Shirking Responsibility

Finally, after a seemingly endless development stage, the next milestone release of Mozilla Firebird, the browser formerly known as Phoenix is ready for download.

This version is so much better than the last milestone. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s already far better than IE or pretty much any other browser. I feel handicapped every time I use someone else’s computer and they only have IE.

I must formulate a plan to convincing everyone I know to switch to Firebird.

Update: For those of you that dislike unzipping programs, here is an installer for the newest release. (Courtesy of Seb from the Mozillazine Forums.)

Finally, someone made a worthy features page for the Firebird™ browser (formerly Phoenix). It shows off some of the nice features that you might not immediately catch on a first cursory inspection of the browser. Oh, and it’s got all sorts of nice sexy screenshots for the downloaders that dig that kinda thing.

Wish they’d get the name thing figured out already, though. Right now the links to the Firebird™ pages are still under http://www.mozilla.org/projects/phoenix/. Which means that the above link will cease to function when they finally switch everything over to Firebird™. Oh, like that really matters in the grand scheme of things.

Ew, did I really just use the phrase “in the grand scheme of things?”

By the way, I vow never again to append a ™ after the name of any browser.

Today while playing around with the latest nightly release of the Phoenix browser, I suddenly realized just how long it had been since I’d used Internet Explorer with any regularity. It felt surprisingly good.

That is all.

Without shame, I will reveal to you something about myself.

I am a hopeless software addict.

Yes, I realize that most frequent web users do at times indulge in this same vice, but few do it with as much gusto as I. The first thing I do when I sit down at a computer, be it my own or a public terminal, is check out the new releases at File Flash and at BetaNews. If I see nothing of interest there, I might swing over by VersionTracker or Source Forge.

Just yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of visiting File Flash and seeing a new release of Trillian listed. It seemed at first to be just a minor point release, which I assumed was just meant to patch some security exploit that had been found a week or two ago. When I visited the Trillian site, though, I learned that along with the update to the free version of the chat program, Trillian Pro 1.0 had also been released.

I’ve been using Trillian for quite a while now and find it to be vastly superior to the native chat clients offered by AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! Aside from the obvious benefit of needing only 1 client to simultaneously connect to AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo! (it also has IRC support, but it pales in comparison to a dedicated client like mIRC), there is also the wealth of options, preferences and settings strewn throughout the program. I realize that some people are annoyed when faced with too many options, but I prefer having total control over every aspect of my software. Also, there are no evil advertisements to soil every square inch of the program.

Trillian wasn’t perfect, though. There were a few annoyances, some bugs and the default skin/interface was really not very good. But Trillian Pro solves most of these problems. The default skin/interface looks very nice and is a lot more efficient than the previous one. And most importantly, it now has a plugin system! So far Cerulean Studios has released some plugins which seem to serve as examples of what can be done. I especially like the RSS plugin, despite it being somewhat simple. Maybe with this plugin system Trillian will finally gain Jabber support.

Before I finish, I should mention that Trillian Pro is not freeware. It sells for $25. I think I would have paid for it, but luckily I didn’t need to. The developers are offering it for free to people who donated a few bucks to them in the past.

And no, I am not in any way affiliated with Cerulean Studios. I’m just an enthusiastic user that likes to point out good software to anyone who will listen. d: