Tag Archives: 0.1

Major update to Instantbird 0.2

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:

Major update offer dialog

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.

Instantbird 0.1.3.1 released

We have just released a small update to Instantbird 0.1.3. This will fix the connection issue with ICQ that appeared a little more than two weeks ago (sorry it took so long!) and improve the stability. You can download this new 0.1.3.1 release from this page or just click on the ‘Check for updates’ menu to download only a small update file.

We are going to post a status update about the progress of the development of the 0.2 version soon.

Instantbird 0.1.3 released!

After a few months without any release, we are glad to announce the release of Instantbird 0.1.3! This should be the last minor release before Instantbird 0.2 on which the work has already started (we are currently working on localization stuff).

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.

Instantbird 0.1.2 crashing with some MSN accounts

We have just released Instantbird 0.1.2.1 to fix a crash that a lot of people experienced when trying to connect their MSN account on Windows. Unfortunately, this issue wasn’t detected during our testing prior to the release and we are really sorry about it.

If you have Instantbird 0.1.2 on Windows (and if it doesn’t crash at startup because of an automatic connection to your MSN account), you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours.

You can get the full version of Instantbird 0.1.2.1 from the download page.

We would like to thank our users who sent crash reports and useful feedback, and congrats to the people who worked on the crash reporting and automated update tools. Being able to notice, locate and fix quickly such bugs with a small (21kB) update is just amazing!

Instantbird 0.1.2 released!

After a few months without any release, we are glad to announce the release of Instantbird 0.1.2!

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.

Instantbird 0.1.1 released!

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!

Instantbird 0.1, one month and nearly 80000 downloads

We released Instantbird 0.1 about a month ago. It has been downloaded more than 1600 times the first day, about 80000 downloads from our servers (the exact number right now is 79497), and we know some unofficial mirrors have been put online.

Of course, we know that 80000 downloads doesn’t mean 80000 users, but we are really happy to see that so many people were interested by the project enough to go ahead and download it. Thank you!