<n>This article was originally published on the <a href="http://blogs.encodo.ch/news/view_article.php?id=93"><b>Encodo Blogs</b></a>. Browse on over to see more!</n> <hr> Trillian is a multi-protocol chat client that's been around for a quite a while, with both a free version and a professional version, which includes extra features and support. Their version has stagnated quite significantly, offering a grand total of one update over the last three years or so. The feature set is robust and it does pretty much everything you need from a chat client, but its look and feel is starting to feel a bit dated---especially if you've gotted used to Adium or iChat on the Mac. With that in mind, it was time to download Pidgin, which, though its name is new, is a very old and well-established open-source project previously called GAIM.<fn> Their libraries are integrated into many other chat clients and GAIM/Pidgin itself is used by much of the open-source world. Despite this, it's a pretty unpolished project. The UI itself is quite nice and simple, looking much like the aforementioned Adium or iChat and dispensing with much of the clutter that afflicted the previous generation of chat clients (like Trillian). So far, so good. Setting up all chat accounts is also pretty straightforward and intuitive. You can easily set up new statuses and the defaults include an "invisible" status, so you can see who else is logged on, but not appear logged in yourself. Status and connection state are combined, unlike in Trillian, which is also a welcome change. Communication is rock-solid, as expected; open-source geeks expect the core stuff to work---it's the UI where their attention to detail strays and makes for a frustrating user experience. Here is a list of the major annoying issues or gross oversights that Pidgin includes today, after lord knows how many years of active development. <dl dt_class="field"> Installation Pidgin includes optional spell-checking, which is a nice touch, since Adium on OS X uses the system-standard spell-checker to make chatting a more pleasant grammatical experience. However, the bloody thing only lets you choose one language, with no option to install more languages later. Documentation There is none. Features like "pounce on user" will remain completely mystifying for the average new user. There is developer documentation in case you want to help develop Pidgin further, but there is zero documentation for actually using the product. The web site is extremely bare, with a completely empty "news" section, a short "about" section and not much else. Running State Pidgin can minimize to the task tray and lets you hide the "Buddy Window" to avoid desktop clutter. However, it relatively quickly got itself into a state where the buddy window was gone, there was no taskbar icon and starting a new instance simply complained that one was already running. God forbid it should actually offer to show the already running instance. Pidgin was alive, but could not be rescued from the limbo to which it had consigned itself. There was no choice but to kill it and restart. Settings Policy Killing Pidgin leads you to the next problem: Pidgin only stores its settings when exited cleanly and seemingly doesn't store anything to disk during normal program execution. Again, for users accustomed to Mac OS X-like behavior---where program state is stored instantly and applications almost always pick up exactly where they left off, even after crashing---this is completely unacceptable. This hurts all the more when you'd only ever started Pidgin once, entered all five of your chat accounts, set up some new statuses and are faced with the "welcome to Pidgin! You have <b>zero</b> accounts. Would you like to create one?" startup assistant on the next restart. More Settings Woe Not only are global settings not stored while the application is running, but some settings are never stored at all. Like window positions. This is infuriating, because Pidgin simply places every new chat window at the top left of the screen <i>no matter what</i>. No, it is not sufficiently amazing that you managed to show a chat window and are allowing me to send text back and forth with friends and family throughout the world. These days, you totally need to remember where I last put the window for each buddy and how big the window was and the position of the text-box slider and---<i>just remember everything dammit and put the windows back the way they were, so I don't have to constantly drag the damned things around so they are in front of my face.</i> These are not little details anymore. In the old days, it was enough to just work; once a tool becomes part of the everyday workflow, it has to iron out its usability issues or it becomes too annoying to use. </dl> Open-source Disclaimer: I know. It's open-source; I could just go in there and fix it myself. I could stop complaining and do something about it. I could change the culture of the project to be more user-friendly. It's just sad that I would have to, sad that projects like this---that are the toast of the open-source world---are still so unpolished and include (or fail to include) features that most of us learned a decade ago were essential. <hr> <ft>They had to change their name after a drawn-out court battle with AOL, whose AOL Instant Messenger product---AIM---claims all trademarks on similar sounding names. </ft>