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Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

pidgin.im

101–110 of 181 posts

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#102
post #2

oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this way: 1. IRC 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text mes…

Stage 2 evokes warm memories. The clients were featureful enough but very far from being resource hogs. The UIs were workable and hid plenty of options in their menus. The webcam features on MSN messenger landed at the same time as broadband internet became widespread in my country, when I was at school, so everyone was in on the novelty. Some of it is certainly the cynicism of age and work life, but I'm certain some…

Thats probably more to do with your perspective rather than anything to do with the clients. I find discord to be very exciting and it’s always a joy to use. The idea of persistent voice channels might not have been invented by discord but it’s where the average person really first discovered them.

Getting home and seeing a few friends on discord and joining in has always been a magic experience for me.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#103
post #88
post #64

Aaah I used it a long time ago, it was then called Gaim I believe. I also used the similarly named but jabber only Gajim. Good times :)

Indeed. Originally it was "GAIM" (due to the original purpose being a GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger client), which AOL wasn't thrilled about. We changed it to "Gaim", which I think they had less of a problem with, or at least we had hoped they would. Internally at least, we called it "Gaim's An Instant Messenger". I'm not sure if we formalized that or not. It's been too long. And then to fully move away from that brandi…

As my fuzzier-with-every-passing-year memory recalls, there were a wide variety of interpretations of what "GAIM" meant, with "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger" being the least offensive one. Mark Spencer, the original author, was always a bit cagey about it--amusingly so to my mind!

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#104
post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

That time period was magical for interoperability of services, P2P and open protocols. The tech landscape today would look much different if the principles of that era were adhered to today.

Instead, the "interoperability" we get today is the result of multibillion dollar corporations making partnerships with each other, while independent developers are locked out.

As an example, Google gets access to streaming services APIs and catalogs in order to fill their Chromecast and AndroidTV products' menus with movies and shows. Meanwhile, Kodi has to rely on hacks to do something similar, it doesn't work with all streaming services, and there might not be feature parity.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#106
post #2

oh pidgin. Throughout my life (as a millennial) chat went this way: 1. IRC 2. IRC, Yahoo messenger, Aol Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger (mostly based on your ISP in the early days) 3. All + Skype (video!! wow!) + Google messenger. *This was when pidgin was invaluable* (there was also some Duck app for macOS?) 4. Skype started charging and since everyone was on Facebook, everyone moved to Facebook messenger. Text mes…

Facebook Messenger originally used XMPP, and for a while, you could use it with Jabber clients, Pidgin, Adium, etc.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#107
post #7

I really miss Adium ( https://adium.im ) which was based on Pidgin's libpurple. Adium had such a great user experience. It was built with native widgets and also incorporated chat themes that were implemented using WebKit's rendering ( https://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=search&cat_id=5&sort=... ). It was fast and memory friendly given that it was a native app and the themes were just small templates offering a di…

There also used to be plugins for iChat (which later became Messages) that added support for MSN Messenger, making for a no-fuss nicely streamlined chat experience across a decent range of networks (AIM, XMPP/Gchat, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger). So between modded iChat and Adium, on Mac OS you had the choice between minimal and kitchen-sink style IM clients, both of which were free and had no ads. OS X had als…

2010 was a great time. Adium for universal chat and XMPP federated services. You could find almost every movie on Netflix still. You could tell the difference between buttons and labels in UIs, and few hamburger menus were to be found. You could still get AppleWorks. Firefox wasn’t trying to sell you stuff. Televisions didn’t come preloaded with spyware. Truly, it was a great time, but we have to build our cyberpunk future today.

At least we don’t have IE6 any more, so it’s a fair trade.

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#109
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi chipx86! I remember "Gaim's An Instant Messenger" used to be on the old website but either google or my memory is failing me.

Hi! Yep, I think you're right :) That sparks a memory.

Dang it's not on the copy of the old site that we keep online at https://gaim.pidgin.im

Re: Pidgin: The Universal Chat Client

#110
post #77
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I did not remember that it was once called Gaim.

it was for sure called gaim. one of the only usable aim clients that worked on linux in the 90s.

You can pretend it's the 90's and 00's if you like at https://gaim.pidgin.im/
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