![]() ![]() Whereas Pidgin has a nice shiny iPhone kind of look to its list of contacts, Trillian's is institutional and crummy it's like comparing a preschool playroom to a run-down Soviet factory that's been gutted of anything useful.Īs glitzy and pretty as Trillian's website and preference screen are, the main program itself is cramped and ugly. Everyone is always shown by group you have no option to simply hide the groups. Offline contacts can't be hidden-they're always there. There is just no excuse for how bad this is-it's one of the core elements of the program and it's implemented like an afterthought. Say it with me, kids: DUH!ĭisplay of the contact list in Trillian is butt-ugly and almost completely uncustomizable. Of the many option categories their preference settings window has, Privacy is not among them. Can it be found anywhere in the preferences? No. I know not every network they can connect to supports this, but it's a good thing to have as an option. So you could turn off "Allow users to see when I am typing", although I'd prefer to leave that on. ![]() I've seen significant evidence on the Web of this. This is all the worse a failure because Trillian is a professional product and they have a vested interest in getting me to upgrade to their Pro version.įor instance: At some point Trillian had privacy settings. Before ever sending a single message with it, I have come to one conclusion: As much as Pidgin sucks, Trillian sucks worse. Trillian has been widely recommended and looked like every bit as nice a program as Pidgin, but way more powerful and customizable. Having lived with Pidgin for more than a year, I finally decided to take the plunge and try Trillian Basic. Pidgin is a deeply flawed program that nevertheless functions somewhat adequately, but I'd kick it to the curb in a minute to get the same level of functionality out of a much friendlier program. Lots of little interface and preference annoyances are present, and lots will never be fixed because the design team is notorious for blowing off good suggestions. I can't hit Ctrl+Enter to start a new line instead of sending a message because gosh, the designers just don't think that's worth implementing. ![]() Fonts and styling are weird to work with properly-I can't have a conversation without having to hit the size-down arrow twice because it doesn't get that I'm not communicating with the legally blind no matter how often I try to tell it. On the open-source software interface scale of 0 being the GIMP, and 10 being Firefox, Pidgin falls somewhere around a 5. Commands are stuffed into menus where they make no sense menus are difficult to access properly under Windows because the whole method of interacting with them is utterly different from anything normal instead of one app window you get a thousand cluttery pieces of crap and if you want to use a plugin, you'd better have a GCC compiler handy because its "plugins" are just separate programs. (Or you can buy Photoshop Elements and get most of what you need, minus proper alpha channel support and such.) But because the GIMP was written for Linux and designed by penguin-thumpers, it is unwieldy and crash-happy in Windows as a result of its reliance on the craptacular GTK library. Penguin-thumpers think, at least on a subconscious level, that user-friendliness is for chumps.Ĭase in point as to why penguin-thumpers should not design interfaces: The GIMP is an image editing program with all kinds of advanced features that you can use for free instead of mortgaging your kidneys to buy Photoshop. Windows apologists at least recognize that no matter what else, Apple has a good sense of user-friendliness. I'm referring to the people who are so far gone over that they can't even fathom how the rest of the world gets along so well with Windows, and by extension, interfaces that make freaking sense. Please note I am not referring to people who like and live with Linux but recognize that not everyone is suited to it. ![]() Pidgin is designed by that certain class of people that I like to derogatorily refer to as penguin-thumpers. I ended up using Pidgin, and have for some time now. After a while of using AIM for work, I couldn't bear dealing with its utter crappitude anymore and I knew the newer versions contained quasi-spyware, so I headed off into uncharted territory and looked at two free alternatives: Pidgin and Trillian. ![]()
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