We are pleased to announce that Instantbird 0.3 alpha 2 has just been released.

This release contains the first visible changes on the road to making Instantbird 0.3 awesome:

• Contacts: If you talk to the same person on multiple IM networks you can now combine the buddies from each network into a single contact. Just drag and drop one onto the other and they will be merged!
• Tags: Tags have replaced groups in the buddy list. Even though our tag system isn’t fully implemented yet, there are already some new features. For example, a tag can be hidden by clicking the “x” on the right side of the buddy list, all buddies from this tag will then show in an “Other Contacts” tag automatically, which is shown at the bottom of the buddy list.
• Windows (and Linux) users will appreciate the minimize to system tray feature, for which we borrowed some code from the popular MinTrayR add-on. By default Instantbird will minimize to tray when the “x” is clicked, to quit the application choose “Quit” from the File menu or right click on the system tray icon and choose “Quit”. This behavior can be changed from the preferences window.
• On Mac it’s now possible to close the Contacts window without quitting the application. A click on the dock will reopen it.

This release also contains very significant invisible changes, including the ability to create JavaScript protocol plugins and the upgrade to the Mozilla 2.0 platform (which Firefox 4.0 is based on). Add-on developers will like this, especially because of the new ability to create restartless add-ons.

Download or learn more about Instantbird 0.3 alpha 2.

Instantbird 0.3 alpha 1 has just been released.

This release contains very significant changes, including the ability to create JavaScript protocol plugins and the upgrade to the Mozilla 2.0 platform. Most of the changes are not yet visible in the user interface, so we would not advise current users of the 0.2 version to update.

However, it includes basic support for Twitter and is already quite stable; so it will please early adopters and testers who don’t go as far as to use nightly builds (which update themselves everyday with the newest code). Add-on developers will also be interested, especially because of the new ability to create restartless add-ons.

As no critical issues have been reported in the recently released Instantbird 0.2, we have turned on major updates for users of Instantbird 0.1.2 and 0.1.3. If you are still using one of these old versions, you will receive a major update offer to get the newer Instantbird 0.2. It will look like this:

Unfortunately, due to a bug of the updater that shipped in the Windows version of Instantbird 0.1.3.1, the update won’t be automatic for these users, who should download the full installer themselves. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

After months of development and a few pre-release versions, we are happy to announce that Instantbird 0.2 is now ready to be put in the hands of the general public.

Instantbird 0.2 is now available in 5 languages thanks to the great work of our translators.

If you have tried Instantbird 0.1 back in 2007 when it was first released, Instantbird 0.2 may feel like a completely different software to you. The most dramatically changed area is the conversation window (for example, new tabs and message styles), but there are notable changes in almost every window. For a list of changes, see the release notes.

Let’s stop talking, so that you can discover Instantbird 0.2 now!

In the next few days, we will talk about our plans for the future, and especially Instantbird 0.3. Stay tuned!

Instantbird 0.2 beta 2 is now available in English, French, Polish and Russian. If you want to help with the translation for another language, contact us.

The new features of this second beta include a better handling of statuses, cool new default message and emoticon themes, a basic log viewer, actions on buddies from a buddy list context menu, and a lot more! Read the release notes for the details.

Windows users will be pleased to notice that this release is provided with an installer.

You can download the beta and read the release notes from here.

The development of Instantbird 0.2 is nearly finished and this beta will be the last one before the final 0.2 release which is expected to come relatively soon.

We are happy to announce the release of Instantbird 0.2 beta 1. The two most significant improvements in this release are new tabs in conversation windows and the preferences window. There’s a lot more new stuff, read the release notes for a more detailed list.

You can download the beta and read the release notes from here.

Today is a very special day for us. We have a double release to announce!

First, the long awaited add-ons website is now ready for you to use. You will already find a lot of extensions on it since we took care of uploading more than 200 of them. Think about browsing the experimental add-ons, a lot of them are still marked as such. The add-ons website is at this address: https://addons.instantbird.org/.

And last, but not least, Instantbird 0.2 alpha 1 is now ready for you to try it! There’s a lot of new interesting stuff in this one. Here are some of them, read the release notes for more:

• It is ready to be localized (and you can try an experimental French language pack),
• Improved conversations: you can change conversation styles, smiley themes are now handled.
• We implemented a ‘magic’ copy/paste feature that will allow you to have pretty quotes out of messages copied from Instantbird. Some bugs may still exist in this.
• As usual, we took great care of stability issues, so Instantbird 0.2 alpha 1 is already more stable than 0.1.3.1 at this point, so don’t hesitate to give it a try!

You can download the alpha and read the release notes from here.