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Trillian (instant messenger)

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Trillian is a multiprotocol instant messaging application for Windows created by Cerulean Studios that can connect to multiple IM programs from one client, such as AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Bonjour, Jabber, and Skype networks (the latter four with Trillian Pro which allows for additonal plugins).

There are currently two types of Trillian available, the original and free Trillian Basic 3 and the commercial Trillian Pro 3. Initially released July 1 2000 as a freeware IRC client, the first commercial version (Trillian Pro 1.0) was published on September 10, 2002. An upcoming product, called Trillian Astra, was announced recently by Cerulean Studios in their official blog.

Contents

Features

Connection to multiple IM services

Trillian connects to multiple instant messenging services without the need of running multiple clients. Users can create multiple connections to the same service, and can also group connections under separate identities to prevent confusion. All contacts are gathered under the same contact list. Contacts are not bound to its own IM service group, and can be dragged and dropped freely.

rightTrillian represents each client with a different-colored sphere (see right). Prior versions used the corporate logos for each service, but these were removed to avoid copyright issues, although some skins still use the original icons for the mediums. The decision of colors were compared to subway lines in London Underground by the designer of Trillian. [link]

Standard IM services

Plugin IM services (require Trillian Pro)

Metacontact

To eliminate duplicates and simplify the structure of the contact list, users of Trillian Pro can 'bundle' multiple contacts of the same person into one entry in the contact list, using the Metacontact feature. Subcontacts will appear under the metacontact as small icons aligned in a manner of a tree.

Activity history

Activity History in action
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Activity History in action
Trillian Basic and Pro both come with Activity History, and both log the history as both plain text files and as XML-files.  Pro has a History Manager which shows the chat history and allows the user to add bookmarks for revision later on. XML-based history makes the log easy to manipulate, searchable and extendable for future functions.[link]



Time travel

Trillian Pro also has the so-called [Time Travel] feature, allowing the user to record, and subsequently review, pause, rewind and fast forward live video and audio sessions.



Instant lookup

Starting with version 3.0 in both the Basic and Pro suites, Trillian makes use of the English version of the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia for real-time referencing using its database of free knowledge. The feature is employed directly within a conversation window of a user. When one or more words are entered (by either user), Trillian checks all words against a database file and if a match is found, the word appears with a dotted green underline. When the user points their mouse over the word, the corresponding article is downloaded from Wikipedia and displayed on screen as a tooltip. When the user clicks on the underlined word, they are given the choice to visit the article online.



Emotiblips

Emotiblips™ are the video equivalent of an emoticon. During video sessions, the user may stream a song or video to the other user in real time.  One can send MP3s, WAVs, WMVs, and MPGs with this feature.  QuickTime MOV files as Emotiblips are not currently supported.



Hidden smileys

In version 2.0 to the current, the default emoticon set contains emoticons that don't appear in the menu but can be used in conversations. Some of these are animations that can only be appreciated in Trillian Pro, but all of them can be used regardless.  A few such emoticons are:




A comprehensive list of smileys can be found [here].



Skins and Interfaces

Trillian has its own unique skinning engine known as SkinXML. Many skins have been developed for Trillian and they can be downloaded from [the official skins gallery] or deviantArt.


Trillian also came with an easier skinning language, Stixe, which is essentially a set of XML Entities that simplifies repetitive codes and allows skinners to share XML and graphics in the form of emoticon packs, sound packs and interfaces.


The default skins of Trillian are designed by designHazard. Trillian Cordillera was used in Trillian 0.7x, while Trillian Whistler has been the default skin for Trillian since Pro 1.0. Cosmetic changes were noticeable in each major release.



Plugins

Trillian is a closed-source application, but the Pro version can be extended by plugins.  Plugins by Cerulean Studios itself include spell-check, weather updater, a mini-browser (for viewing AIM profiles), e-mail checker, Winamp song title scroller, stock exchange monitor, and RSS feedreader, as well as a plugin for the Jabber and Bonjour networks. Others have developed various plugins, such as a games plugin which can be used to play chess and checkers, a protocol plugin to send NetBIOS messages through Trillian, a plugin to interact with Lotus Sametime clients, a plugin to interact with Microsoft Exchange, a POP3 and IMAP email checker, or an automatic translator for many European languages to and from English. There is a plugin to interact with Skype, SkyLlian, but it needs Skype to be installed in order to be used.


Plugins are available for free and are hosted on [the official web site].



Membership

Users can purchase Trillian for $25, but only require $5 to extend the membership to download an upgrade for a major release.  The membership also provides access to a members-only discussion forum.



History


Early beginnings

After several internal builds, the first ever public release of Trillian, version 0.50, was available on July 1, 2000, and was designed to be an IRC client. The release was deemed 'too buggy' and was immediately pulled off the shelf and replaced by a new version 0.51 on the same day. It featured a simple Connection Manager and skinned windows.


A month later, two minor builds were released with additional IRC features and bug fixes. Despite these efforts, Trillian was not popular, as reflected in the number of downloads from CNET's Download.com.


Trillian was a donateware at that time. They used PayPal for receiving donations through their web site.



Introduction of interoperability

Version 0.6, released in November 29, 2000, represented a major change in the direction of development, when the client became capable of connecting to AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ and MSN Messenger simultaneously in one window.


Although similar products, such as Jabber, Odigo and Imici, existed at that time already, Trillian was novel in the way that it distinguished contacts from different IM services clearly on the contact list, and it did not require registration of a proprietary account. Besides, it did not lose connection easily like the other clients.


A month later, Yahoo! Messenger support was introduced in Trillian 0.61, and it also featured a holiday skin for Christmas. Meanwhile, the Trillian community forums were opened to the public.


During this period, new versions were released frequently, in a matter of months and weeks. Such development cycle attracted a lot of enthusiasts into the community. Skinning activity boomed and fan sites were created. A skinning contest was held on deviantArt in Summer, and the winner was selected to design the default skin for the next version of Trillian. Trillian hit 100,000 downloads on August 14, 2001. Trillian 0.635 was the most stable version.



Entry into mainstream and the \"IM Wars\"




Trillian Cordillera, the default interface for 0.7x

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Trillian Cordillera, the default interface for 0.7x





Contrary to the anticipation for version "0.64" in the community, the next version of Trillian was numbered 0.70. It was released on December 5, 2001 and it took 5 months for the development of this version, which was comparably longer than previous builds.


The new version implemented file transfer in all IM services, a feature most requested by the community at the time. It also represented a number of skin language changes. It used the contact list as the main window (as opposed to a status window 'container' in previous versions) and featured a brand new default skin, Trillian Cordillera, and an emoticon set boasting over 100 emoticons, setting a record apart from other messengers available at that time.


Version 0.71 was released on the 18th. It supported AIM group chats, and was the first major IM client which included the ability to encrypt messages with SecureIM.


Within two months, the number of downloads of Trillian surged from 300,000 to 1 million on 27 January, 2002, and 5 million within 6 months. It received coverage and favorable reviews from mainstream media worldwide, particularly by CNET, Wired Magazine and BetaNews. The lead developer and co-founder, Scott Werndorfer, was also interviewed in TechTV.


However, Trillian remained the center of attention in IM in the media for the rest of year, but not for a good reason. It had gained attention from AOL that Trillian supported its messenger. Version 0.72 was released on January 29, 2002, and it began to suffer connection problems to AOL Instant Messenger [link].


AOL blocked SecureIM access from Trillian clients, although Cerulean appeared to have circumvented the latest block with version 0.721 of its client software, released merely one day later. The "AOL War" continued for the next couple weeks, with subsequent patches 0.722, 0.723 and 0.724 released by Cerulean Studios. Trillian garnered a lot of media attention as a result, and its developers were praised by its community for their efficiency.


Trillian appeared for the first time in February 2002 in the Jupiter Media Metrix Internet audience ratings with 344,000 unique users and has grown 77 percent to 610,000 as of April 2002. While those numbers cannot compare to usage by the major IM networks, Jupiter said Trillian consistently ranks highest according to the number of average minutes spent per month [link].


Trillian also had a special version created for Iomega ActiveDisk.



Commercialization with Trillian Pro

On September 9, 2002, to the surprise of the Trillian community, a commercial version of Trillian, Trillian Pro 1.0 was released concurrently with Trillian Basic 0.74. Notably, the commercial version was sold for $25 USD for a year of subscription, but all those who donated to the development of Trillian before were eligible to a year of subscription for free.


The new version had added SMS and mobile messaging capabilities, Yahoo! webcam support, pop-up e-mail alerts and new plug-ins to shuttle news, weather and stock quotes directly to buddy lists.


It appeared Trillian Pro would be marketed to corporate clients looking to keep in touch with suppliers or customers via a secured, interoperable IM network, and a relatively dull and stern user interface. The company had no venture-capital backing and depended entirely on donations from users to stay alive.


Trillian Pro 1.0 was nominated and picked among three other nominees as the Best Internet Communication shareware in its maiden year of being a "try before you buy" shareware [link]. Trillian received various awards afterwards.


On April 26, 2003, Trillian hit ten million downloads [link].



Trillian Pro 2.0


Trillian Pro 2.0 was released on September 9, 2003 to lukewarm reviews. Many supporters had lost interest as a result of the increasingly long development cycles and lack of communication between developers and users, and moved on to other open-source software such as Miranda IM and Gaim.


The new version boasted core program rewrite, Unicode, language pack support and tabbed messenging, a feature that became popular as tabbed browser Firefox rose in popularity.



Blockages from Yahoo! and Sharing Patches with GAIM

A few weeks later, Yahoo! attempted to block Trillian from connecting its service [link], as their "efforts to implement preventative measures to protect our users from potential spammers". A few patches were released to address the issue due to the Yahoo! protocol upgrade.


In a surprising move, the Trillian developers shared patch codes with its open-source Linux rival GAIM to solve the Yahoo! connection issues. Sean Egan, the developer of GAIM, posted in its site, "Our friends over at Cerulean Studios managed to break my speed record at cracking Yahoo! authentication schemes with an impressive feat of hackery." It was later revealed that the developers were friends and had helped each other in past occasions. [link]


Meanwhile, as Microsoft forced its users to upgrade to MSN Messenger 5.0 for upgrades in their servers for security issues [link], October 15 also would mark the deadline for Trillian support for MSN Messenger. However, it appeared that Cerulean Studios worked with Microsoft to resolve the issue on August 2, long before the deadline.


On March 7, 2004 and June 23, 2004, Yahoo! changed its instant messaging language again to prevent third-party services, such as Trillian, from accessing its service. Like previous statements, the company said the block is meant as a pre-emptive measure against spammers from its Yahoo! Messenger service [link]. Cerulean Studios released a few patches to fix the issues quickly, within a day or two.



Trillian 3 Series

In August 2004, a new official blog was created in attempt to rebuild connections between the Studios and its customers. Trillian 3 was announced in the blog and a sneak preview was made available to a small group of testers.


After months of beta-testing, the final build was released on December 18, 2004, with features such as new video and audio chat capabilities throughout AIM, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, an enhanced logging manager and integration with the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. It also featured a clean and re-organized user interface and a brand new official web site.


The release also updated the long-abandoned Trillian Basic .74, to match the new user interface and functionalities as Trillian Basic 3.0. The number of accumulated downloads of Trillian Basic in Download.com hit 20 million within a matter of weeks.


Trillian 3.1 was released on February 23, 2005, with new features such as Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and multiple identities support.



U3 and Google Pack

Trillian was made available for U3 USB flash drives on October 21, 2005, despite Trillian being known to be portable long ago with third-party plugins such as Trillian Anywhere.


On January 6, 2006, Larry Page, the President of Products from Google, announced Google Pack, a bundle of various applications including Trillian Basic 3.0 as "a free collection of safe, useful software from Google and other companies that improves the user experience online and on the desktop".


"We're very excited for Trillian to be included in Google Pack, as we at Cerulean Studios have always been very focused on giving end-users the highest quality experience possible," said Scott Werndorfer, Co-founder, Cerulean Studios. "We believe this goal aligns Trillian perfectly with Google Pack." [link]


The inclusion of Trillian in Google Pack was perplexing to some media analysts as Google has its own Google Talk service, which also touts interoperability. Trillian is also included as one of the "client choices" in Google Talk's "federation". Google's backing on Trillian advanced the positions of both parties in the instant messenging competition.


According to the Cerulean Studios' Official Blog, as of Friday, 19 May 2006, Trillian has been discontinued from Google Pack. [link]



Trillian Astra (Trillian 4)




Screenshot of Trillian Astra's Contact Window

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Screenshot of Trillian Astra's Contact Window








Screenshot of Trillian Astra'a Login Screen

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Screenshot of Trillian Astra'a Login Screen





More than a year after the release of Trillian 3.1, the Cerulean Studios blog began spreading news again, and announced the next version of Trillian to be called "Trillian Astra" [link]. The new release claimed to be faster and include a new login screen. A new web site was disclosed to the public.[link]



Version history



Trivia



See also



External links



References





































 





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