I tried moving to other IM clients and none of them worked as well as Pidgin, which is an epic failure in the IM client "market." A long time ago Pidgin was known as "gAIM," and gAIM was a great client! It had a sort of minimalistic user interface, it worked on all the major protocols reasonably well (except the MSN plug-in... which still doesn't work worth a shit) and just generally stayed out of the way. Now days it's jammed full of random useless crap for the sake of "looking better" and being "more consistent" while the underlying stuff barely gets improved. Hey, that sounds familiar! *looks at browser* Oh, yeah, Firefox did the same thing. But anyway...
I tried Carrier, and it's like going back in time but forward in functionality. The only problem is, it doesn't go far enough back in time as far as the UI goes. There's still this stupid bug [and more that] the Pidgin devs introduced a couple minor releases back that makes it impossible to move up a line in the input box of a conversation to fix something on a higher line because the damned view goes back to the bottom instead of staying with the cursor. I can't see where I'm at when it isn't on the screen for me to see. And worse yet, the view keeps jumping from the bottom to the cursor over and over so it just sits there and has a seizure while you're trying to fix a typo. Seriously, how couldn't somebody notice this? Or don't the Pidgin devs ever make typos? Oh... they do. They must to produce this pile of shit.
I don't even enjoy using Pidgin anymore, but the truth is it's still better than the rest. Actually, it isn't. I'm gonna stick with Carrier (same damn thing + patches) because at least it's UI works (mostly) the way I like.
Further, more specific bitching:
Firefox (and others) used to have tabs that auto-expanded to fill the entire tab area evenly. Then they decided that the tabs should be a certain width, and if they fill the whole area, then they shrink to fit. So, you can always know what to expect, always know where that close button will be. Pidgin had the second way for the longest time and it was something it's users actually enjoyed. But these downright egotistical devs thought they knew better and went to the way tabs used to be done years ago. Way to take a step back, fellas.
The ability to resize the input box has been beaten to death, even by professors, so that doesn't really need to be discussed. But it does deserve a mention. Fucking moron "developers." Anyway...
According to those who write the software, I'm supposed to look at my list and think (because they dictate how I interpret raw information apparently) "I want to talk to Alex." Not, "I want to talk to Alex on AIM because both of our MSN plug-ins are steaming piles of shit and should be avoided at all costs." Why have him on MSN then? Why don't you just come over and arrange my list for me, asshole. Because sometimes MSN is all the other person has. Why should it fucking matter in the first place? Why can't I force his AIM s/n to be the one that shows up on the list? Why do they think a piece of software can know what I want? It's just 0s and 1s. Leave the decisions to the people with brains.
And failing that, why can't it just show me the damned protocol icons as the actual icons next to the people instead of further cluttering the list with a second set of icons (the status ones)? Remember what I said about gAIM having a simplistic charm? The Pidgin releases throw that right out the window.
I gotta stop for now, but believe me, there's PLENTY more I could bitch about. In fact, should just start posting shit like Adobe UI Gripes.
Also, fuck Skype's latest release. Can't even give the option to put it in the tray? I have more important apps to hang out in the taskbar than Skype. Morons, user choice is always greater than OS UI guidelines/recommendations.
