Instant Messenger is giving me grey hair

[torquill]

My primary IM account is Yahoo. I'm wishing this weren't the case right now, but that's where most of my friends congregate.

This is a problem because I can't find decent IM clients that will connect reliably to Y!IM. Trillian seems to do the job in Windows (especially since I figured out a way to turn off the moronic auto-match thingie that comes up with totally irrelevant webpages based on words in my messages). Pidgin was working (mostly) in linux, but I have to do frequent updates to keep it that way, and it has once again decided it can't connect. I'm fed up.

Empathy (the Gnome client) wedges when trying to sign on, or repeatedly complains of network errors when connecting to GTalk and Y!IM. (Everybody can get on AIM, apparently.) Most other linux clients I've tried have had half-baked UIs or can't connect at all. Meebo works as a stopgap -- except that when I tried it today, I discovered that pressing the "log in" button at meebo.com does absolutely nothing in Chrome. I have to run Firefox to log in. Gaaaaaah....

Why is it that we're still having issues like this with 12 and 14 year old protocols? All I want is to log in and send/receive messages, dammit!

Hey, open source community! Where's my IM client?

Comments

[amanda-nye.livejournal.com]

Drave just switched to something called Digsby that he seems to like.

[saraphim78.livejournal.com]

or you could go REALLY old school and just use IRC ;)

[redrob.livejournal.com]

The problem is that Yahoo likes to change their protocols regularly - they Do Not Play Well with Others. I believe it's at least every year or two you have to get an update to your client for it to continue working. (Backward compatibility? Hah!)

Naturally, their own client is ready in plenty of time. 3rd party clients? Not so much.

I've had these unannounced Yahoo changes manage to crash Trillian. Yeah.

Anyway, best of luck. (FYI - I'm on Yahoo, as well as several others - most of my handles are on my profile page.)

Alex

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've heard that mentioned. I'll go check it out.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but just like in the old days, nobody on IRC is worth talking to. ;)

(I'm actually on a CMC called lily, which is sort of like the grandchild of IRC... but almost none of my RL friends are there.)

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Oh, hey, every year or so I could totally understand. It's having to download a new version of Pidgin every week that has me batty.

The whole "we want to beat 3rd party clients" thing has been going on for a decade, nothing new. Gaim did pretty well with it; so did its child, Pidgin. For a while. In the last year or so Pidgin seems to have lost its mojo. I wouldn't mind too much if the other options were viable. Gotta go check out Digsby...

[amanda-nye.livejournal.com]

He was complaining mightily about the same issues. I think he's Windows, but I know Yahoo compatability was high on his list as well as easy use and actually working.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

....almost. (http://www.digsby.com/signup/maclinux/?os=linux)

I signed up; hopefully if many people express interest, it will spur development. If anybody out there wants to encourage cross-platform development on stuff like that, even if you don't use these particular platforms, you might consider signing up as well... they say they don't spam.

[saraphim78.livejournal.com]

Never heard of it, all I know, old school wise, is IRC....comstud, ring any bells?

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

nope, no bells. I was always more on the BBS end of things than IRC.

Lily (http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/lily_%28CMC%29) has a few sophisticated features that IRC lacked, like detailed permissions and the ability to easily combine channels (discussions) for linear reading. Review is a nice thing too. There's a good set of people on the RPI server.