So a few days ago I said I'd be making a blog post that covers what I think are the important bits of Adium 1.0 if there was enough interest.
And there was indeed a lot of interest. So without making you folks wait any longer, here's the highlights (note: These are what I thought the majority would be interested in that has not tried the beta). Please note that the fonts I use are not the default.
A few notes/thoughts/random ideas before I begin though. Or rather, maybe a little bit of a history lesson. Bah, either way. Basically the way we chose to do things a while back was to release .80 and then maintain just that for security/bugfixes and not much else. As many of you know an Adium release contains a lot of changes even if it's just a security fix.
We also skipped .90 through .99. We might not have done that if we had to do it over again, but it's mostly worked out for the better.
We also released .80 over a year ago. .89.1 Is basically over a year old with bugfixes, and no real new features.
It's enough to make you go batty, or even turn into a large rectangle board game and then be split apart.
Like this:
Or maybe it makes your Mac blue to not know what's going on with Adium in a meaningful way. Just maybe
So if you all wonder why we talk the beta up so much on the forums or irc, or why we tell some folks to try the beta to see if it resolves an issue, it's for those and other reasons.
One final note. Contrary to popular belief, Adium X 1.0 will not have Voice/Video. This was noted here.
On to the show
The whole enchilada
I just thought this one wold be appropriate first. It's in our built-in help on the front page, I think it's pretty nice:
Contact List
So I think that the most viewed portions of the app are the Contact List and the.. well, you guess.
Anyhow, so pictures say more than words:
There are 2 big changes here.
1) The default contact list style has changed.
2) The toolbar has changed, like so:
There are 3 things to note about this area, those being the Name area (where Chris is), the Status, and the Image. All three are modifiable, right there. Mousing over the portions will making each apparent. Last I remember these are global settings and affect all accounts, but I may be wrong about that.
There is also 1 minor change to the contact list. Images will now be rounded if they are displayed inline. It's not a large amount of rounding, but it takes some of the sharpness off of the images
Here is what happens if you click the image in the toolbar
I think that covers the contact list pretty well, on to the...
Message View
So here goes:
This is the stockholm style on the xtras. It's interesting to note that both the message style and the contact list style were both from the xtras site. That's right, used user generated styles to create part of the look for 1.0, and I think it's really turned out well. Congrats folks, you all deserve it.
On to
Preferences
Other than the Contact List and Message Window, I think folks will look at Preferences the most.
So here's the General Prefs:
There are a few things here, most of it hasn't changed. Notables include the Evil Menu Duck checkbox moved here, a Hotkey preference got added here, and some other things got moved around.
One of the more apparent things about this screenshot is the fact that the toolbar icons had changed. Let's look at them closer
Adam Betts did these, they look pretty snazzy.
The last thing I'm going to post on here is the Personal Preferences.
The key thing here is that you can set your global Name (alias), Profile, and Icon. If you click Choose Icon, you can even set the image with an iSight.
For the cocoa developer, figure out what actually happens when you click on the Choose Icon button, you might chuckle quite a bit.
Well, that's all I'm going to show. There's lots of other changes, but these are the general ones. We all hope you folks will like them.
Oh, one last note. This is Beta 14, and things are subject to last minute changes.
Do not post bugs or requests to the comments! Use Trac.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Comments:
In my b14 I don't have the option to use no icon. It is either use global icon or use this icon. I really want to use no icon but since I cannot I have been using a blank white icon for the past 3 years. What am I missing?
maybe it's just me, but does anyone else on b14 have a problem with runaway thread count? under activity monitor, i watch adium's thread count grow and grow until it has thousands of em and it is using a whole core on my mbp (original 2.0 15"). great fun to watch the numbers count up, but not fun to have to cycle adium every 30 mins.
i experience the dreaded cpu gobbling as well. is there is a good way to capture exactly what is going on so we can submit it back to the developers for debugging?
I didn't see any mention of the new feature (probably missed it) that I've found to be my favorite :)
The auto-hiding of the contact list has been working great for me! Image Link
The only change I'd like to see to it is if the contact list could be "docked" to the side and pop out when my mouse is over there, similar to the OS X dock. Otherwise, I think it's one of the best additions coming with 1.0.
The auto-hiding of the contact list has been working great for me! Image Link
The only change I'd like to see to it is if the contact list could be "docked" to the side and pop out when my mouse is over there, similar to the OS X dock. Otherwise, I think it's one of the best additions coming with 1.0.
2 things i really would like to see in 1.0 is faster file transfers between msn-accounts. The second thing is to set a comment next to your name on your msn account, or atleast see other users comments. as you might have noticed, i only use adium for my msn-account (nearly everybody in sweden is using msn )
anonymous, Preferences->Personal, not account-specific prefs. Leave your accounts on the 'global' setting so they can inherit the behavior from Personal prefs.
anonymouses, the runaway threads is a known issue with AIM connectivity we've fixed for 1.0b15. I'd link to the ticket, but Trac is still getting fixed.
fn: Dock-like hiding is precisely how I use it. Check the "automatically on screen edges" checkbox in Preferences->Advanced->Contact List. The preference layout will most likely be rearrange in 1.1 to expose this feature a bit better and more clearly; it's just too late in the 1.0 beta cycle to make a big change like that.
anonymous, beta.adiumx.com. Page is down at present.
anonymouses, the runaway threads is a known issue with AIM connectivity we've fixed for 1.0b15. I'd link to the ticket, but Trac is still getting fixed.
fn: Dock-like hiding is precisely how I use it. Check the "automatically on screen edges" checkbox in Preferences->Advanced->Contact List. The preference layout will most likely be rearrange in 1.1 to expose this feature a bit better and more clearly; it's just too late in the 1.0 beta cycle to make a big change like that.
anonymous, beta.adiumx.com. Page is down at present.
Evan, thanks for explaining the no icon/global icon settings. I guess I never realized how that worked.
Also, that screen edge hiding is way cool! You guys should highlight that feature more.
I have also experienced the thread count issue. If I leave Adium running for a few days it can often bog down my machine. I am looking forward to that resolution.
Also, that screen edge hiding is way cool! You guys should highlight that feature more.
I have also experienced the thread count issue. If I leave Adium running for a few days it can often bog down my machine. I am looking forward to that resolution.
Great job on the betas so far - can't wait for the 1.0 milestone!
One thing I would suggest though - I can't stand that all userpics in the Contact List now have rounded corners forced upon them. Would it be possible to offer an option to remove the rounded corners in Preferences? Give people a choice, rather than having a choice forced upon them ;)
One thing I would suggest though - I can't stand that all userpics in the Contact List now have rounded corners forced upon them. Would it be possible to offer an option to remove the rounded corners in Preferences? Give people a choice, rather than having a choice forced upon them ;)
IIRC, msn user names were displayed in a tooltip on mouseover, just next to the pic. Or was it one of the plugins that I had installed?
@h
Hah! I knew someone would complain! We snuck that in a while back and didn't provide an option for it -- I personally think it looks pretty yucky, but that's just me.
I'd be reluctant to add a pref for it -- I think we should just remove it entirely rather than having yet another option.
Hah! I knew someone would complain! We snuck that in a while back and didn't provide an option for it -- I personally think it looks pretty yucky, but that's just me.
I'd be reluctant to add a pref for it -- I think we should just remove it entirely rather than having yet another option.
Eh, it's something we're trying for 1.0. If we get a rush of people who hate it then back to the ugly sharp corners we go.
I think if you are going to take screenshots for the general public to view, you should use the default fonts. Your fonts make it appear to be much uglier than the current version ;)
yeah, I noticed them back in b14 (or was it 13) - just never said anything until now! The corners look okay I guess when the icon size is large, but they look awful when small (as in my case, 16x16).
@scifi451
1) Nope, you can't change it, it has the pic there for good.
2) You can change the icon pack, we ship the gems still I think
1) Nope, you can't change it, it has the pic there for good.
2) You can change the icon pack, we ship the gems still I think
there ist still not possible to send files through adium :(
ichat did it but i've never senn that I can send a PDF file with adium :(
tell me please, what's the problem :(
ichat did it but i've never senn that I can send a PDF file with adium :(
tell me please, what's the problem :(
What i'd like to see is a drop-down menu of available contacts from the menu-bar icon. No chance of this?
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