Its like, *amazing*. (Trillian)

Member Name: imagin8or

Product:	Trillian
Date:	05/07/01 (651 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: All in one!, superb contact list, super user-friendly.

Disadvantages: Not quite up to mIRC standard in the IRC stakes, I didn't think of it first

A few years ago, some bright spark came up with instant messaging. Welcome to the new generation.

Trillian manages to combine your AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo and even IRC instant messengers into one truly stunning program. This here is a program of WinAmp epic proprtions. You install the program, and then tell it about each of your accounts. You can even tell it to have multiple accounts on any service open - for example I use 2 MSN, 2 ICQ, 1 Yahoo and several IRC accounts at the same time.

It will import all your Buddies/Contacts etc from ICQ, MSN etc adn put them all in one big Contact List. Each contact has an icon by their name that tells you which service you're using. Double click on their name and you can start your conversation in an MSN style chat box. If you have multiple accounts on that particular service, simply select from the list that pops up. The Contact List has folders for all your contacts, so as they come online they will turn up in the respective folders, ICQ style.

Another brilliant thing to note about the Contact List is that it is DOCKABLE! So just stick it to the side of the screen at all your application windows will resize to fit next to it, very useful if you use instant messengers a lot. The Constact List also has a row of icons for your accounts at the bottom, so you can click them to set your status on each. Particularly useful is the IRC option. There is also a 'Trillian button' which allows you to access Trillian's main functions without resorting to the main window.

The main program window minimizes to the system tray, ICQ style, and will flash when someone appears online or sends you a message, along with the respective sound effect. Within this window you can open chat windows. I know, I know, you love having the chat window floating around, separate, right? Then click the icon in the title bar and choose 'Detach'. You now have a floating chat box. Often with all these windows
, you want to clear them out the way without closing them. Simply do the reverse and choose 'Attach' instead, and the chat window will disappear off to the main window and take up residence there.

From the main window you can Login(IRC), Enter a Channel (IRC), send a Private Message (IRC), File Transfer (IRC), DCC Chat (IRC), open the Contact List, List All the chatrooms on the server (IRC), Finger User, etc. As you can probably guess, the main window is mainly for IRC things, and replaced mIRC for quick chats with ease. I don't think it will do many of the mIRC specials, like colour, aliases, etc but since Trillian is an ongoing project, they'll turn up soon. If you are talking to another Trillian user using one of the instant messenger services then you can use IRC style /me actions, etc. Conversely, while in an IRC chat, smileys ( :) ) will be turned into the familiar MSN style icons. Of course, not all of them will work, but the most common ones do. This all give Trillian a continuity between the different chat types and services. Yet another great addition is the autocopy thing. Just select some text in the window and it's automatically copied to the clipboard, so no edit-copying here, thank you.

Also attached to the main window is a Toolbox, which can be push into a tab at the side or expanded. This has two sections, My Stuff and Connections. These are resizeable, as is pretty much everything in Trillian. The My Stuff box contains folders, into which you can put URLs, links etc. V. useful alternative to Favourites in IE. The Connections box lists all your connections separately as folders, in which you have your current chat conversation windows listed, so mine has Dcc Folder, ICQ xxxxxxxxx, MSN ******, Yahoo! ******, MSN *****, ICQ xxxxxxxxxxx, and in each all of my chats. This is very useful for knowing who you are talking to, and remembering lost/idle windows.

Trillian is also fully skinnable, although the defa
ult is a nice Windows XP stylee job, rounded corners, etc, etc. One thing you will notice when using Trillian is its sheer useability. Its the IE of the Netscape world, but with more Netscape6 looking. I wuold advise you to download this IM program now, even if you only have one account, as this program is smaller and lighter than running more than one IM program. Plus it works better and falls over a lot less often than an ICQ after 13 conversations. If you're a dedicated IRC addict, and mIRC is your customised weapon of choice, Trillian won't replace it. So just get it for its IM abilities, like just starting up one program instead of three or four. When it's caught up with mIRC though (current version of Trillian is 0.6 something) I think it'll give it a run for its money...

Prepare to love your trillian. Go on, get it now, unless you have a chat addiction problem already. That'll just get worse. Off you go! It's free...

Summary: