AnaP  | 2007-07-18
A great multi-protocol instant messaging software for Mac users
Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X. It supports many popular protocols like AOL Instant Messenger (IRQ and .Mac), Jabber (including GTalk), MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger or Bonjour (compatible with iChat). What i most like is the tabbed messaging features and what's even cooler is that you can choose to have more than one window, so you can group them in more windows with tabs. Another useful feature is the file transfer, but unfortunately that's buggy and is not always working. It is usable and really easy to use, its menu is as structured as can be. It supports multiple emoticon packs and you can choose which one to use, for example you can have Yahoo emoticons even if you use a GTalk account only. Another really cool feature is that you can fully customize your events. So, if you access the "preferences -> events" menu you'll find out that you customize every single event in its smallest detail (audio and video alike). The Adium design integrates nicely with the Mac OS X look, but if you want you can customize it more: you can change icons and emoticons and, for the contact list themes, styles, layouts and size. You can personalize the colors of the window (status, events, groups), fonts or the spacing between the contacts. So everything can be customized for contact list and for messages window. Also, as if being free was not enough, it's also open source. This allowed users to create hundreds of "Xtras" like emoticons, message styles, status icons, sound sets and applescripts.