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Zimphire · Feb 25, 2004, 10:02 AM

I like iChat, but I really need a "Do it all" app. Proteus was cool but it still crashes too often, among other things.

So I decided to download the latest build of Fire and compile it.

WOW much better than it used to be. It's lean clean and simple and works. On top of that, it's free.

phillryu · Feb 25, 2004, 10:24 AM

I'll be sure to try out Fire when I get home but.. have you tried Adium recently? Click my sig, try a new binary. It has all the services, free, clean interface, etc. You might like it.

Krypton · Feb 25, 2004, 10:29 AM

Adium is my favourite in terms of UI design, but the latest Fire builds come closest to feature completeness for an OS X multi chat client.

Having said that, a new Proteus is almost done which really will be feature complete from what I can tell - including file transfer and buddy icons amongst other stuff.

Developer · Feb 25, 2004, 10:35 AM

You compiled it? Don't they offer a binary any more?

mdc · Feb 25, 2004, 10:49 AM

i've been all for proteus for the last year, it has worked very well for me.

i am awaiting the new version, pretty much just for file transfer.

Zimphire · Feb 25, 2004, 10:50 AM

Originally posted by phillryu:
I'll be sure to try out Fire when I get home but.. have you tried Adium recently? Click my sig, try a new binary. It has all the services, free, clean interface, etc. You might like it.

I heard that version was very crashy.

Zimphire · Feb 25, 2004, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by Developer:
You compiled it? Don't they offer a binary any more?

You have to compile the daily builds.

Zimphire · Feb 25, 2004, 10:51 AM

Originally posted by mdc:
i've been all for proteus for the last year, it has worked very well for me.

i am awaiting the new version, pretty much just for file transfer.

Fire's file transfer works great. And it's free.

Krypton · Feb 25, 2004, 11:11 AM

For those who don't want to compile, the latest alpha: 1.0a2

Fire has its own forums now.

mdc · Feb 25, 2004, 11:13 AM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
Fire's file transfer works great. And it's free.

one question:
lots of my friends have an account on more than one protocol. in proteus you can join all those accounts into one 'user account' and then sort them by preference. if you message the user it will see which account is online (according to preference) and message that account. almost taking instant messaging away from chat service, to just chatting.

i normally have no idea what service my friend is on. i don't care, i just want to message them.

this is one thing i want in a messenger. is this possible in fire?
before i go out and try compile a daily build... i have no idea what to do

nforcer · Feb 25, 2004, 03:28 PM

I tried it out. Fire is much improved from the version I used a couple years ago, but still needs some work. The cluttered interface and lack of tabs are the main things I don't like (from the forums it looks like tabs will be coming in a post 1.0 Fire release). But the core components seem to be there and working, and it has some options other clients lack. File transfer on AIM (Oscar) works both ways for the most part. The only case I found it to fail was when Fire tried to receive a text clipping from iChat.

Overall, while it's not ready to use full time, I'm glad we will have more options soon. If the Fire team can take constructive criticism and suggestions well, in time we might have a good competitor to Adium with a nicer group of developers to work with.

yukon · Feb 25, 2004, 04:25 PM

Last I tried Fire was for Jabber, not too long ago, and it was...unpleasant.

I'm waiting on Adium 2.0 to get Jabber back and do it right, until then I'm on Adium 1.6.2c (though iChat's Address-Book integration was nice). I'm looking for modern things like user-icons, file transfer, etc, and I've decided to move to something Open for that (Adium and Jabber fit the bill nicely ;-).

Amorya · Feb 25, 2004, 06:27 PM

Originally posted by nforcer:
I tried it out. Fire is much improved from the version I used a couple years ago, but still needs some work. The cluttered interface and lack of tabs are the main things I don't like (from the forums it looks like tabs will be coming in a post 1.0 Fire release). But the core components seem to be there and working, and it has some options other clients lack. File transfer on AIM (Oscar) works both ways for the most part. The only case I found it to fail was when Fire tried to receive a text clipping from iChat.

Overall, while it's not ready to use full time, I'm glad we will have more options soon. If the Fire team can take constructive criticism and suggestions well, in time we might have a good competitor to Adium with a nicer group of developers to work with.

I have to say, I really like the interface for the most part! (The prefs could use some cleaning up and the buddy list isn't perfect, but the chat windows and Edit Buddy windows are great).

Can't get file transfer MSN to work - I think it has trouble because I'm behind a NAT router. But the official MSN client works fine, however.

Amorya

fireside · Feb 25, 2004, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
I heard that version was very crashy.

only reason i've ever been crashed by Adium was because the internet was disconnected suddenly or something like that.

brutal · Feb 26, 2004, 02:44 AM

I'll definately try Fire when I get home.
I hate that iChat doesn't support the msn-protocol. iChat is such a good app, but none of my friends have a .mac-account or use AIM, so I never get to use it. I love that whenever I bring my mac back from sleep, I don't have to restart iChat for it to log on again.

I refuse to run the official MSN Messenger, and aMSN/dMSN are too ugly. Adium is pretty neat but still a bit buggy. Proteus is cool, but still lacks file-transfers and connection-detection (

)

Fire it is.

kovacs · Feb 26, 2004, 04:14 AM

I'm currently using Proteus as a MSN client, Adium looks promising but it still is way too buggy, Proteus has some quirks but seems to work pretty well, Fire works equally well but doesn't look as good... MSN is very popular here in west europe and almost every student uses it, american developers sometimes seem to forget about MSN....

Jan Van Boghout · Feb 26, 2004, 04:44 AM

Originally posted by kovacs:
I'm currently using Proteus as a MSN client, Adium looks promising but it still is way too buggy, Proteus has some quirks but seems to work pretty well, Fire works equally well but doesn't look as good... MSN is very popular here in west europe and almost every student uses it, american developers sometimes seem to forget about MSN....

Does it support decent group chat yet? I'm so tired of the fact that nice looking Cocoa apps have lame MSN implementations (hopefully libgaim will fix much of that) and the ugly RB and other apps have all the great features

kovacs · Feb 26, 2004, 05:13 AM

Originally posted by Jan Van Boghout:
Does it support decent group chat yet? I'm so tired of the fact that nice looking Cocoa apps have lame MSN implementations (hopefully libgaim will fix much of that) and the ugly RB and other apps have all the great features

Nope, the perfect MSN client for the Mac simply doesn't seem to exist, I want to the looks of Proteus, the features of the windows version and the ease of use of iChat...

Horsepoo!!! · Feb 26, 2004, 09:33 AM

Adium 2 is pretty good right now. And the Proteus update is shaping up. But Fire?

Zimphire · Feb 26, 2004, 10:57 AM

I tried the latest Adium, doesn't have all the service. Proteus is STILL buggy, and hasn't been updated in forever.

I'll stick with Fire for now.

gperks · Feb 26, 2004, 02:24 PM

I use Fire too. I tried Adium but Yahoo isn't supported Fire's working well for me except it doesn't always automatically reconnect after sleeping.

Truepop · Feb 26, 2004, 05:25 PM

Fire is great for Yahoo and MSN but since I use AIM more than anything else, Adium did it for me.

Proteus I believe as taken a turn for the worse. No updates in a long while, slow clunkly start up, large compared to Adium... Hell even on the Proteus forums users had nothing better to do than praise adium but Justin put a stop to that.

Horsepoo!!! · Feb 26, 2004, 07:09 PM

Originally posted by Truepop:
Fire is great for Yahoo and MSN but since I use AIM more than anything else, Adium did it for me.

Proteus I believe as taken a turn for the worse. No updates in a long while, slow clunkly start up, large compared to Adium... Hell even on the Proteus forums users had nothing better to do than praise adium but Justin put a stop to that.

Considering Proteus is the work of one guy, and that guy is in school doing his 4th year of CS, Proteus is pretty good. And the next update will be really neat.

Adium is cool but looking at how many people are on the project, it's no wonder it's progressing fast.

That said...Adium 2 is shaping up but still has quite a few annoying problems (a major one, not being able to see offline contacts, will be fixed in tomorrow's build apparently.)

As for Fire; ugly, slow and crash-prone. I've never seen such a piece of **** in my life.

ginoledesma · Feb 26, 2004, 07:46 PM

Aside from the lack of audio/video conferencing on Fire, one critical feature that's missing is proxy support. That's the only reason why I still keep the official IM clients, because in school I have to use the proxy servers.

Proteus is nice, and that it integrates with the Address Book is great, too. I haven't tried Adium in a loooooong time, so I can't comment on it.

Zimphire · Feb 26, 2004, 08:22 PM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
As for Fire; ugly, slow and crash-prone. I've never seen such a piece of **** in my life.

Hmm I love its simply look, never crashes on my computer and connects like *that*

Don't know what version you have used.

brutal · Feb 27, 2004, 04:02 AM

I really like Proteus, and I wish there will be an update soon.
IMO it would be perfect if you could run it without dock icon and it autodetected your connection (and automatically reconnected after sleep).

Horsepoo!!! · Feb 27, 2004, 07:11 PM

Today's Adium 2 build is really good. Adium 2 now allows you to see offline contacts. Contact info now shows. Groups that contain no online contacts now hide. A lot of arguably useless crap was removed.

nforcer · Feb 27, 2004, 08:18 PM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Today's Adium 2 build is really good. Adium 2 now allows you to see offline contacts. Contact info now shows. Groups that contain no online contacts now hide. A lot of arguably useless crap was removed.

And a lot of arguably useful crap was also removed recently, mainly Contact List Status Circles which caused somewhat of an uproar for people who used them. And still a lot of arguably useless crap, like the Tic Tac Toe plugin and the Status Menu Item remain (not sure if the Status Menu still does, I'm still using an older build). When I asked if these things were going to be removed on the Adium Forums, Adam Iser responded by moving my post and one following it in a separate thread, called me a troll, and locked the thread to make some kind of example out of me. I would continue debating about how Tic Tac Toe is regarded as a "useful" feature in an AIM client on their forums, but as I mentioned, the thread is locked.

Krypton · Feb 28, 2004, 07:06 AM

Originally posted by nforcer:
And a lot of arguably useful crap was also removed recently, mainly Contact List Status Circles which caused somewhat of an uproar for people who used them. And still a lot of arguably useless crap, like the Tic Tac Toe plugin and the Status Menu Item remain (not sure if the Status Menu still does, I'm still using an older build). When I asked if these things were going to be removed on the Adium Forums, Adam Iser responded by moving my post and one following it in a separate thread, called me a troll, and locked the thread to make some kind of example out of me. I would continue debating about how Tic Tac Toe is regarded as a "useful" feature in an AIM client on their forums, but as I mentioned, the thread is locked.

The Adium team have been streamlining the app (i.e. removing some features) so that they can concentrate on the core functionality. Tic Tac Toe is there because it's developed by one person, and does not interfere with any of the other features (but yes, it's still useless).

Zimphire · Feb 28, 2004, 10:46 AM

I can't do it. I've tried and tried Adium. Either it just doesn't work right, or it crashes.

Fire has never done me wrong.

Horsepoo!!! · Feb 28, 2004, 12:14 PM

Originally posted by Zimphire:
I can't do it. I've tried and tried Adium. Either it just doesn't work right, or it crashes.

Of course!!! Adium and Proteus crash all the time on your computer. How can we forget?

I don't think you've really 'tried and tried' the latest version of Adium 2. I'd be interested in knowing what makes Adium 2 crash.

yukon · Feb 28, 2004, 01:29 PM

Adium v.2 hasn't been released yet, it's Alpha quality (i'd argue it's beta, but alpha's it's release level). I'd wait until things are slightly more settled before reccommending Adium2 as a main application.

I find the old Adium to be very customizable, very stable, and very nice. It doesn't support filetransfer or user icons, but that's why I'll be moving to Jabber when at least one client does it decently (even GAIM was painful). www.jabber.org if I'm confusing people with my strange words.

Agasthya · 01:52 PM

Originally posted by yukon:
Adium v.2 hasn't been released yet, it's Alpha quality (i'd argue it's beta, but alpha's it's release level). I'd wait until things are slightly more settled before reccommending Adium2 as a main application

Adium 2 has been in development since December of 2002 and it still doesn't have many key AIM features. I don't think it'll 'stabilize' anytime soon. It'll hold a place in my dock because I don't use Proteus and iChat is way too 'large' and way less customizable.

And yes, it crashes often. Way too often. Every time they put in a large feature, random things start break. Thats slightly aggravating as well.

Zimphire · Feb 28, 2004, 02:16 PM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Of course!!! Adium and Proteus crash all the time on your computer. How can we forget?

Not just mine. Read the thread again.

I don't think you've really 'tried and tried' the latest version of Adium 2.

Oh I have, and it doesn't connect to all the servers Fire does either.

I'd be interested in knowing what makes Adium 2 crash.

Me too.

Horsepoo!!! · 03:21 PM

Originally posted by Agasthya:
Adium 2 has been in development since December of 2002 and it still doesn't have many key AIM features. I don't think it'll 'stabilize' anytime soon. It'll hold a place in my dock because I don't use Proteus and iChat is way too 'large' and way less customizable.

And yes, it crashes often. Way too often. Every time they put in a large feature, random things start break. Thats slightly aggravating as well.

Which key AIM features are we talking about?

Everything's in alpha if you ask me. Or beta. Or final. I've seen alpha products that were more stable than final products and vice versa.

Originally posted by Zimphire:

Me too.

Well...whenever you're ready to tell us how or when it crashes, give me a shout. Otherwise, I don't think I can take you seriously.

If we're going to play the "recommendation game" I can't recommend iChat, Proteus, Fire or Adium.

-iChat does a neat text-disappearance act every now and then...since 1.0. (Though this one isn't a multi-protocol client, I'm assuming we're talking about multi-protocol clients here)
-Proteus hasn't been updated in awhile and the services modules are taking a hit from the Big Boys changing the protocols all the time.
-Fire is, well, Fire...ugly and crashy in the latest binary...ridiculously complicated for anyone without dev tools to get the latest version.
-Adium has some odd problems since it's in heavy dev stages.

Agasthya · Feb 28, 2004, 09:16 PM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Which key AIM features are we talking about?

Everything's in alpha if you ask me. Or beta. Or final. I've seen alpha products that were more stable than final products and vice versa.

You can't tell what key features are missing? Why don't we compare it to official client. Adium is missing chat support, direct connect support, file transfer status, the ability to send files, and the ability to set your own buddy icon within the application. Probably some other stuff, but I can't think of any more off of the top of my head. I think all of these things are in libgaim but just haven't been implemented for some reason.

Secondly, if an alpha product is more stable than the final release of a product, that developer has some serious issues. Anyone that does not properly test their app and iron out all of the bugs before releasing a final version is releasing an incomplete project and is hurting the user base more than helping. Just because a product has more features doesn't mean that it has to be unstable.

djohnson · Feb 28, 2004, 10:10 PM

What I like about Fire is that it uses only 3% of my cpu instead of the 25%+ that AIM uses

yukon · Feb 28, 2004, 10:59 PM

The AIM official client is, to me, the devil. Seriously, people started hating me because I'd seem to just drop off in the middle of conversations (caused by AIM crashing). Banners and bloat. I moved to AIMM on MacOS9, I'll heartily reccommend that if you're not yet in OS X.

Compaired to AIMM, Adium 1 is like Mozilla, but I do like it. Adium 2 seems to me to be one of those "It'll be DAMNED AWESOME when it's done, but probably don't use it now..." projects. The only difference, is Adium2 is getting very close to being perfectly usable, as testified to in this thread. I'll move to Adium2 when it beats Adium1 ("block contact" anyone?), and to Jabber as soon as it's barely supported again.

Zimphire · Feb 29, 2004, 12:27 AM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Well...whenever you're ready to tell us how or when it crashes,

Well since this is the first time anyone asked that I saw..

It crashed twice when I Recieved more than one message at a time.

And the other times were just random quits.

give me a shout. Otherwise, I don't think I can take you seriously.

I don't think that really bothers me...

-Fire is, well, Fire...ugly and crashy

Ugly is subjective, and crashy isn't one of the problems I hear a lot.

in the latest binary...ridiculously complicated for anyone without dev tools to get the latest version.

Anyone can get the LATEST version. IF you want to get the DAILY builds you can install the dev tools.

Most everyone I know already has them installed anyhow.

eevyl · Feb 29, 2004, 04:01 AM

Originally posted by Agasthya:
You can't tell what key features are missing? Why don't we compare it to official client. Adium is missing chat support, direct connect support, file transfer status, the ability to send files, and the ability to set your own buddy icon within the application. Probably some other stuff, but I can't think of any more off of the top of my head. I think all of these things are in libgaim but just haven't been implemented for some reason.

I have to correct some things here. Direct connect support and file transfer is hosed in current Adium because of not yet finished work on libgaim (libgaim is not Gaim, btw). All other things, you are right are not yet done. Still, you can set your buddy icon using the Address Book.