is nice, but I need a decent mail app and I like Moz for that.

Media Player Classic
Best. App. Ever. As long as you've got the codec installed, this handy thing will play the media files for you. This includes QuickTime, RealPlayer, and even Flash movies.

Nimo Codec Pack
A compilation of video and audio codecs as well as stream switchers, extra directshow filters, and nifty bits. Rather than hunting down individual codecs for XviD, 3vix, OGG, etc... this pack does it all in one operation.

Thank you for your time.

A friend pointed me to Miranda IM the other, not sure why as my primary OS is OS X and my Secondary is Linux.

But it looked really nice, GPL, loads of plugins.

Um yeah.. Trillian is also closed-source, and quite bloated.

Give me Miranda-IM any day....

My boss one came to me saying that he wanted us all to shutdown IM in the office. "It's too distracting".

I asked him how much phone usage dropped after IM. If IM was being used "just to chat" so was the phone, but with IM people could keep working while talking about the latest Survivor episode or American Idol qualifiers. Phone usage for personal purposes dropped to almost zero.

Of course that didn't stop him from keeping with the IM blackout plan.

What I did? Installed one with a boss-key. ;)

Miranda, in case you were wondering, is a tiny (fits on a floppy) stand alone, low frills IM client.

Miranda IM requires a MSN plugin upgrade to v.8 if you havent done so already. :) cheers

Miranda IM requires a MSN plugin upgrade to v.8 if you havent done so already. :) cheers

My Miranda-IM MSN-connected client is responsive. LW.

I wouldn't. Gaim is way too bloated, buggy, and cumbersome. Try Miranda along with the appropriate protocol plugins.

Fuck Gaim, and fuck Trillian. Use Miranda if you're on Windows.

Agreed. But I think that will change. People are really starting to demand an alternative to the big centralized servers, with all these stupid games their owners are playing. And there is some good software out there:

As far as clients go:

• For X11, gaim has Jabber support. It's a little crude, but it's coming along. gaim's UI is getting pretty good, so this will be a pretty friendly client.
• For OS X, I've implemented crude Jabber support in Adium using the Nitro library and will work to improve it as I find time. Adium is an IM (mostly AIM) client that has a really good user interface, so if I just get the protocol-specific stuff working well, it will be worlds better than most Jabber clients out there.
• For Windows, miranda has a Jabber plugin now. I haven't tried it out, but miranda has a pretty good UI also, once you install a few essential plugins.

The server still needs work, though, you're right. I haven't played with any of the commercial offerings, but jabberd is kind of lacking. jabberd2 looks promising, at least in its ability to support database-based storage stuff better. If someone wanted to contribute, I'm sure the jabberd people would welcome them in ironing out bugs, making the install process easier, and implementing new features. The killer feature I'd like to see is support for server-side logs. Then you could log in from anywhere and see all of your old chat logs. Storing them on the client just doesn't work for people who access it from several different places.

Well the recent Yahoo block convinced my girlfriend to stop using it and switch to ICQ, since she shouldn't talk to me any longer since I was running Gaim, and her dad runs ICQ as well. Now Gaim has since restored connectivity to Yahoo, but I recently ditched Gaim on windows since it runs like crap on it, randomly locks up, crashes, etc. I could file a bug report, but the fact is that I want something that works now.

Oddly enough I was running Trillian/free before all this, and switched to Gaim because Trillian was confusing the shit out me, with it's plethora of options, I got tired of fucking with it. Sure I can figure it out, but I'd rather not have to figure it out, I'd rather just use it, and put my brain to use where it belongs, in my Job..

I now run Miranda again like I did long ago when it was the lone messenger on Windows which is also free and still runs like a dream. Although no buddy icons in aim :( for it. Who knows why I switched from Miranda to Trillian, probably because my buddy was touting it. Kinda fun that I'm back at square one now. :)

I still run Gaim on linux tho, as it runs perfect there.

My point? Miranda has to be the best free client out there. :)

Wha... Miranda is great and GPLed

Miranda Im(open source im client with multi-protocol support. light, fast and free.)

Jabber(open im protocol)

Partial list of IM clients that use/support the jabber protocol

Trillian is by far the best windows IM client.

You are of course entitled to your opinion. Personally, I dumped Trillian for Miranda-IM. I find it leaner and the interface cleaner.
Oh, and it's GPL'ed.

Personally, I'm sticking with Trillian, I'll just stop using the MS IM service.

The aforementioned aside, I agree completely.

Because gaim is stuck using the old insecure MSN protocol. If you run Windows, switch to Miranda and select "Use MSN protocol v8" in your MSN Network settings.

Only 4? Why settle for bloated and buggy gaim when you can run Miranda?

This was in Februrary of 2001. I worked on it for a couple weeks, but the software was just shit. The server crashed all the time. It was a pain to install. The clients were ugly and written by people who didn't understand modern GUI standards. Moreover, there were *way* too many clients to choose from, meaning I would have to install and test 5 or 6 genuinely awful clients to find the 1 usable one.

In the end I gave up and we went back to ICQ. However, the compelling Jabber philosophy stuck with me, and I hoped that these problems would solve themselves with time. I gave it a second chance in October of that same year, but not much had changed. (I mean, HOW HARD is it to send little text packets across the internet? We're not talking about creating a web browser here!)

In retrospect, I think we have moved past the point where internet progress is driven by innovative visionaries who anticipate the future. Rather, progress is driven by brute evolutionary forces selecting software that happens to solve the right problems at the right time. For all its great philosophy, Jabber was just not useful enough to real everyday people. I'm talking here about people whose primary goal is to communicate, not to learn about or participate in a software development project.

I would argue that these same factors are behind similarly mediocre successes like freenet, Miranda, and many others. Here's a link to my frustrated posting on the Miranda forum when I was trying to switch over to it. Note in particular how the community responds by pointing out that the problems are solvable. That's not the point! Real users don't like solving problems, they want it to just work. It's a hard concept for nerds to grasp, but an important one.

I'll concede that my opinions about Jabber are fairly dated. Really, I should give it another shot. However, the fact that Jabber is still unknown to most people on the street gives me a strong clue as to what those results will be.

-Gonz

I think it's time to switch to Miranda. It is open source, free and supports ICQ/AIM/MSN/Jabber protocols. Don't know if it runs on Linux, though.

Miranda Instant Messenger. No ads. No crap. All the protocols are plugins - ICQ, MSN (for now), AIM, Jabber, Yahoo and others.

Then you want Miranda. "Smaller, Faster, Easier"

Biggest problem: No coherent look and feel. I install an app and it doesn't use my desktop font. It might not even use the same libs/settings to render whatever font did select. Worse, I might not actually be able to go to file->options/preferences and find a standard font-dialog! Eeew. Unacceptable to me.

No Miranda and the fact that I haven't found a single GUI editor that I like.

I spend 95% of my time in the browser (Opera, no problem there), editor (which really must fit my taste) and use IM quite a lot.

And Oh, something like Virtual Dub would be nice. I've been thinking that it might be able to start porting it to Qt, but I don't know...

.. hope they've learned of the awesome power of Miranda.

Didn't try it, but there's an example of a voice plugin.

.. hope they've learned of the awesome power of Miranda.

Didn't try it, but there's an example of a voice plugin.

However, everything entered into *any* chat service is totally unprotected, and can be snooped. In fact, in the current EULA, they explicity state that they will give archives of the messages (which they store, BTW) away to officials upon prompting.

You can always try Miranda IM with the SecureIM plugin activated. The only problem is that the ones recieving your messages needs to have Miranda and SecureIM activated.

I think some Jabber clients and servers support encryption too.

However, everything entered into *any* chat service is totally unprotected, and can be snooped. In fact, in the current EULA, they explicity state that they will give archives of the messages (which they store, BTW) away to officials upon prompting.

You can always try Miranda IM with the SecureIM plugin activated. The only problem is that the ones recieving your messages needs to have Miranda and SecureIM activated.

I think some Jabber clients and servers support encryption too.

http://miranda-im.org/download/search.php?action =s earch&keyword=spanish

... and use Gaim, for Linux and Windows. Has capability to connect to AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu(?) and IRC networks.

I really wanted to like Gaim for windows. Downloaded it, got it running. It gave an error message on every launch saying something about not being able to read my buddy list. Then after a few days it died, crashing on boot. An uninstall/reinstall did naught to correct the situation. Though I'd prefer an open-source solution, I switched to Trillian, and it just works right. I'm going to give Miranda a try under windows today, though.

Prepare to dump ICQ!

Get Miranda it's interface is similar to ICQ (but way less busy). It can import all your ICQ history and contacts. It's far less bloated. You can download sounds and icon sets to make look/feel exactly like ICQ (which is what I've done).

I also have the MSN plugin installed so I can chat with MSN people.

I was a hardcode ICQ user but Miranda is the ultimate replacement.

Can't comment on that plugin, never used it. Don't even use IRC much; the internet is enough of a timewaster for me already :-(

I'm running the following plugins: CopyIP, GnuPG, History++, PopUp SecureIM, Last seen, Tooltip info, Version info, WhiIsReadingMyStatusMsg.

These all do one thing and they do it fairly well.

I'm also using an older executable to pull the two contact list arrow-icons from, since the one that's distributed with Miranda is ugly as hell. I have no idea why they turned the nice little arrows into ugly plus-and-minuses... yuck.

A little unusual maybe, but I'm running my Miranda with 25% inactive opacity, 100% active opacity. That way I can have the contact list expanded but still read through it as long as the mouse-pointer doesn't put miranda in focus. Very slick if you ask me, and the only use of transparency on the desktop that I feel is meaningful.

/Intresseklubben noterar.

Can't comment on that plugin, never used it. Don't even use IRC much; the internet is enough of a timewaster for me already :-(

I'm running the following plugins: CopyIP, GnuPG, History++, PopUp SecureIM, Last seen, Tooltip info, Version info, WhiIsReadingMyStatusMsg.

These all do one thing and they do it fairly well.

I'm also using an older executable to pull the two contact list arrow-icons from, since the one that's distributed with Miranda is ugly as hell. I have no idea why they turned the nice little arrows into ugly plus-and-minuses... yuck.

A little unusual maybe, but I'm running my Miranda with 25% inactive opacity, 100% active opacity. That way I can have the contact list expanded but still read through it as long as the mouse-pointer doesn't put miranda in focus. Very slick if you ask me, and the only use of transparency on the desktop that I feel is meaningful.

/Intresseklubben noterar.

Can't comment on that plugin, never used it. Don't even use IRC much; the internet is enough of a timewaster for me already :-(

I'm running the following plugins: CopyIP, GnuPG, History++, PopUp SecureIM, Last seen, Tooltip info, Version info, WhiIsReadingMyStatusMsg.

These all do one thing and they do it fairly well.

I'm also using an older executable to pull the two contact list arrow-icons from, since the one that's distributed with Miranda is ugly as hell. I have no idea why they turned the nice little arrows into ugly plus-and-minuses... yuck.

A little unusual maybe, but I'm running my Miranda with 25% inactive opacity, 100% active opacity. That way I can have the contact list expanded but still read through it as long as the mouse-pointer doesn't put miranda in focus. Very slick if you ask me, and the only use of transparency on the desktop that I feel is meaningful.

/Intresseklubben noterar.

Can't comment on that plugin, never used it. Don't even use IRC much; the internet is enough of a timewaster for me already :-(

I'm running the following plugins: CopyIP, GnuPG, History++, PopUp SecureIM, Last seen, Tooltip info, Version info, WhiIsReadingMyStatusMsg.

These all do one thing and they do it fairly well.

I'm also using an older executable to pull the two contact list arrow-icons from, since the one that's distributed with Miranda is ugly as hell. I have no idea why they turned the nice little arrows into ugly plus-and-minuses... yuck.

A little unusual maybe, but I'm running my Miranda with 25% inactive opacity, 100% active opacity. That way I can have the contact list expanded but still read through it as long as the mouse-pointer doesn't put miranda in focus. Very slick if you ask me, and the only use of transparency on the desktop that I feel is meaningful.

/Intresseklubben noterar.