Adium 1.4.2 is now available. It includes, among other improvements, fixes for the following major problems:

• a frequent MSN crash
• an MSN issue adding contacts
• an MSN connection problem involving the error “Signed in from another location”
• ICQ losing connection without showing
• Hang when opening a chat window to a contact with a malformed log

Message style improvements
We have also addressed the complaints about the focus indication we added to the bundled message styles for the 1.4 release. They are now only shown in group chats and the indicators for Mockie have been redone.

For more details on the changes in Adium 1.4.2, you can read the release notes.

Libpurple tradeoff
However, you will find that on MSN the following features do not work in Adium 1.4.2:

• direct file transfers
• user icons
• receiving custom emoticons

We had to decide whether we wanted to update libpurple, the library which provides network-level connectivity for most services in Adium, to fix the major three MSN issues mentioned at the top and we decided that is was worth it despite these feature regressions it brings.

*Clarification: These features are currently broken in 1.4.2. They were not removed. We didn’t decide to throw them out. It’s simply that they are broken in the included version of libpurple. We had to make a decision between updating to fix a large number of other bugs while knowing these 3 would be broken, or leaving them untouched and leaving several services COMPLETELY broken for a number of our users. We chose to do the most good for the most people. It was one or the other.*

Where’s Facebook migration?
We originally intended to offer a migration path from the old to the new implementation of Facebook Chat in Adium 1.4.2. However, the implementation isn’t ready yet and with the many major issues already fixed in 1.4.2 we decided to push Facebook migration to 1.4.3. So for now, if you have problems with Facebook, you’ll have to manually switch as outlined here: http://trac.adium.im/wiki/FacebookChat.

Support and development
As always, if you find a bug or have a question, 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?

• Twitter connection issues (for Adium 1.4.3; see the Help page for details)
• Facebook migration (for Adium 1.4.3)

It’s been 2 weeks since we released version 1.4.  The response has been incredible. Now, hot on its heels, comes 1.4.1 with even more ducky goodness.

While the primary purpose of this update is to fix ICQ authentication[1][2], we stuck a few other goodies in there as well. (Did someone say ‘faster MSN file transfers’? 😉 ) We’ve upgraded from libpurple 2.6.6 to version 2.7.5 which brings with it the usual smörgåsbord of fixes and enhancements. For more details, you can read the release notes.

What’s up with ICQ?

For those that are unaware, ICQ is no longer owned by AOL. The breakage that users may have experienced was due to the change-over to the new authentication servers.

Users of Mac OS X 10.4 using Adium 1.3.10 can change the server setting to “login.icq.com” in the “Options” pane of their ICQ account’s settings.

SSL encryption is currently not supported server-side so we were forced to disable it in Adium 1.4.1.

Support and development

As always, if you find a bug or have a question, refer to the Help page. Please do not post it in the comments.

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

What’s next?

The next big issues on our list:

• fixing Facebook Chat support
• finding a solution to complaints about the changes made to the default message styles in 1.4

We have received a multitude of reports of people not being able to connect to ICQ. From what we have found out it seems the problem lies with the German Telekom.

If you are experiencing this issue, please be patient.  We will provide an update when we know more.

Update: It looks like Telekom managed to resolve the issue before midnight (German time).

Many of you are reporting an error message that started appearing today:

The client version you are using is too old.
Please upgrade at http://pidgin.im/

First, about that website address: Adium uses libpurple, which is the core library from Pidgin. That’s why Pidgin’s address is in the message. We need to swap out that address for Adium’s address.

As for the rest of the error: It appears that, starting today, AOL’s servers now require ICQ 6 or later. Libpurple, in every recent version of Adium, promises to behave like ICQ 5. So, now, AOL’s server responds with “ICQ 5, you say? You’re too old!” Libpurple receives this and passes it on to Adium, which displays it to you.

Once the Pidgin team (they maintain libpurple, remember) fixes this problem, we’ll bring the fix into Adium, and we’ll get it out to you in a new release as soon as we can.

Thanks for your patience.