What’s new?

This version contains several new features, but is also a stability/bugfix release.

• New features:
  • Proxy support: you can now use HTTP and Socks proxies.
  • Typing notifications: you can know when the person you are talking to is typing.
  • Automatic reconnection: when a non fatal connection error occurs (e.g. network failure), the account is automatically reconnected after a few seconds.
  • Idleness: servers are notified when you are idle so that your status is changed.
  • Better handling of chat rooms: the topic of the room and the list of participants are displayed, IRC commands work.
  • Findbar: it is now easy to search in a conversation, with a findbar similar to the Firefox one. A notable difference is that it searches backwards by default, so that the most recent matching messages are found first.
  • Universal build: the Mac binary now also works on PPC Macs.
• Updated: Instantbird 0.1.3 is based on libpurple 2.5.2 and Mozilla 1.9.1b2.
• Improved stability: we used the crash reports that we got from the 0.1.2 release and nightly builds to fix bugs that resulted in crashes.

You can download Instantbird 0.1.3 for Windows, Mac or Linux from this page. Of course you can also download the source code.

We look forward to get your feedback on this release. You can comment on this post or join us on IRC in #instantbird.

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:

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!

What’s new?

This version is more a stability/bugfix release than a feature release.

• Updated: Instantbird 0.1.2 is now based on libpurple 2.4.3 and Mozilla 1.9.0.1.
• Improved stability: we fixed the outstanding bugs that resulted in crashes. We also turned on breakpad to get more data on crashes.
• Detailed tooltips: the tooltips of the buddy list now contain detailed information.
• Under the hood: On this release we spent a lot of time on the build system. Instantbird can now be built like any other Mozilla application. It doesn’t require to build dependencies separately any more. This results in smaller downloads (we package only the files that are really needed) and for developers it will now be easy to play with our code.

You can download Instantbird 0.1.2 for Windows, Linux or Mac from this page. Of course you can also download the source code.

We look forward to get your feedback on this release. You can comment on this post or join us on IRC in #instantbird.