Nightly builds available

Nightly builds

We produce nightly builds of Instantbird every day with buildbot. These builds can be downloaded from our server at http://ftp.instantbird.com/instantbird/nightly/latest-trunk/. Please note that these builds are available for testing purpose only, and are totally untested before we put them online. Use them at your own risks. If you want to help us with testing, there is no need to download and install a new build from the server everyday, the application will automatically propose updates.

To ensure that users won’t confuse nightly unstable builds with releases, we use a different set of icons for the nightlies. The nightly icon is:

Nightly logo

What’s new?

It has already been a few months since the last release, so I guess it’s a good time for a quick status update.

Just after the 0.1.2 release, we switched from subversion to mercurial for the versioning of our source code. Our mercurial repository is publicly available at http://hg.instantbird.org/. At the same time, for the Mozilla code we use, we switched from the CVS trunk (1.9.0.x) to mozilla-central and we are now using a build system which is very similar to the comm-central one. In fact, it’s a copy of it with very small modifications. Thanks to the people who helped us for the transition and to the people who worked on the comm-central build system.

There are also some new features: There’s a findbar in the conversation window (Ctrl/Cmd + F to open it), commands (/me, /topic, etc…) work in conversations, the list of chat room participants is displayed (for example, in IRC channels), typing notifications work, idleness (becoming idle based on the inactivity time) works, status changes are displayed in conversations, it’s possible to force a check for update, …

We also spent time on code cleanup (debug logging for example) and stability improvements (taking into account the data from the crash reporting system).

What’s next?

We plan to do another minor release soon, and after that, for the 0.2 release, the focus will be on extensibility.

On a side note, this project has been public for one year, Instantbird 0.1 was released on October 18th, 2007. Even if we hoped to do more, it’s been a great year for the project!

17 thoughts on “Nightly builds available

  1. I can’t connect to my Google Talk account, although it does work in Pidgin with the exact same settings.

    Ps. Glad to see there’s a mozilla-tech based IM.

  2. Some suggestions:
    - needs a taskbar icon
    - only *one* click on taskbar icon should open & close the app.
    - New account: XMPP should mention some prominent providers (e.g. Google Talk)
    - Common providers should be pre-configured (only need to enter UN&PW)
    - conference calls?
    - video calls?
    - conference + video calls?
  3. >>Thanks to the people who … and to the people who worked on the comm-central build system.<<

    On behalf of myself and other comm-central [Build System] “owners”/”peers” your welcome, I’m glad it helps more than just us as well!

  4. Are there any plans to provide InstantBird-Firefox integration in the form of a Firefox extension? My ultimate dream would be to be able to access all my IMs from the Firefox sidebar!

  5. It would make connecting to IRC servers a lot easier if the list of servers are available in the pull-down dialog. Just my two cents worth. For privacy, password lock to InstantBird at the start of the program to make it accessible only to authorize users.

  6. : Thanks for the feedback. In a future version (we don’t know yet which version exactly) we will use the master password system of Mozilla’s password manager. And providing a list of common IRC servers is indeed a good idea. :)

  7. Your IM Mangager looks great, the only thing I miss, but which is important to me, is the master password.