[JDEV] What does een IM system need to reach the end user (Was: Re: [JDEV] Poll about who will use Jabber when Trillian comes out)

[Nathan Walp]

On Wed, Jun 11, 2003 at 09:12:23PM +0200, Mattias Campe wrote:
> IMHO, what most of the end users want is:
> 
> 1 multiprotocol, good loking, localized client with basic features 
> (chat, file transfer, presence) that they can download in 1 click.
> 
> -) Multiprotocol:
> *client-side* support for AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber

<shameless self promotion>

Gaim's Jabber support definitely isn't the best out there, but it's not
horrible, and we do AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu, Zephyr, IRC, even
Napster chat, and Trepia support is being worked on for the next
release.

> -) Good looking:
> most of the users are interested in how a client *looks*, not what it 
> *does*: skins, avatars, emoticons,...

Gaim won't ever be skinned (at least not the GTK+ ui for it, anyways)
but we do have emoticons and avatars/buddy icons (not for jabber yet,
it's on my long TODO).

> -) Localized:
> they want the client in their *native language*, by downloading *1* file 
> to have it all

Gaim supports 24 different languages/locales, all included in the
default install.

> -) Basic features:
> as I said, most of the users are interested in the looks, not the does. 
> Still, add 1 more feature to it (next to chat, file transfer, presence) 
> and their lying at your feet: file sharing.

File transfer is the old "standard" in our jabber support, but I'll
definitely implement the new standard when it's finalized.


> What I don't think they (="most of the users", not all the users) are 
> interested in is an icq.com-style portal, that's at least what I "feel" 
> in my group of friends. And I'm living in a building with 200 people 
> where a lot of them *ask* me about info, because they don't like to look 
> it up. So, I think they rather expect a client out of the box, without 
> having to look at any documentation. So, a localized free version of 
> Trillian which supports Jabber...

Gaim seems to fit the bill, as soon as I can add some of the cooler
features to our jabber support.  

The windows port really is coming along nicely, and as soon as the
drag-n-drop bug in gtk-win32 is fixed, I'll really be pushing Gaim on my
friends, and hopefully talking them into jabber accounts as well.
(Until that bug is  fixed, you can't re-arrange the order of your
contacts)

</shameless self promotion>


Nathan

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