Adium support for Twitter was initially added in version 1.4, released in 2010. Aside from some bug fixes, it hasn’t seen many changes since. Twitter support has been good enough for quite a few people (including many current and former Adium developers) to keep it in Adium.

Twitter’s plans have made us consider the future of our support for Twitter. Fortunately, our very own Frank Dowsett has stepped up and will make the changes required to keep Twitter working in Adium. Updated Twitter support is targeted for Adium 1.5.7.

It’s no secret that Twitter has been moving to discourage third-parties from developing Twitter clients. We don’t know what shape this might take in the future, but we do know that many of you use, and even enjoy the ability to interact with Twitter via Adium. We will do our best to continue to support it.

It’s been an amazing decade working with you all to bring from infancy to awesomeness the world’s best multi protocol instant messaging client. I can’t even begin to enumerate our shared accomplishments, the things I’ve learned, and the friends I’ve made along the way.

I’m proud to be able to pass the torch of leadership to someone I know has the skills and drive to continue excellent Adium development and encourage you all — and hopefully new collaborators beside – to do the same. Thijs Alkemade has agreed to serve as Lead Developer, and I look forward to watching his progress in the role.

I love Adium too much to just say “Goodbye and good luck!” even though, with my first child due in May, I know that it’s not just ophthalmology and Regular Rate and Rhythm Software that will be demanding my attention soon. (I can’t believe that I first joined Adam Iser and the rest of the young Adium community as a college sophomore back in 2002 — look how far we’ve all come!) I’m assuming the title of Lead Developer Emeritus and will continue to be a part of the development and user community as much as time permits.

Zac West has made great contributions before and after becoming co-lead developer in mid-2009. He has recently joined startup HereLabs and will be focusing his efforts there and on Prowl, so is announcing his retirement from active development, as well.

My sincere thanks to all of you, with a special shout-out to Eric Richie and Robbie Vehse who have done a fantastic job keeping Adium moving forward in the past years while my time became increasingly scarce.

Use coupon code FREELOVE for free shipping in the United States January 28-30.

From what we’ve been able to gather, it should be possible to use MSN in Adium until March 2014.[2] As of this moment, it is not legally possible for us to integrate Skype support (more information: [3], [4]).

Historically, Microsoft has not necessarily encouraged third-party clients connecting to MSN, but they have been tolerated. Not long ago, Microsoft added an XMPP interface to connect to MSN, however it was lacking features and it will be shut down in October. While it’s possible that they could someday add one for Skype, they haven’t provided any indication of doing so.

We know that many of you rely on MSN and we understand that this news is frustrating. It’s frustrating for us as well because, as of right now, we aren’t left with any options. We’ll have to see how this all transpires over the next year. If we find a solution, you can be sure that we’ll let you know.

Notification Center support
Adium 1.5.4 now supports Mountain Lion’s Notification Center. By default, notifications are shown for a couple of events. You can add and remove notifications in Adium’s “Events” preferences.

People have asked us how Adium decides between Notification Center and Growl (especially with Growl.app installed) so here is an explanation from our very own Stephen Holt:

1. Growl.app is installed, and the user has configured it to NOT use Notification Center:
Notifications work as before. Notification tickets are sent to Growl.app which performs actions and displays notifications as configured by the user
2. Growl.app is installed, and the user has configured it to use Notification Center:
Growl.framework detects this state from within the app and notifications are sent directly to NC. Additionally, notification tickets are sent to Growl which performs any associated actions. Growl.app displays nothing.
3. Growl.app is not installed:
Growl.framework detects this state from within the app and notifications are sent directly to NC. Nothing else is done.

Please note that only Growl.app version 2 or newer can be set to use Notification Center.

Changes under the hood
This release requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 and an Intel Mac. It is the first Adium release to feature 64-bit support. This means that you will need to update any plugins you have installed (notably Skype). As always, these can be found on our xtras site.

New icons
Bogdan Mihaiciuc contributed a great set of icons which you will notice all across Adium: in the preferences, in the chat window and in the Transcript Viewer.

Improved Transcript Viewer
The Transcript Viewer was polished to look native on modern versions of OS X. “Next”/”Previous” buttons were added for highlighted search terms within a transcript (similar to Safari). Stephen Holt completely rewrote the log indexer making indexing faster and searching more accurate.

Other various user interface improvements
Our dock icon now uses a shiny round badge when on Lion as well as better looking overlays. The “Get Info” window’s appearance was relieved of many visual glitches. The contact list’s icon menu has been updated to look native on recent versions of Mac OS X. The “About Adium” window was also updated (credits for its graphics go to Mike Houben & Paul Wilde).

Our iTunes and Address Book integration is more flexible and easier to configure using tokens.

Growl support
Adium 1.5 also includes a change to how we show notifications. The Growl application got a major update (version 1.3) and is available on the Mac App Store for $1.99. But, to allow you to still get notifications for free, we have enabled showing Growl notifications even if the application is not installed. This feature is called Mist:

You can fully customize when these notifications are shown. If you do not wish to be shown any notifications, there are two possibilities:

• turn them off in Preferences → Events
• disable Mist by entering the following commmand in Terminal.app: defaults write -g com.growl.growlframework.mist.enabled -bool NO

However, if you want to use a different skin or use some of the more advanced features of Growl, you will have to either buy the application from the Mac App Store, or get an older and free version from http://growl.info/downloads.

Libpurple changes
We have also updated libpurple to 2.10.0. Regrettably, that means we have had to remove support for QQ. QQ was removed from libpurple as it had not been updated and was known to not work for a long time, which left us no choice but to remove it as well. If you are brave, there is an unofficial plugin available on http://www.adiumxtras.com/index.php?a=xtras&xtra_id=8226 which aims to bring support back.

Support and development
As always, if you find a bug or have a question, please see the in-app help or the online Help page.

Adium is free, open source software. If you’d like to help us out in any way, please find out how you can contribute or donate to support the project.

Adium previously had two of its domains hosted via GoDaddy. As of today, these are being transferred to another registrar, gandi.net, who is donating $1 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for each transfer.

Prominent changes
Adium 1.4.4 should fix Facebook Chat connectivity as well as a crash when installing an Xtra from the website.

Support and development
As always, if you find a bug or have a question, please refer to the Help page.

…And if you’d like to help us out in any way, feel free to find out how you can contribute.

What’s next?
Meanwhile, 1.5 is coming along nicely.

Here are a few of the more prominent changes:

Facebook Chat
Facebook will now connect via the officially-sanctioned mechanism (Facebook page on the API).  You no longer have to provide Adium with your username and password; when you first log in, you will be prompted to authenticate via a facebook.com window. Existing Facebook Chat accounts are upgraded automatically.

MSN
We reverted Adium 1.4.2′s change to libpurple’s MNP16 support from MSNP15. This should fix direct file transfers, user icons, and receiving custom emoticons, while disabling multiple points of presence (MPOP). We determined that this was the better trade-off based on user feedback.

Other important changes
We also fixed Twitter connectivity for many, a common crash, and activated the overlay scrollers for Lion.

Support and development
As always, if you find a bug or have a question, please refer to the Help page.

…And if you’d like to help us out in any way, feel free to find out how you can contribute.

Onward to 1.5!

I’ve been with Adium for almost 8 months now, starting from January 2011. Basically i’m working on everything I manage to grab , things that I find interesting or easy to fix, years old tickets and even reviewing contributors patches recently, though I have to admit that my main area of interest is Adium’s UI. I hope to bring new life to Adium by working on a new “better/fresher/cooler/-insert-a-great-word-here-” UI.

Other areas of interest would be: performance improvements, modern (latest) OS X tech, source code/project clean-up and lots of other interesting stuff.

Developing for Adium is great, learning new stuff everyday, great team, lots of new friends .

More about me (including contact info) on my wiki page here. Thanks!