[gunnar]

Can someone recommend an instant messenger that connects to MSN other than the Microsoft product. I was using (and loving) Fire for its simple interface but it no longer supports MSN. Is there an open source messaging standard yet?

[ambush]

Adium 2 with multi protocol support (via libgaim) is coming.

[hyperizer]

Have you tried Proteus?

[hotani]

ok, so there are a lot of IM threads out there... I'll pick this one to revive and pitch my little fit in....

First off, I'm a little (ok, waaaaay more than i should be) pist about the IM options in OSX. Lets have a look shall we?

1- iChat: This is nice. Good interface, clean, sharp, easy.... all that good stuff. But it only connects to the "Apple" network and AOL. Give me Yahoo support. NOW!!!

2- Fire: Fire is wonderful. I love this app, but for some reason it keeps losing the ability to connect to Yahoo. Yes, I know the problem is on Yahoo's end since they keep changing their connection protocols or some crap like that. But other clients seeem to be fine with that. C'mon, get it together! I want to use Fire.

3- Adium: I tried this last night, and noticed two problems:
problem 1: people that displayed as 'online' with the yahoo client did not show up as 'online' in Adium. This pretty much renders it useless to me.
problem 2 (which maybe i could overlook if they took care of problem #1): I see everyone who is 'offline' and then *POOF* they're gone!! And where is the setting that says "display all users EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT ONLINE???" I guess they don't want me to do that. Bye Adium, thanks for playing.

4- Proteus: Same problem #1 as Adium. For some reason online people showed up as offline. And I did not show up to them either... (this is in Yahoo by the way).

5- Yahoo messenger: well, it works - that's better than all the others. And that's why I'm using it. But that's the only reason. Its ugly. Even with Silk enabled, its still butt-arse-ugly. If it were HALF the app it is in Windows, it would be without question the winner of my little IM contest.

I'm such a whiner aren't I?

[mdc]

Originally posted by hotani:
4- Proteus: Same problem #1 as Adium. For some reason online people showed up as offline. And I did not show up to them either... (this is in Yahoo by the way). And they want me to send them money for this?

not to call you a liar or anything, but i have never had a problem with any protocols on proteus connecting and me not being able to see them online.

i have installed all the different im apps, and, *personally*, proteus is the one that i like best. i have never had any problems with it, and i have no problem paying, is it, $10 or $15 now, for some individual's hard work.

i love the way you can edit a user's info and take all their different chat protocols and put them into one user account, and no matter which one is online, to me it looks like 'that user' is online. i could not care less over which protocol i chat with someone with, i just want the message to get to them. and this is great for not having 3 different user accounts for each of my friends, aim, yahoo, msn.

the single chat window with a drawer is exactly what i want. having ibook and powerbooks with 1024x768 resolution, you don't have huge amounts of screen space to use. having one chat window in the bottom right corner with a drawer with each user in it, is perfect.

the user interface is minimilistic, if you want. username status icon. that's it.

ok i'll shut up now, but i just wanted to give a vote towards proteus.

[hotani]

Originally posted by mdc:
not to call you a liar or anything, but i have never had a problem with any protocols on proteus connecting and me not being able to see them online.

i have installed all the different im apps, and, *personally*, proteus is the one that i like best. i have never had any problems with it, and i have no problem paying, is it, $10 or $15 now, for some individual's hard work.

i love the way you can edit a user's info and take all their different chat protocols and put them into one user account, and no matter which one is online, to me it looks like 'that user' is online. i could not care less over which protocol i chat with someone with, i just want the message to get to them. and this is great for not having 3 different user accounts for each of my friends, aim, yahoo, msn.

the single chat window with a drawer is exactly what i want. having ibook and powerbooks with 1024x768 resolution, you don't have huge amounts of screen space to use. having one chat window in the bottom right corner with a drawer with each user in it, is perfect.

the user interface is minimilistic, if you want. username status icon. that's it.

ok i'll shut up now, but i just wanted to give a vote towards proteus.

No problem. I'm not sure if I made it clear or not, but if any of the above apps worked I would use it - if it worked consistently, then I might even cough up some cash for it.

Proteus was fine, but I need the basic functionality of being able to see people online... for an IM client, this is like breathing; pretty essential. When I tried it last week it couldn't do this with Yahoo.

EDIT: Just found this thread in the discussion forums on the Proteus website. When I get home tonight, I'll try this fix and see what happens. It was a nice looking app - I liked the feature set, just couldn't get it to work.