Monday, April 25, 2005

AIM 6 Beta 1 Released!

OK, we've decided to release the first beta of AIM 6 (AKA "Triton") to the public!
http://beta.aol.com/projects/tritonbeta/

Note that this is a very early beta, of a product that is a complete rewrite... it's not very polished in a lot of places. The standard disclaimers about beta software definitely apply here.

That said, you can see it's going to be a really good product. A whole new UI engine, called "Boxely", IE as the IM renderer, a new IM library called AIMcc with plugin support - we've got a solid foundation to develop on.

For those interested in the plugin API - take a look at the type library in acccore.dll. Plugins aren't exposed in this beta, and the API isn't final, but you can get an idea of what is going to be supported by this API.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

so in later versions will the buddy list actually be able to be docked, and the program take up less than 100 mb of ram while running, and less than 30 mb while not running (you can't even exit it from the taskbar icon)?

Anonymous said...

IE as the IM renderer?  I'm hoping AOL will be doing server-side filtering against vulnerabilities.  Also, while you said its not very polished, are all the features in there?  I know you mentioned plugin support is not open yet, so I'm hoping that is true of profiles as well

Anonymous said...

I believe the new AIM client is pretty neat. I do believe there should be more
features in the new AIM client. Plugin support would be wonderful. Be able to
let developers get creative. I also want to note, that you guys should make a
newer AIM client for the Unix/Linux platform. If you want AIM to succeed, think
about your options.

-Chris

Anonymous said...

Chris, there is in fact a plugin architecture.  As the post said, take a look at the acccore.dll, the hooks in there look pretty good.  As for cross-platform, most of Triton is based on "Boxely", which looks to be their own work.  So, if IE were taken out of the picture, it would probably be very portable.

Anonymous said...

Boxely? ATL, DHTML, IE... ugh. This thing is a serious beast. Kudos to the dev team for the slick component set... but sheesh! DeadAIM, Aimutation, et al musta really put teh ph3ar on from the higher-ups. Hehe, good luck fixing the mem footprint!

What are all the nifty image (window?) transition FX gonna be for? =D

"Writing Code. The dawn sun breaks. I am at peace."

Anonymous said...

AIM needs to be available on Unix/Linux.

Anonymous said...

That is definitely not cleartype...is it? The fonts look amazing, as does the rest of the client.  Only thing I would reccomend is the use of system-drawn borders/titlebars. The whole custom bubbly lite-gray look confuses people like my grandmother (really), and doesn't make you the best WXP citizen.  Otherwise, though, it's going to be one hell of an upgrade (and about time, too!). I might even consider axeing Trillian.

Give us those nifty shadows AOL has, too, will 'ya?

Anonymous said...

For a beta release; this is excellent. I would agree with that more features need be added; however, knowing how AOL/AIM releases GM products, the features will be there.

This is Very Nice! Excellent job! :D
Maybe this will garner support for using the native AIM client rather than Trillian. :)

Anonymous said...

I tried it out for a bit, I'm digging it but 3 services amounting to 80+ megs just to run? And you can't close out of the taskbar icon? Get rid of the bloated side stuff and I'll start looking forward to the final release.

Anonymous said...

IE as a renderer? :|

Anonymous said...

Yeah...This recent version of AIM TRITON, i dont think is going so well. Im allways stuck at "Validating" and can never logon.
So i uninstalled for now and went back to an old version of aim and installed aimutation with a crystal blue theme.

I Believe aim will fix this error soon enough.

Anonymous said...

I also keep getting suck at validating. This is really getting me angry, on my dads laptop it doesn't happen, just on mine. Is there ANY way to fix this?

Anonymous said...

FINALLY figured this out.  What worked for me was disabling "port triggering" for port 5190 on my Netgear router.  Left "port forwarding" for port 5190 enabled.

Anonymous said...

yea the validating problem is happening to me too... i cant get pass validating and it takes a long time. and than after like 30 min or so it said login failed.

Anonymous said...

~POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO FIXING THE "VALIDATION" SCREEN HANG~

You probably have Nero 7 installed,  AND you might have the version 7.0.1.2 upgrade. Go to:  ftp://ftp1.usw.nero.com/software/nero7/Nero-7.0.1.4b_eng_no_yt.exe (Or Nero's site for the upgrade for version 7.0.1.4)  Wait for hours till it downloads and installs.  Restart your computer or whatnot, and then try AIM Triton.  
Please email me at  pepanee@hotmail.com  and tell me if this solution worked, since it worked for me.  But PLEASE email me; I just want to see if this helped people.  Thanks!

Anonymous said...

that "fix" is all well and good if you actually have Nero installed, I do not, and I still have this problem, I am about ready to call it quits on AIM, and switch entirely to something worth my time.