Tips for Switchers

For the Switcher who is reluctant to leave behind the power and control of Trillian, you may find iChat a bit limiting, both in its features and its inability to connect to multiple IM networks.

iChat is a solid application, but it only connects to the AOL Instant Messenger network and Apple’s .Mac network (which requires that you pay $99 a year for a .Mac account…)

If you want multi-network support on OS X, you have a couple of options: Fire and Adium.

What the Duck?!

Both are free and open source, so you have no risk in trying them out. And while both are solid instant messenger clients, if you’re a former Trillian user, you’ll quickly realize - as I did - that Adium is the only way to go.

UPDATE: Adium 1.0 was officially released the day after this was posted! The Apple Blog has an in-depth review.

Features

Network Connectivity

Adium connects to the AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber, IRC, BonJour, Google Talk, Lotus SameTime, Novell Groupwise and Gadu-Gadu networks.

It’s available in 20 languages.Adium has a rich base of developers (and non-developers, but I’ll get to that in a moment) and has been built with features that a former Trillian user would love. Some of these include:

• Tabbed conversation windows
• Encryption
• File Transfer

If there’s something you don’t like or would like to change, chances are someone has provided the tools to do it. Or, you could do it yourself. All of the documentation required to create an AdiumXtra is available on the Adium web site. Many people without any development experience at all have created things like icons and emoticons using freely available tools.

Customization

AdiumXtras

Adium has an entire developer and designer community creating Xtras for the Adium client. Xtras are defined as:

• Dock Icons
• Emoticons
• AppleScripts
• Status Icons
• Contact List Styles
• Message Styles
• Sound Sets
• Service Icons
• Plugins

…and the notorious “Miscellaneous“.

They can be found at AdiumXtras.com

Dock Icons

Don’t like the Duck? Ditch it.

According to the Adium blog, the Adium icon started out as a “messenger bird” or “carrier pigeon.” Over the years, it has morphed into Adiumy, the duck.
Why a duck? Who knows…If you like Adiumy, then lucky you. If ducks aren’t your thing, then you appear to have hundreds, maybe thousands, of options. (This is a guess. They don’t list the total number of dock icons and I decided not to count them…)For those who care, I’m currently using the White MacBook Adiumy Dock Icon set, available in five luscious Adiumy colors.

Emoticons

Express your emotions with Adiumy.

Adium comes installed with its own set of default icons along with those for Yahoo, MSN and iChat.Can’t get enough of the duck? You can download a set of Emoticons designed with the face of Adiumy. Ok - you’ve probably had enough of the duck so feel free to choose from dozens of others.

AppleScripts

For when you run out of things to type.

Amaze your friends with such cultural contributions as the Chuck Norris Random Fact Generator or the Animal Crossing Fish Puns.Too goofy for you?Then let your chat buddies know what you’re listening to in iTunes. There’s a script to pull the Artist, Album and Song Title. Or, let them know the URL of the page that you currently have open in FireFox. There’s a script for that, too.Once again, probably hundreds of useful - and thoroughly questionable - AppleScripts for use with Adium.

Status Icons

yt?

Let your IM buddies know your online status using the standard icon set or choose form dozens of others.

Contact List Styles

Adium has some very interesting options in this area. You can choose from a variety of standard window styles or my favorite, no window at all.

Here, you can see my contact list. Notice that it’s not bound by a window of any sort with a completely transparent background. Each of my contact groups have their “bubble” as do the contacts within each group. They can be hidden or exposed to my liking. I allow this window to be perpetually open on my desktop so I can keep tabs on people’s availability.

Message Styles

Like the Contact List Styles, you can also decide what your conversation window can look like. Once again, ther are a number included with Adium, but you can download various styles. Here’s my chosen Message Style.

Sound Sets

Quack!

Sounds Sets are groups of sounds that are attributed to Events that occur within Adium. For example, an event can be something like “When a contact signs on“ or “When a message is received.”

You can not only attribute sounds to these events, but you can also change the behavior of Adium. For example, “When a contact signs on, play [your selected sound] and bounce the Adium icon in the dock.”

I recommend that the first thing you should do is change your sound set to something other than the standard Adium sound set, which is chock full of (yes, you guesssed it) duck sounds. It’s gets really old, really fast.As you can see, I’ve selected the iChat Sound Set, then customized it so I could turn off things like “Buddy Sign On” notifications. Of course, you can choose from others than come pre-installed or download new ones. If you’re feeling adventurous and have some time on your hands, you can create your very own Sound Set and if you’re feeling generous, share it with the Adium community.

Service Icons

Hopelessly devoted 2 u.

For the uber-connected among us who have to use multiple IM services to stay connected to friends and colleagues, you can also add a bit of variety to these icons. Icons for all supported services are available for download or you can use generic ones if you prefer.

I use the standard Service Icons.

Plugins

Only one here to speak of: the PlainText Plugin, which removes some formatting from incoming messages.

Miscellaneous

Whatever’s left over.

Ah yes, the famous Miscellaneous category. What lives here?

Menubar icon replacements, Dashboard Widgets, and Growl windows. (We’ll discuss Growl in another post.)

Useful Adium Tips

• Create messages in tabs. One of the simplest yet most useful features of Adium is its ability to organize IM sessions into tabbed windows. If you’re even a moderate user of IM, you’ll experience the benefits of this immediately.
• Don’t automatically accept files. Especially if you publicly disclose your IM address(es).

• Don’t open “safe” files after receiving. While the Mac isn’t prone to viruses, there’s bound to be one that shows up some time - and you don’t want to be the first to experience it.
• Allow closing of inactive tabs. If you’re chat session ended 30 minutes ago, do you really want to have to the tab to remain open? If yes, then ignore me.

• Show up to ‘X‘ lines of history in new windows. I’ve found this to be helpful, particularly if you’d like to quickly recall the outcome of the last chat sessions. Great if you use IM for business. I like this feature so much that I’ve increased the setting from 5 lines to 50 lines.

• Leave the default “Dimming of messages older than the last 5 minutes.” This way, you don’t accidentally think that it’s a new message if you leave the chat window open.

A note on Encryption

Adium has the ability to encrypt the messaages between you and another IM’r. If you use IM for business, (or if you use it for personal discussions while at work) you may want to do this.

I find that I don’t conduct serious business over IM, so I don’t bother with it. But I know people who send very sensitive information over IM without encryption. That’s just crazy, in my opinion. Use your judgement.

Are you a Switcher with a question you want answered? Send us email to questions@tipsforswitchers.com or use our convenient contact form.

Technorati Tags: Adium, Applications, Mac OS X, Macintosh, OS X, Apple, Tips, How to, Tutorial, Software, Mac, John Federico, Switchers, Instant Messenger, Instant Messenging, MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, AIM, Trillian, Google Talk, Jabber, Lotus Sametime, .Mac, dotMac, Novell Groupwise, ICQ, BonJour

written by jf