Well, now that it's been made public, I can start to talk about it... the next version of the AIM client (which will be a BIG step forward from the 5.x series) will have support for 3rd party plugins. The mechanism will be COM/IDispatch, so any standard development tool can be used to author these plugins.
The API will be very rich and support presence, IMing, file transfer, audio/video, and more, including the ability to set up peer-to-peer sessions with another user who has your plugin.
We've been thinking of some cool plug-in ideas, but I'm sure that the AIM community is where the best ideas will come from.
6 comments:
This sounds really, really cool. Can you tell us more about the rules and restrictions for accepting 3rd party developers?
The BuddyList *is* the platform.
Thanks in advance,
Nick Gray
BuddyGopher reads all your friends away messages, so you don't have to.
~ http://www.BuddyGopher.com/
I don't think the rules and restrictions have been finalized yet, but I am hoping that anyone will be able to develop plugins, and selected partners will have their plugins featured on the service.
There are only 2 things people want to see:
1. Good compatibility with firewalls and devices that support UpNP.
2. No more ads (especially audio/moving ones).
Those are teh 2 most popular plugins you will see.
this will make things more simplified - but most of this is already doable by controlling aim using the windows api - or by using a perl lib etc
I think one plug-in idea that will be very popular is the ability to rename the screen names on the buddy list. With so many people and the constant use of repetitive screen names that include numerous numbers like ...786254, this plug-in would come in very handy.
This is like a must! I don't want to have to wait till the next version of aim to get it eather! Re-nameing people's screen names in your buddy list. I've seen this feature on mac and well all i can say is....*drool* It is super convent and super helpfull with new and similar screen names. THIS IS A MUST HAVE NOW sorta thing if you know what I mean.
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