“Alternative instant messaging”

Everybody knows that MSN Messenger on Mac is never as polished as it is on the PC. Still, that doesn't mean you should give up chat clients altogether, as the Mac offers excellent alternatives, like Adium X.

This messaging client is the perfect example of an excellent open source program. It's very regularly updated and has a strong and active community. Adium X works with almost all the IM services you'll find out there, including Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger.

The interface is simple yet colorful and multiple chats can be tabbed all into one window. If you want to engage in a private conversation with another user, Adium X support Off The Record (OTR) encrypted messaging.

As I said before, Adium X has generated an active community, which generates all sorts of extras for the client like icons, sounds, plugins or applescripts.

True, file transfer is a little flaky, and Adium X still doesn't offer voice or video chat, but it's very enjoyable to use and extremely flexible.

Adium X is a free and highly customizable IM client, that allows you to connect to almost any online chat service and engage in multiple conversations simultaneously.

Languages:

English, Spanish, German, French, Catalan, Chinese Simp, Chinese Trad, Dutch, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian

Recent changes in Adium X:

Fixed Yahoo! Japan connectivity
Fixed ICQ connectivity for some accounts with large contact lists
Improved rate limiting management for AIM and ICQ accounts
Fixed a longstanding bug in which contact list tooltips could appear while on a different Space (workspace or virtual desktop) or while the contact list is obscured by other windows
Fixed repeating / stuttering event sounds on G5 machines
Fixed display of chat transcripts which contain HTML codes in their content
Fixed negotiation of XMPP authentication over SASL when one mechanism fails but another can succeed, as when the server support GSSAPI, Adium is not authorized to connect via GSSAPI, but Adium has a valid username/password combination to use instead.
Fixed a crash when closing the Personal preferences immediately after changing your alias or display name
Fixed a crash when disconnecting an account which had previously received an authorization request
Fixed the 'Show received colors' preference to no longer determine whether we show received font size; this is now solely determined by 'Show received fonts'
Fixed default group chat conference settings for Google Talk
Fixed the User Icon toolbar button in chat windows when in text-only mode on 10.5
Fixed enabling/disabling of the Bookmark Chat toolbar button
Improved automatic linkification
Fixed the Messages preferences preview to display the correct font for outgoing preview messages
Fixed restoration of the message window's location when it overlaps the dock and has a visible toolbar
Fixed "Insert Link to Active Page" button for Camino 1.6
Fixed another bold/italics display issue
Fixed positioning of the push/pop/swap button in the text entry area of chat windows (seen when using control-up and control-down to manipulate the message stack)
Added an ID property for contacts accessed via Applescript
We now allow the # character in Jabber names
Fixed the Import from iChat button in the first run wizard
Fixed receiving of empty XMPP message stanzas
Danish, French, French Canadian, and Brazilian Portuguese translation updates