Speaking of an all new, customizable message display, here’s the low-down. The new message view is powered by WebCore, the same framework which drives Safari. Six completely distinct styles are included with Adium, and adding more is as easy as double-clicking a bundle created by a style author (several authors are already actively working on styles – check out the Adium Forums for more information).

Almost all styles support putting any image Safari can view behind your messages… play with the possibilities and, like a certain drink which I maintain is really just carbonated water and therefore a complete mystery, Make Adium Yours. The new view offers so much more customizability both for you and for us that there’s basically no comparison to the old message view… but if you really like the old one, included styles let you get that “Retro” or “Simple” feeling.

A few things are still to come for the new message view – in particular, control over the way sender’s names are presented (the alias versus the screenname or some combination thereof) and control over text colors. We gotta keep you excited for Adium 0.54 next week, eh? 🙂

Adium X 0.53 is now available! 🙂

It features an all new, customizable message display, custom link titles, two new protocols (Yahoo! Japan and Novell GroupWise) and a ridiculously long list of improvements and fixes. If you have a day or three to spare, read the monstrosity that is the new change log.

If you are having difficulty downloading, please try another mirror as some Sourceforge mirrors take longer to update than others. The release is definitely available for immediate download on Sourceforge’s servers in Dublin, Prague, Phoenix, Zurich, Minneapolis, and Chapel Hill.

The world is conspiring against Adium 0.53 at the moment. Developer CVS was down last week causing all sorts of confusion. Now, CVS is doing fine, but we’ve discovered a big ol’ crash in MSN which snuck into libgaim (and therefore into Adium) since Adium 0.52… message windows left open for 5 minutes without activity cause Adium to crash. Fun, eh? Anyway, that’s a pretty Big Deal, so we’re going to keep working on fixing it and delay release until that is done. We’ll release this week sometime, but we may end up waiting until Friday to get back on our weekly schedule.

It’s finals time for almost everyone on the team, so time has been a bit tight lately. Sorry – we’ll get you your Adium fix ASAP! 🙂

Developer CVS is working great again 🙂

A week my foot! That was three days! Great job on the repair, Apple! I sure am glad I got Applecare. Anyway, I’m back in action. This weekend should be fruitful… I hope. 🙂

We’re experiencing some issues with developer CVS; we’ve decided to delay the 0.53 release until early next week. Hopefully things will be cleared up by the weekend.

Thanks for your understanding 🙂

For anyone interested in creating webkit message views (message window views created with css and html) check out this thread on the forums. Do a search on the forums if you need more information.

There’s bad news folks. The screen on my Powerbook decided it didn’t like being attached, and jumped off. So it’s being shipped off to Apple HQ to be repaired. I won’t be able to come online much, and definitely no Adium work.

*collapses into his chair* After nine hours at the testing center (plus an hour for lunch), the MCATs are over. I either did well or really well… I’ll find out in a month or so. Thank you so much to everyone who offered their support and encouragement!

WebKit Theme Creators! With the addition of message history in .52, you can make the history messages appear differently from other messages. Please check out the copy of Smooth Operator which came with .52 for technical details, and update your themes accordingly. If a theme doesn’t explicitly support message history, the history messages will appear just like any other messages.