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Trillian 3.0 Released
Octagon Most writes "Cerulean Studios has released Trillian Pro 3.0 which is still interacting with AIM, Yahoo, MSN instant messagers with impunity. It has a cool new Instant Lookup feature which links to Wikipedia, and a serverless messaging mode using Rendezvous. The free version is now Trillian Basic 3.0. Trillian is still Windows only, and if you don't like the FAQ response regarding Linux and Mac support let 'em know."
I was honestly surprised to see this on slashdot this morning. After all, there aren't many slashdot posts proclaiming excitement over new versions of SQL Server, right?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
It's good to emphasize that, although Trillian and GAIM are competitors, they share information with each other when things go awry. Whenever Yahoo! makes a change that screws up GAIM and Trillian, you can bet the devs on both sides will be helping each other out. Now that's a good proprietary/open source relationship.
Wikipedia in-depth comparison of instant messengers, including gaim and trillian.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
It's not even so much that we're uninterested, it's that we know Trillian isn't really as well-suited to the model of MacOS X or Linux applications. (FWIW, at least two Trillian developers -- including me -- have Macs as well as windows boxes. I'm posting this from Safari, in fact.)
/do/ periodically re-examine the possibility, but...
:)
I develop Mac OS X software in my spare time, and I can tell you flat out that Trillian would violate the Aqua Design Guidelines six ways from Sunday unless completely reworked, just for starters. (Of course, a depressing number of Macintosh applications also do, but still.) And for a small development team, trying to keep a single code tree in sync across multiple platforms without making it suffer overall, would be hard; that's something far easier for an OSS project. We
Honestly, Trillian's designed not for the power-users who want to get down and dirty with every little aspect of an IM protocol, or for OSS activists. It's designed, as has been noted, more for Joe Average; this is why Trillian 3.0 is made to look and feel more like a Windows XP application in the preferences system and whatnot. And to some extent, that userbase tends to be more prominent on Windows.
For those who are really into OSS or are on Linux, Sean and the others who work on it have made a great app in Gaim. And for those who are on Mac OS X, Adium X is pretty kickass. Heck, even the new iChat in Tiger is pretty straightforward for Joe Average Mac User.
It's not like there's some Highlander-esque 'there can be only one!' situation with instant messaging clients. You'll even notice we at Cerulean are on good terms with the Gaim team; when Yahoo locked everyone out last time, we deciphered the new login protocol and donated it to Gaim (and to Adium as a result). You can find other instances in the Gaim changelog of code donated from Trillian; it's certainly not like we're out to kill open source and crush all opposition or something. ("I am Trillian MacLeod of the clan MacLeod, and I've come to take your head developer!")
Gaim and Trillian are made to fill a different niches. If one's right for you, great! Doesn't mean the other one isn't right for other people.
--Rachel