Trillian Astra v4.0 Build 45

[Ras]

Astra comprises a new set of services designed specifically for Trillian users. With a strong focus on privacy and security, it allows Trillian users to locate each other, share their IM accounts and dynamic personal information, and communicate anywhere at any time.

Over the years, the one point that has been continually driven home to us is performance, whether it means operational speed or memory consumption. We've made some great strides in this realm with Trillian Astra.

+ Start chatting faster

+ Redrawing times improved

+ Network connections are more efficiently managed

+ Memory usage reduced

+ Memory leaks plugged

+ Skin variety with memory in mind

Start chatting faster

Between loading multiple plugins, parsing and initializing XML-driven skins, and establishing connections to your IM accounts, the time it takes to fully load Trillian has a tendency to decay over time. We've improved performance across the board when loading Trillian to eliminate the needless "wait time" between launching the application and actually using it.

Redrawing times improved

Little things make a big difference. For Trillian Astra, we spent time discovering why certain controls (a scrollbar, an icon, etc.) took longer to redraw than others and optimized these routines when possible. The differences are measured in milliseconds, but when you're drawing 60+ user icons in a contact list these sub-second times can be the difference between a quick product and a sluggish one.

Network connections are more efficiently managed

Another minor detail in speeding things up involves the connections Trillian makes to IM services. With Trillian Astra, the routines to handle both incoming and outgoing data have been heavily optimized to ensure a speedy overall IM experience.

Memory usage reduced

You spoke, we listened. Trillian Astra represents the ultimate in flexible, efficient memory usage; we've reduced the amount of memory required for our XML routines by roughly 5MB and trimmed things here and there whenever possible to decrease footprint further. If pretty graphics aren't for you, using a barebones skin drops memory usage even further.

Memory leaks plugged

As with all releases of Trillian, time has been spent plugging memory leaks wherever they're found.

Skin variety with memory in mind

For the absolute minimalists among us, we'll be featuring a super stripped-down skin that will barely register in overall memory usage! As well, we're extending invitations to all current and past skinners to bring their skins into modern Trillian times. We hope to offer as many possibilities as we can by the time our final product is ready, including various best-of-breed third party skins.

Your contact list everywhere you go

A long-standing feature request, your contact list is now downloaded everytime you start Trillian. That means if you're visiting a friend's house or configuring a new computer, your personalized contact list will stay with you.

Add one Trillian Astra IM name and get the rest for free

Even with an interoperable instant messaging client, explaining who you are to a new friend is still somewhat of a burden. You have 5 IM accounts; which ones will you hand out? Today's solutions involve long signatures at the end of e-mails and filled-out forms on social networking sites. The burden of trying to equate "John Doe" to a batch of IM names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers has never been a particularly easy task to automate. With Trillian Astra, your contact information is automatically managed and exported to anyone who requests it (within the privacy restrictions that you define), making it easier than ever to describe your digital presence to your contacts.

Social Widgets

As we surveyed the best way to develop an interoperable personal information system, frustration with today's solutions and their absolute lack of extensibility and aesthetic appeal was at the forefront of our minds. Comma-delimited lists are now a thing of the past; powered by a dynamic, flexible information store and Flash 9, widgets are visual interpretations of otherwise stagnant user data. The building blocks of a widget are open source, and any aspiring Flash developer can create new widgets to capture and showcase a new piece of information. The backend data structure is not limited in any way, making widgets truly free of restrictions.

New login screen and easy guest login

With proper support for Windows' Documents & Settings architecture, it's easy to keep your Trillian settings separate from other users on the same PC. The new login screen allows you to log in as an "invisible" user, and guest mode lets visitors log in quickly without leaving any files or personal artifacts behind.

Strong encryption and identity verification

Trillian Astra also includes the next generation of SecureIM encryption. Astra conversations are secured automatically with a new public-key system, ensuring your communication stays private; encrypted messages intended for you will be useless to anyone else. Public keys help you be sure that you're actually talking to the right person, and not someone who has hijacked another account.

Open protocol

The protocols used by Trillian Astra are open to any client developer wishing to interoperate with them. Protocol documentation will be published and maintained upon official release. Cerulean Studios is committed to maintaining and supporting interoperable networks.

Interoperability is important. It promotes healthy competition between market leaders, opens the door to consumer choice and, in our industry, streamlines reliable and powerful lines of digital communication regardless of your choice of system, protocol, or client. Because not everyone tends to agree with us, with every major release of Trillian we are obligated to keep things up-to-date to ensure that all of Trillian's interoperable parts are running smoothly.

MySpace IM and Google Talk

Trumping about every other feature request we've received lately was the constant demand for MySpace IM compatibility. So here it is - basic IM and list management, avatars, emoticons and formatted text are all supported. We'll continue to adapt this as the MySpace IM network grows. We've also created a new plugin specifically for Google Talk, breaking it apart from Jabber.

File transfers refreshed

The protocols involved in establishing a successful file transfer tend to receive minor changes here and there for various reasons. We've worked hard to ensure that Trillian Astra speaks all of these latest languages, and are once again compatible with all the latest versions of major instant messaging file transfer protocols.

Sending multiple files is a breeze, Trillian-style

Some networks support the idea of "folder transfers" or "bulk file transfers". Because not every major IM service supports this idea, we've always shied away from supporting it "partially" within Trillian. In Astra, we've solved the problem using another technology entirely. Select 5 files on your desktop, drag them to a friend, and Trillian will automatically zip them up and send them as a zip file. Everyone speaks ZIP!

A new file transfer window with even more information and utility

Our new file transfer window exposes a variety of useful goodies, including total transfer time, a debug window that helps explain exactly what's going on behind the scenes, and an image preview area so you know what file type or image you're receiving before you receive it.

More support for status messages, AIM and ICQ interoperability, and MSN gatewaying

Beyond file transfers and major design changes, we've worked hard to bring the little things together. Trillian Astra includes support for custom status messages on MSN, and we've finally separated our AIM engine from our ICQ engine, meaning less wasted memory for you if you don't use one of those services. We've also worked hard at improving AIM/ICQ interoperability - when you're an AIM user talking to an ICQ user, your experience should be vastly improved over 3.x. Lastly, we've finally added support for the oft-requested MSN Messenger "gateway" service, ensuring that you can connect to MSN even when port 1863 is blocked!

IMCore

Historically, building and maintaining support for 5+ major IM services has been a challenge. Compounding the problem were the little bugs that may have appeared in one service but not another service due to slight changes in programming style or even forgetting to fix a bug. With Trillian Astra, every Cerulean plugin is built using the same underlying technology - IMCore. This means that when MSN fails to reconnect properly or can't talk to a SOCKS5 proxy, fixing the bug in one spot will automatically fix it in every other plugin. This speeds up development and reduces the chance for human error. Technically speaking, IMCore is a carefully-designed set of C++ classes that provide the underlying basics needs for ANY IM plugin - communicating with Trillian's API, handling low-level network connectivity, and managing the notions of contact lists, file transfers, etc.

OS Windows All (Vista Compatible)

Homepage: http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/

Download: http://rapidshare.com/files/36512584/Trillian.Astra.v4.0.Build.45.rar