IM clients

[cellio]

Dear LazyWeb,

The soon-to-be-only "supported" IM client is soon to be one that has some accessibility problems for me. I've been told that I can get a security variance to install a different one. I probably get one chance at this.

The folks who told me this recommended Pidgin. (Others they mentioned included Trillian, Adium, Exodus, Pandion, and Jbother. I haven't done anything with those yet.) The main thing I need to be able to do with an IM client (that the current client doesn't already do) is modify the fonts and colors in the UI.

Pidgin claims to have themes. I even see that the (Windows XP, in case it matters) distribution came with some, and I've found sites where I can download more. What I can't find is a way to actually apply those themes. Per this FAQ (or a link from it), I've tried using GTK Theme Selector; it doesn't change anything, even after restarting Pidgin. I also found allusions to a .gtkrc file, but not enough information (so far) to just go and roll my own. (And anyway, if someone else has already done the work...)

This article recommends using GTK+ Theme Control from inside the UI. That worked exactly once; having set one theme from the installed set, I can't change it to another.

Can anyone out there offer me some guidance? I guess I'll move on to Trillian in the meantime, but I was getting a strong "use Pidgin if you can" vibe so I'd like to figure this out.

Edit 12:30AM: Pidgin themes installed into the right directory are eventually noticed. The sequence seems to be: use Theme Selector to pick a theme, then go into Pidgin and enter the name of that theme (both steps are required), and then maybe it works. There appears to be a delay; this failed for me initially and worked an hour later. As for editing, it turns out that each theme is (wholly?) defined by one config file, and while I don't know the whole language for that yet, I've been able to make some progress by cloning a theme and tweaking the colors. I don't yet know how to do font sizes.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I use Pidgin and Spark at work, Adium at home, and used to use Trillian.

What I wanted in terms of customizations was: minimalist skin; transparency; absolute control over fonts and smileys. Trillian offered all of these. Trillian had some problems with XMPP servers like OpenFire, though (or at least I could not configure it correctly) so I can't use it anymore. However if it works I recommend it for control. (if you do want the minimalist theme I believe it was called something unappealing like "WinME": it basically looks like a Win9x window)

Pidgin is.. okay. Not quite as customizable, but it does cover transparency and fonts, and multiple connections. I have had trouble where occasionally it barfs and deletes all of my settings, including server configurations, but not often.

A lot of people love Adium. I find it passably tolerable in a pinch but otherwise annoying. That said, I rarely IM from home so have not played with it much.

Spark.. bleah. Stay away from it!

[cellio]

Spark is the tool that will soon be standard. It replaces the MSN IM client, which sucks.

Spark seems like a decent-enough client, if only I could either get it to honor the Windows color scheme or configure colors by hand. The screaming white background, and the light-gray text in the contacts list, are problems for me. (The white hurts my eyes and I can't read the gray text -- it's too light.)

How do I set skins in Trillian? The doc and the UI disagree; I do not have a "choose" option. If the answer is that I need to download some first, where do I put them? (The doc seems to be silent on this.)

Thanks!

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

I found no way to control Spark showing smileys or control the font, both of which are important to me. The colours irritate me too.

Hmm. I don't have any computers with Trillian on them anymore, but you do need to download them separately and extract the zip files into the main directory (or the skins/ directory under it), and restart. The skins I tried varied, but most had a readme in the zip file.

[cellio]

you do need to download them separately and extract the zip files into the main directory (or the skins/ directory under it)

Thank you! That did it. (No readme file with the skin I downloaded as an experiment.)

I found ways in Spark to control some of the fonts. You can set size for active contacts (but not offline ones, which is weird) and the chat window, but not the search box or profiles. You can't set colors on any of that, and I don't think you can set font face. (The default font face is ok with me, so I haven't looked.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Ah, I loathe sans serif, especially since at work we're often IMing code snippets around. The only colour I could control is the name of the sender: it does some sort of hash, so if you add ! or : or something after your alias, your name appears different.

A lot of companies are standardizing on Spark. The only reason I can think of is that it's completely free rather than crippleware/nagware. But that does not make it a good choice.

Hope Trillian works out!

[cellio]

Yeah, for code I want courier or the like. Spark is new enough to us that I hadn't noticed the effect on code yet.

This is really sad, but one of the factors influencing the choice is that Spark can be re-branded to have the company name, logo, colors, and whatnot on it. Why anyone cares about that for an internal tool is beyond me, but they also spent money doing that kind of branding for the internal portal, so I guess this shouldn't surprise me. I would have preferred that they spend that money fixing some of the usability flaws in SharePoint instead of worrying about company image, but I don't get a vote.