Trillian Astra Exclusive Preview

[Spike]

The new version of Trillian, codenamed "Astra", looks nice, but can it live up to the hype as well as loyal Trillian users' expectations? I got my hands on some exclusive Astra alpha screenshots, so I'll highlight some of the new features depicted in the screenshots.

Trillian Astra definately sports a brand new look. The whole new look is pretty much eye candy, and surprisingly the interface wasn't laggy. Load times did improve, as well.

When you start it, you'll see that you can register for an account online. This is part of their new "IM Anywhere" campaign, which will tie your Trillian account to a web interface, enabling you to talk with your friends from any web browser. Meebo, meet your contender.

The main contact list window is a lot more sleek. The connection icons have moved to the bottom, and your avatar is centerpiece around some quick shortcut buttons. The way you organize and view your contacts has improved, as well, you can choose to sort by name, connection type, status, and more, and there are a few different display modes incorporating your buddys' avatars. The only thing I didn't notice was an icon or something to tell me what network I was communicating on wth my buddies. (The screenshots show a Google Talk connection, new in Astra, and free. The old Jabber plugin required Trillian Pro.)

Most other things didn't really change much (to keep the interface the same as the 3.x series), but I like how they have completely redesigned and recoded some aspects of the program. A few protocols have been added/changed (Google Talk and MySpaceIM integration are a couple examples), I noticed there was room for a new thing called "buddy widgets" or something to that effect, and they are heavily emphasizing the "Astra Profile".

All 12 screenshots below. Click an image for the full-size version.

[Sparks]

Augh. Put a break after the images in the article, please! ;) That said...

Most other things didn't really change much, I'll give Cerulean that it is only in Alpha, but I would have much preferred it to be rewritten entirely, instead of adding/changing Trillian 3.x.

I'm a little puzzled by this comment. It... pretty much /is/ a complete rewrite. That's why it took so long, and is in alpha right now. We spent all that time more or less starting over: now it takes up far less memory, it's faster and smaller.

Just as one example, every medium has been redone from scratch around a new system called 'IMCore' -- rather than each medium being responsible for its own networking, encryption, profile management, etc., IMCore handles that for all mediums. Thus each medium just has to implement the protocol parser and generator, and IMCore handles much of the work for you. If we find a bug in SSL code or add support for a new proxy system, IMCore is changed and all mediums immediately pick it up.

Sure, things like the preferences panel, things like that, have been kept as much like 3.1 as possible in appearance (even where settings inside those have changed), specifically to keep things familiar to users.

It's still an under-development alpha, so a lot of things (audio/video chatting, etc.) aren't back in as we flesh out the IMCore implementations of things. But, given that we entirely redid most of the core codebase over the course of a year and a half or so... thus the long release... while trying to keep it backwards compatible as much as possible in terms of skinning language and plugin API... I'm not sure how much more we could've done in the way of rewriting it! :)

But, yes, many of the new features are built around the Astra profile, as the write-up at the Trillian Astra preview
shows. For instance, you can log onto a Trillian copy in a 'guest mode' which then pulls down your contact list and any other stuff you've stored on the Astra servers, runs a session, and -- when you log out -- cleans up the files again afterwards. Useful for logging in on a friend's computer when at someone else's house! Things like that.

I notice that these screenshots don't seem to be logged into the Astra service itself, which is one of the most significant changes to the system in this alpha. You can make social information available about yourself in the Trillian Astra program, and the Astra service shares this information out in a number of different ways. (And, of course, each element of the information can be locked down to specific security levels, like 'everyone' or 'just my friends' and so on.) Widgets exist that can be shared right in your Astra message windows, as well as on websites, to share status and mood and so on.

It's a little disappointing to see a 'preview' which didn't even bother to look at one of the more unique/interesting features of Astra, the social presence integration and the account synchronization.

[stev02]

I couldn't agree more Sparks. :) I wonder why the reviewer was not connected to the Astra network. :s

[Spike]

I didn't take these screenshots personally, but the person who did them for me was telling me how he was having some troubles getting it to connect to your servers. He was behind a firewall/proxy, however, so that could have made a difference. And I completely agree, these don't highlight some of the newer, better, Astra Profie features. Maybe if I could get an invitation to join the alpha myself I could do another article or an update and feature the Astra profile. (spike -at- bigblueball -dot- com) ;)

Originally Posted by Sparks

I'm a little puzzled by this comment. It... pretty much /is/ a complete rewrite. That's why it took so long, and is in alpha right now. We spent all that time more or less starting over: now it takes up far less memory, it's faster and smaller.

And you know something, I do believe you. It's just when all of the non-Astra features look pretty damn similar to the 3.x series, I was a little skeptical at first. Good to hear it straight from the source, though, thanks. I'll fix the article straightaway.

[lazyturbo]

I got a chance to try out Astra yesterday. It certainly looks alot different than the previous versions, and much more visually appealing. The navigation will take some getting used to, as menus and options are located in different places. I find that alot of contact options are missing from previous versions, like the ones that appear when you right-click on a contact. I managed to find some of them when I opened up a message window. So in terms of navigation, I find the previous versions a bit easier and convenient. I also wasn't able to find the button where I could set the same status or connect/disconnect to all my connections at the same time.

Secondly, they said it would be faster, but I don't see how this would be possible with all the colorful themes. It actually is slower when you're scrolling through the contact list, and sometimes got laggy on my computer, especially if you display your contacts with their buddy icons.

The Alpha version only came with one skin, that only allows you to change to different colors. Overall, I think Astra could be greatly improved if they offered different skins, especially something simple like Whistler, that would greatly improve the speed and ease of use. Because the default one offered now is not as good compared to previous versions.

[Sparks]

In 3.1, a lot of the slowdown was in the skin /engine/. In 4.0, the amount of glitz/flash in the skin itself determines speed. Cordonata should be reasonably fast on a moderate-level machine, but Cobalt (for instance) which is also installed will be much, much faster.

If you find Cobalt is running slower for you than 3.1, it *really* should not be; if so, PLEASE log into Bugzilla with your alpha account and log a bug with some performance and system info? It's conceivable there are situations that affect skin performance which we haven't found or fixed, but we'll need info to track those down. This is why it's an alpha, after all. :)

A lot of the right-click contact options will be returning; due to it being alpha (and the mediums having been restarted from scratch), stuff's still being fleshed back out.

[Jeff]

Ok, I've got the official beta and a Trillian account. Astra surely is a thing of beauty. The UI improvements are nice and as a long-time Trillian user, they "feel" right. It does load faster than Trillian 3 Pro did (thank GOD!), though there are clearly still some performance issues on my 3 year old P4 running XP. I'm betting that there are still tweaks to be had.

As Sparks noted, many of the performance issues will be related to the skin you use, and I'll test that out more thoroughly throughout the week.

I've begun capturing some screenshots, and will give a full report on my intial testing this Friday.


Click the thumbnails for a full-size image.