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Instantbird Changelog

What's new in Instantbird 1.5

Dec 20, 2013
  • Creating a new conversation tab has been made easier. ?Clicking the '+' button in a conversation window shows a list of conversations that can be started with a single click.
  • The list is sorted with a frecency algorithm, taking into account how often and how recently you've talked to each contact.
  • This list also automatically includes the channels advertised by the IRC servers you are connected to.
  • New tooltips that better fit the style of Instantbird
  • Improved Multi-user chats user interface: ?Participants now have context menus that allow you to open private conversations or add them as buddies.
  • Highlighted nicks in chat rooms now have tooltips and context menus.
  • Auto-joined chat rooms that have been put on hold will stay on hold after a restart.
  • A list of alternate nicks for IRC can be configured, in case your preferred nick is taken when you connect.
  • about: pages (e.g. about:config) can now easily be opened with the /about command (e.g. /about config).
  • Retina display support on Mac OS X.
  • Google Talk and Hangouts Android users are now shown as mobile.
  • Google Hangouts users will no longer appear as always typing.
  • Better support for displaying RTL languages in conversations.
  • The vKontakte protocol was removed as the vKontakte service dropped support for connecting with an XMPP client.
  • New for developers: New API to add tab panels with arbitrary content to conversation windows: in-code documentation.
  • Updated to Mozilla 25.
  • Various minor bugs and a few crashers fixed.

New in Instantbird 1.4 (May 21, 2013)

  • The log viewer now groups your conversations by date.
  • Twitter improvements:
  • The character counter for Twitter has been improved to take into account automatic link shortening, allowing you to easily tweet links without worrying about their length!
  • Updated to the Twitter API v1.1, note that Instantbird 1.3 may stop working with Twitter on June 11th, 2013!
  • Twitter now includes everyone you follow as a participant in your timeline.
  • IRC authentication works better with bouncers (e.g. ZNC).
  • You can now easily override self-signed/invalid/out-of-date certificates for IRC servers.
  • Each account now keeps debug logs which can be accessed by right clicking on the account in the Account Manager and choosing "Copy Debug Logs", these contain essential information for developers to diagnose user issues. (Note that debug logs MAY contain sensitive information.)
  • Under the Hood:
  • Updated: Instantbird 1.4 is based on Mozilla 20.0.1 and uses libpurple 2.10.7!

New in Instantbird 1.3 (Nov 16, 2012)

  • Major accessibility improvements.
  • IRC improvements:
  • Long messages will be sent in multiple parts instead of being cut off.
  • SASL authentication is now supported, this is required for certain IP ranges or when using Tor and connecting to Freenode.
  • Twitter improvements:
  • Your own description is now shown (and editable) above the timeline.
  • Replying to a tweet now replies to all users, just like on the Twitter website!
  • The tab icon for Twitter timelines is now the Twitter bird to more explicitly differentiate a timeline from a chat window.
  • The "Show Nick" add-on was integrated. This highlights when a user's nickname is mentioned in a chat to easily see conversations that are occurring. We hope you will enjoy this new feature, but if you don't you can disable it by setting the advanced preference "messenger.conversations.showNicks" to false in about:config.
  • Two new social networks were added via XMPP: Odnoklassniki and VKontakte.
  • Under the Hood:
  • Updated: Instantbird 1.3 is based Mozilla 16.0.2 which brings great new possibilities for add-on developers and uses libpurple 2.10.4. This is the last Instantbird release supporting Mac OS 10.5 and PPC as these will not be possible to support with Mozilla 17.
  • The memory consumed by libpurple and its dependencies is now tracked in about:memory.

New in Instantbird 1.2 (Aug 9, 2012)

  • The log viewer shows conversations just like the conversation view, thanks to a new JSON-based log file format that stores meta-data along with the text of the conversation.
  • Support for Bonjour has been added (requires the Bonjour Print Services on Windows or Avahi on Linux).
  • Improved user interface for multi-user chats:
  • Better tab completion, see our blog post for details.
  • It is easier to tell who is active, as only nicknames of participants who have talked are coloured in the participant list.
  • IRC enhancements:
  • Channels are automatically rejoined after reconnects.
  • Instantbird tracks the status of IRC contacts more precisely by using the WATCH or MONITOR commands, if they're supported.
  • ChanServ messages are displayed in the channel they reference.
  • No more noisy messages from NickServ interrupting you after a successful automatic identification on login.
  • Passwords are now stored in the Mozilla password manager for improved security. As in Firefox and Thunderbird, it's possible to protect them with a master password.
  • Easily create new accounts now that the account wizard offers a list of the most popular networks first and shows all supported networks on demand.
  • Better system tray integration: you can now change the status directly from the icon's context menu.
  • Quickly find where you left off in a conversation: The position of the first unread message is now marked visually (and you can quickly jump there by pressing Alt-PgUp/PgDn or swiping).
  • Restoring long conversations will now show a progress bar instead of freezing the user interface until all the messages are loaded.
  • Previously read ("context") messages are now distinguishable from new messages (when restoring from hold) in all default message styles. These styles now also respect the font setting from Preferences->Content.
  • Keyboard navigation of conversations has been improved by allowing scrolling from an (empty) input textbox: just use the arrow keys, Page Up/Down, or Home/End! There are also new shortcuts for putting a conversation on hold (ESC) and opening the log viewer (Ctrl+Shift+H, like "History" on Firefox).
  • Major accessibility improvements have been made to new messages, contact groups and contacts.
  • For Add-on Developers:
  • Control sound preferences more precisely: for example Advanced Sound Controls.
  • Reorder the contact list: for example Sort By Status.
  • It's now possible to easily add new protocols using JavaScript: for example VZnet Chats.
  • Under the Hood:
  • We now have our own extensible JavaScript implementations for:
  • Facebook Chat and Google Talk, based on our own XMPP protocol plugin (from Google Summer of Code 2011).
  • IRC
  • Updated: Instantbird 1.2 is based Mozilla 14.0.1 which brings great new possibilities for add-on developers and uses libpurple 2.10.4.
  • The license of most of the code was updated to the Mozilla Public License (MPL) 2.0, official builds of Instantbird 1.2 are distributed under the GNU Public License 2.0 or later.
  • We're using libqq-pidgin now for QQ since QQ is no longer included in libpurple.
  • Platform changes forced us to drop support for Windows 2000 and Windows XP before Service Pack 2. Please upgrade to Windows XP SP2 or later.

New in Instantbird 1.1 (Oct 19, 2011)

  • Conversations can now be placed on hold:
  • A conversation can be put on hold from the context menu of the conversation tab. Conversations on hold are listed at the top of the Contacts window, where it is easy to reopen them with a double click.
  • Closing conversation tabs cannot cause you to miss messages any more: when closing a conversation tab with unread messages, the conversation will automatically be put on hold instead of being closed.
  • Closing a chat room tab will put its conversation on hold instead of leaving it.
  • If a new message arrives in a conversation on hold, its tab will reappear automatically. (For chat rooms, this will only happen if your nick is mentioned).
  • The number of unread messages in each conversation on hold is clearly indicated; this will prove to be useful for IRC channels where you are idling!
  • Improved Tray Support:
  • The Instantbird tray icon is visible even when the application is not minimized.
  • Improved Twitter support:
  • Twitter entities (@mentions, #hashtags and shortened links) are now supported.
  • Messages can now be retweeted and replied to (by using the context menu).
  • Tweeters can be followed and unfollowed directly from the context menu of their tweets.
  • IBM Lotus Sametime is supported, by popular demand.
  • Chat participants now have tooltips - Whois information for IRC is fetched and displayed automatically
  • Tab completion for IRC nicks, Twitter usernames and commands.
  • The new Interruptions manager API allows add-on developers to easily create add-ons to reduce annoyances:
  • Events can be filtered based on their details (type, source, ...) to customize which actions are allowed to happen.
  • The default ICQ settings have been updated to work with their new servers.
  • Unknown commands are no longer sent to IRC/XMPP chat rooms.
  • Updated: Instantbird 1.1 is based on libpurple 2.10.0 and Mozilla 7.0.1 which brings great new possibilities for add-on developers.
  • Improved stability: the crash reports from the 1.0 release and the nightly builds have been taken into account to fix bugs that caused frequent crashes.

New in Instantbird 0.3 Beta 1 (Jun 14, 2011)

  • Users can now set their buddy icon and the display name of their accounts right on the contacts list.
  • New information toolbar at the top of the conversation UI, showing the buddy icon, display name and current status of your contact. In addition, you can switch the buddy you're talking to by clicking on the protocol icon.
  • The conversation tabs styling has been updating to match Firefox 4, and users of recent Windows version is appreciate some Aero glass effects.
  • Bubbles, the default message theme, has received new time-related features
  • (Windows 7 only) Jumplist support to quickly change the status.
  • The contact list is sorted alphabetically (both groups and contacts appear sorted).
  • Lots of minor improvements, among them:
  • You can now quickly jump to the n-th tab using + in the conversation window, where is ctrl on Windows
  • A help command ('/help') was added to quickly and easily see which commands are available for the current conversation.

New in Instantbird 0.3 Alpha 2 (Apr 18, 2011)

  • New features:
  • Contact merging: If you talk to the same person on multiple IM networks you can now combine the buddies from each network into a single contact. When opening a new chat the buddy that is online will be chosen automatically and the conversation window will automatically switch buddies if they switch to a different IM network.
  • Tags: Tags will be used to replace the groups in the buddy list. Tags can be hidden by clicking the "x" on the right side of the buddy list, all buddies from this tag will go into an "Other Contacts" tag automatically, which is shown at the bottom of the buddy list.
  • The buddy list can now be closed on Mac without Instantbird quitting and reopened from the Dock.
  • Minimized to tray on Windows and Linux. By default close (hitting the 'x') on the buddy list will minimize to tray, this can be changed in the preferences.
  • Lots of minor improvements, among them:
  • Unknown status is now differentiated from offline status with different icons.
  • Dark variant of the "Simple" skin.
  • Nicer animations.
  • (over 50 code changes since alpha 1, see ChangeLog since alpha 1).

New in Instantbird 0.3 Alpha1 (Feb 12, 2011)

  • New features:
  • Twitter support: When the twitter account is connected, a timeline conversation automatically opens. If the conversation is closed by the user, it's reopened automatically when new messages arrive. The user should disconnect the account from the account manager to prevent new messages from being displayed.
  • There's a "track" advanced option that allows to specify keywords to track. This is a comma separated list of keywords. Comma means OR, space inside a keyword means AND.
  • Updated:
  • Instantbird 0.3a1 is based on libpurple 2.7.9 and Mozilla 2.0b11pre which brings great new possibilities for add-on developers (restartless add-ons for example).
  • Under the hood:
  • Protocol plugins can now be implemented in JavaScript.

New in Instantbird 0.2 (Jul 14, 2010)

  • Localized in Finnish, French, Polish and Russian. Support for more languages will come in later releases.
  • Redesigned Conversation window:
  • New tabs. This release has a new tab system inspired from the tabs of Firefox 3.5. It is now possible to have several conversation windows, reorder tabs with a simple drag&drop or detach a tab to move it into a new window. When the window is too small to hold all the tabs, the list of tabs is able to scroll.
  • Message styles system similar to the one used in Adium. A few cool themes are built-in.
  • Emoticons are now replaced by images, and there is a theme system for these sets of images.
  • Context menu with search engines integration.
  • Improved copying of messages. When selecting several messages in a conversation and copying them to the clipboard, they will be formatted in a way suitable for pasting as a citation, for example in an email.
  • Message filtering. For security, undesired HTML markup is filtered out of IMs before displaying them.
  • Preferences window: Instantbird finally has a preferences window. Even though it will look very familiar to users of Firefox or Thunderbird, it contains lots of options that are very specific to Instantbird.
  • Visual refresh: The conversations windows, the buddy list and the account manager have been visually simplified to improve their usability, especially when resized to small windows.
  • Better status handling:
  • status toolbar at the top of the buddy list allowing quick status message changes.
  • offline status to quickly disconnect all accounts and reconnect when back online. The status is changed to offline automatically when the network link goes down, and is changed back to its previous state when the link is back, reconnecting accounts automatically.
  • Better control on the idle and auto-away behaviors.
  • /away, /busy, /dnd, /back and /offline commands usable from all conversations for quick status changes.
  • Basic log viewer accessible from the buddy list or conversation tab context menus.
  • Buddy list context menu: provides a way to remove buddies, move buddies between groups and an option to show offline buddies.
  • Alias buddies: usable from the buddy list context menu, or with the F2 key.
  • Protocol plugins can be loaded as extensions. See our blog post for more details.
  • Installer on Windows.
  • Lots of minor improvements, among them:
  • Facebook Chat in the list of supported protocols by default (using the XMPP protocol).
  • Detailed buddy information in tooltips when hovering conversation tabs.
  • Account manager improvements. The account manager has been slightly enhanced in several ways: addition of a context menu, drag&drop reordering of accounts, better default actions when double clicking, indication of how long an account has been connected, etc.
  • Notifications. Pop-up notifications (using Growl on Mac) of messages arriving when conversation windows are inactive. (Turned off by default.)
  • Custom font. It's now possible to customize the font, size and color of the text of your messages.
  • Join chats is now usable with more protocols (XMPP, ...). It used to work only with IRC.
  • Menus cleanup. Items are more likely to be where you expect them. Menus finally work correctly from any window on Mac.
  • Mobile status is displayed in the buddy list and on conversation tabs.
  • Warning when exiting Instantbird if there are new unread IMs. (Can be turned off through a preference.)
  • Auto-adaptative textbox: The input box in conversations will automatically take a size that is suitable based on the size of the window and the amount of text entered.
  • Under the hood:
  • libpurple statically linked with its dependencies and its default protocol plugins.
  • The preference system of libpurple has been plugged into the Mozilla preference system. Now the libpurple preferences are now accessible from about:config.
  • Gettext has been replaced.
  • Updated: Instantbird 0.2 is based on libpurple 2.6.6 and Mozilla 1.9.2.7.
  • Improved stability: we used the crash reports that we got from the 0.2 pre-releases and nightly builds to fix bugs that resulted in crashes.

New in Instantbird 0.1.3 (Dec 8, 2008)

  • New features:
  • Proxy support: you can now use HTTP or Socks proxies.
  • Typing notifications: you can see when the person you are talking to is typing.
  • Automatic Reconnection: when a non fatal connection error occurs (e.g. network failure), the account is automatically reconnected after a few seconds.
  • Idleness: servers are notified when you are idle so that your status can be changed.
  • Better handling of chat rooms: the topic of the room is displayed, the list of participants is displayed, IRC commands work.
  • Findbar: It is now easy to search in a conversation, with a findbar similar to the Firefox one. A notable difference is that it searches backwards by default, so that the most recent matching messages are found first.
  • Universal build: The mac binary now also works on PPC Macs.
  • Updated: Instantbird 0.1.3 is now based on libpurple 2.5.2 and Mozilla 1.9.1b2.
  • Improved stability: we used the crash reports that we got from the 0.1.2 release and nightly builds to fix bugs that resulted in crashes.