Many of the problems are the same things that other people have mentioned on this thread:
-Obnoxious buttons on the bottom of the buddy list
-The strange way the account dialog was split up
-Removal of ability to choose how you want to be idle
-Preferences and missing options (it had such a nice layout before, why tabs now?)
-The chat window seems very awkward from previous versions
I know it's still just beta, but I don't like the direction it's heading. Of course, when the first GTK2 versions of Gaim were coming out, I was thinking pretty much the same thing. Over time, things seemed to get better, though. So maybe it's just a matter of time before I'll get back into the new versions again.
Really, this is the beauty of open source software. While I can't say I like the new user interface and will probably be uninstalling this version shortly, I'm sure it won't be long until someone creates a fork of the old code base and establishes a new project. Based on the old usability of Gaim, it should be fairly easy to incorporate new Gaim features into the project, without having to use all their new UI modifications and crippled usability. Then we can have the power of Gaim the way we want it.
I recall this kind of thing happening in the Ultima Online scene, where a huge change in UOX3 development caused many others to create their own server emulators based on the old code base. It was pretty cool to see and a lot of good came from it.
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Many of the problems are the same things that other people have mentioned on this thread:
-Obnoxious buttons on the bottom of the buddy list
-The strange way the account dialog was split up
-Removal of ability to choose how you want to be idle
-Preferences and missing options (it had such a nice layout before, why tabs now?)
-The chat window seems very awkward from previous versions
I know it's still just beta, but I don't like the direction it's heading. Of course, when the first GTK2 versions of Gaim were coming out, I was thinking pretty much the same thing. Over time, things seemed to get better, though. So maybe it's just a matter of time before I'll get back into the new versions again.
Really, this is the beauty of open source software. While I can't say I like the new user interface and will probably be uninstalling this version shortly, I'm sure it won't be long until someone creates a fork of the old code base and establishes a new project. Based on the old usability of Gaim, it should be fairly easy to incorporate new Gaim features into the project, without having to use all their new UI modifications and crippled usability. Then we can have the power of Gaim the way we want it.
I recall this kind of thing happening in the Ultima Online scene, where a huge change in UOX3 development caused many others to create their own server emulators based on the old code base. It was pretty cool to see and a lot of good came from it.