Pidgin 2.4.0 Released

[Jeff]

Pidgin 2.4.0, the latest version of the popular multi-protocol IM program for Windows and Linux is available to download. This free program connects to AIM, Yahoo, WLM and over a dozen IM networks.

Pidgin is a great little program that supports many features of the various networks, such as file transfer, away messages, and typing notification. It also goes beyond that and provides many unique features. A few popular features are Buddy Pounces, which give the ability to notify you, send a message, play a sound, or run a program when a specific buddy goes away, signs online, or returns from idle; and plugins, consisting of text replacement, a buddy ticker, extended message notification, iconify on away, spell checking, tabbed conversations, and more.

You can also use Pidgin to login with multiple accounts simultaneously.

What's new?

• libpurple
  • Added support for offline messages for AIM accounts (thanks to Matthew Goldstein)
  • Fixed various problems with loss of status messages when going or returning from idle on MySpaceIM.
  • Eliminated unmaintained Howl backend implementation for the Bonjour protocol. Avahi (or Apple's Bonjour runtime on win32) is now required to use Bonjour.
  • Partial support for viewing ICQ status notes (Collin from ComBOTS GmbH).
  • Support for /notice on IRC.
  • Support for Yahoo! Messenger 7.0+ file transfer method (Thanumalayan S.)
  • Support for retrieving full names and addresses from the address book on Yahoo! Japan (Yusuke Odate)
  • The AIM/ICQ server-side preference for "allow others to see me as idle" is no longer unconditionally set to "yes" even when your libpurple preference is "no."
  • Fix SSL certificate checks for renewed certificates
  • Fix the ability to set vCard buddy icons on Google Talk/XMPP
  • D-Bus fixes on 64bit
  • Fixed retrieval of buddy icons and setting of server-side aliases on Yahoo! and Yahoo! Japan when using an HTTP proxy server (Gideon N. Guillen)
  • Fixed an MSN bug that would leave you appearing offline when transferred to different server

• Pidgin
  • Input text area in conversation windows auto-resizes to fit more lines (up to a maximum of 4 lines)
  • Added the ability to theme conversation name colors (red and blue) through your GTK+ theme, and exposed those theme settings to the Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control plugin (Dustin Howett)
  • Fixed having multiple alias edit areas in the infopane (Elliott Sales de Andrade)
  • Save the conversation "Enable Logging" option per-contact (Moos Heintzen)
  • Typing notifications are now shown in the conversation area

• Finch
  • Color is used in the buddylist to indicate status, and the conversation window to indicate various message attributes. Look at the sample gntrc file in the man page for details.
  • The default keybinding for dump-screen is now M-D and uses a file request dialog. M-d will properly delete-forward-word, and M-f has been fixed to imitate readline's behavior.
  • New bindings alt+tab and alt+shift+tab to help navigating between the higlighted windows (details on the man page).
  • Recently signed on (or off) buddies blink in the buddy list.
  • New action 'Room List' in the action list can be used to get the list of available chat rooms for an online account.
  • The 'Grouping' plugin can be used for alternate grouping in the buddylist. The current options are 'Group Online/Offline' and 'No Group'.
  • Added a log viewer
  • Added the ability to block/unblock buddies - see the buddy context menu and the menu for the buddy list.
  • Fixed a bug preventing finch working on x86_64

Link: Pidgin Website