Slashdot Mirror
AOL to Replace AIM with Triton
An anonymous reader writes "BetaNews is reporting that AOL has begun beta testing a replacement for its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) software. Triton has an entirely new user interface that adds highly anticipated features including tabbed messaging and logging. The client will also be open to third party plug-ins." From the article: "It is no coincidence that AOL is fielding so many betas concurrently. AOL Browser, an Internet Explorer based Web browser; AOL Media Player, a standalone audio and video player; AOL search technologies and AOL's synchronization utilities are all part of what was once a unified communications client called Fanfare."
I live in Canada so have never used AIM. I am, however, an avid user of Trillian and GAIM over ICQ and MSN. Now I'm not sure if it's just me, but offering tabbed chatting and logging features doesn't seem that impressive to me. Honestly, I wouldn't use a client that didn't log conversations and offer some type of window control.
I didn't RTFM, but I hope that those aren't the best features that Triton has to offer...
Because the small guy actually cares about the product, has passion around it, enjoys the work, and wants to put out something that makes him look good. He's also far more likely to "dogfood" the application, so it has to work for him before anyone else.
Huge companies like AOL (this is a generalization!) only care about the bottom line, and the passion & interest for the product isn't nearly as strong at the level of the developers. They aren't building something they believe in, they're building what they're paid to build. Add in "too many chiefs, not enough indians" (basically, every mid-level manager and marketdroid has to get their word in and impose their will) and the end result is bloated garbage.
Triton was completely re-written from scratch using a new GUI toolkit called "Boxely", which was derived from Mozilla's XUL. As a result, this new AIM is extremely extensible, and hackable.
.box). These contain the code that drives the entire product. You can easily modify and extend AIM, just as you can write extensions for Firefox with XUL. This is no accident, AOL wants developers to build on AIM as a platform.
Poke around in C:\Program Files\Common Files\AOL\AIMBeta\services and you'll find a bunch of javascript and xml files (ending in
When I worked at AOL, I developed Boxely as a fun side project. I left the company a year ago, but they kept my project alive and now seem to be building real software with it. I probably should have open sourced it from the beginning.
On my blog I've written more about Boxely and how it compares to XUL: http://www.joehewitt.com/
Just what does this client do that it needs more than a 600mhz computer?
I got the installer, which was annoying as it's not even an installer at all but an install-getter, and it immediately prompted me with the message "Your computer does not meet the minimum system requirements to download and install AIM® Beta."