We are glad to announce the release of Instantbird 0.1.1.
This release is mostly a bug fix release. We’ve been impressed by the success of the 0.1 release and thought it would be nice to deliver a more stable version for the users we already have before making big changes for version 0.2.
The things we focused on for this release are:
- Improved stability: we fixed the outstanding bugs that resulted in crashes.
- Proper handling of non-ASCII characters. Instantbird now uses UTF-8 for all strings.
- Usability improvements. We fixed bugs that didn’t require much of our time and will significantly improve the user experience. For examples: aliases in the buddy list, linkification in the chat window, … We also removed some common annoyances in the UI.
- IRC Chats. In order to build a community, we thought it was critical to provide some way for users and testers to talk in a public place and not only send us private messages. There is now in the “File” menu a “Join Chat” item which will allow users and future contributors to join us in irc.mozilla.org#instantbird
We look forward to get your feedback on this release. You can comment in this blog or join us on IRC.
We would like to thank the early testers and users of the 0.1 release who provided some great feedback and helped us make Instantbird better!
nice. I hope instantbird takes off. I’m very interested in this project, as I’m blind and it’s the closest thing to accessible multinetwrok we’ve got that will hopefully have good builtin or easily found functionality.
So I’ve used IM a lot, and I’m already quite impressed on the ease of use from Instantbird. Not that I’d expect anything else that starts with the word Mozilla. I’ve never really used IRC, what’s the best way for me to go about setting that up.
Can’t wait to see a final release! Please hurry! :) I’m downloading v0.1.1 now because Pidgin is not working so well.
Instantbird seems nice, but i REALLY would like to have a (optional) all-in-one-window-solution for instant messaging, Climm (from climm.org) is a nice example for this.
Great begin, really hope that this project can go further Miranda IM…waiting for the next release!
Good to see an IM client that will have continual upgrades made to it. I have been using Trillian for years and enjoy it pretty well but there are no changes being made to it that can be utilized by a free user. Hope this will become my only IM client. Keep up the good work.
nice and clean, interface. is there a way to set things like fonts and colors?
I really, really like this Pidgin-type tool for Mac because I don’t like Adium at all. Keep up the good work! I think you should add a bigger away message bar, fonts/smiley face options, and sound options.
For a 0.1.1 release, I’m EXTREMELY impressed. It doesn’t yet have Away configurations, full XMPP interoperability (like service discovery and the ability to set the client’s priority), or a full-featured and dynamic buddy list that I can tell yet, but it’s already well on its way to becoming a premier Pidgin alternative. In fact, I’m already using it for that purpose. I can live without the expand/collapse group functionality in the buddy list for now, and I was already relying on launching Psi (ugliest IM client ever) for my service discovery configurations (like transports and chatroom listings), so no great loss for supporting an IM solution that holds lots of promise. It already inherits the GTK theme flawlessly (even when I’m using the Neutronium theme, which turns everything very dark), and already defaults to a tabbed single window. Kudos. =)
As a recent “switcher” to the Mac, I was surprised and a little disappointed to find that the premier IM app for OS X (Adium) was a beautiful-looking app, and yet was missing one feature that I had assumed to be basically “standard” for all such programs, based on my experience with GAIM/Pidgin: “Buddy Pounce”. Since Instabird is based on Pidgin, can we assume that feature is included? If not, where does such a feature lie on the development roadmap? Thanks, good luck..
The roadmap is public, buddy pounces are listed on it.
As discussed on IRC, support for the basic IRC commands is needed to do joins, etc. from the chat window rather than going back to the connections interface. I also have the Same Place Jabber extension installed into Firefox that handle Jabber Chat, but I need IRC for Mozilla and other single server IRC connections.
What I am highly impressed by is Your an XULRunner application. The Thunderbird team is working to migrate to XULRunner. It would be fantastic if Instantbird evolved to work easily with Tbird.
So where’s the IRC channel?
Thanks for your work so far! I really like what I see.
Haha… Neglect my recent post. Saw the info in the blog post! x)
I’ve also used Trillian for years but recently began looking for something with XMPP (mainly for GoogleTalk) since I’ve been getting fed up with how capricious ICQ can be. I’d tried Gaim in the past but I had problems with it. I decided to give Pidgin a shot, anyway. Unfortunately it crashed every time I tried to get at the Preferences. Hopefully as Instantbird develops there’ll be a simple(r) version available for those of us who really only want to keep track of our various IM accounts through one client.
Instantbird rocks! (Because it unites all famous messengers in one application an it’s so easy to use!)
I can’t wait until the next version is released!
Does anybody know when 0.2 will come?
No. We are still discussing whether we want to ship a 0.1.2 release with what we currently have as soon as possible or start working on bigger changes.
Well, if the 0.2 release doesn’t take too much time I would wait for it, but if it takes more than a month I would prefer a 0.1.2 release before. Keep up the good work :)
Very good, a Mozilla fan and descovery this program recentely, he is very simple yet, but probabily will be the best IM, like Firefox is the best brower and Thunderbird is the best e-mail tool.
Please, finish this program early as you can!
Update?!? Can’t wait for updates :-/
Updates are coming soon!
Has this stopped?