Gaim 0.60a5 - 56K Warning

Necrosis · Mar 18, 2003, 10:22 PM

What is Gaim?

Quote:

Gaim is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. It is compatible with AIM (Oscar and TOC protocols), ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo, IRC, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, and Zephyr networks.

Gaim users can log in to multiple accounts on multiple IM networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on AOL Instant Messenger, talking to a friend on Yahoo Messenger, and sitting in an IRC channel all at the same time.

Gaim supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer (coming soon), away messages, typing notification, and MSN window closing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, and more.

Gaim integrates well with GNOME 2 and KDE 3.1's system tray, as well as Windows's own system tray. This allows you to work with gaim without requiring the buddy list window to be up at all times.

Gaim is under constant development, and releases are usually frequent. The latest news regarding Gaim can be found on the news page.

Sourceforge: Gaim Home Page

Status Icons

FAQ

Download Gaim 0.60a5 for Windows

Information taken from Gaim Homepage

Screen Shots

This is the new account editor. Note that signing on a new account takes only a single click.

Gaim 0.60 uses GTK+ 2.0. Its entire interface has been dramatically overhauled from previous releases, looking to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines for guidance. The result is a dramatic improvement in usability.

This is the modify account dialog. All of Gaim's dialogs are being rewritten to take advantage of GTK+ 2 and improve usability.

The smileys you see in your conversations are themable. Writing a smiley theme is easy, and installing one is even easier. You can drag a link right from the themes page in your browser into the themes selector.

Gaim's GNOME applet has been replaced with a tray icon plugin. This tray icon will dock into any freedesktop.org compliant notification area (GNOME 2, KDE 3.1) and provides rapid access to common features and the ability to reduce clutter on your desktop by hiding the buddy list window.

You can now have any arbitrary number of conversations in any window. You can drag the tabs from one window to another or within the same window to reorder your conversations.

Gaim 0.60 has infinitely improved its internationalization support. In this screenshot, we see a conversation over AIM using in many different languages, even using multiple character sets in a single message. No other third-party IM client can claim this kind of internationalization support.

Loading a new plugin is extremely easy. Plugins are probed when you start Gaim. You just need to choose which one you want and click the checkbox. The preferences dialog has been completely rewritten to present options in a more organized manner.

File transfer support is one of the many new features in Gaim 0.60.

Useful Facts

Gaim has released a Windows version. Right now it is an "alpha" release, the most buggy type of release a project can make. For some people it works very reliably, for others it is unusable.

Does AOL's attempts at blocking Trillian affect Gaim? No.

Please visit Gaim's Homepage for more info. Enjoy!!!

dipstick · Mar 18, 2003, 11:33 PM

Wow, looks nice. I'll keep my eye on this one.