When it comes to IM’ing, Ive been a loyal Trillian user since the early days (Mid 2001 to be more precise). I’m not blinded by it’s brilliance, I know it has its problems and I know it’s not perfect for everyone but I like it and I use it. I have, in the past, tried switching to other IM apps but never with any real luck and tended to switch back to what I knew after a short time.

So it’s with this “bias towards Trillian” angle that I decided to give Digsby a go. I’d heard a lot of positive talk about it so was keen to see what it offered and how well it does it. As the skinning side of things is something I’m interested in, I’ll focus on this side plus any other day-to-day kind of stuff I might come across.

My knowledge is quite minimal when it comes to Digsby, so I’ll be making assumptions all over the place (probably wrong). I’m sure I could find accurate info on the Digsby website if I were to look a bit harder than I have - but what fun would that be? :) I tend to run blindly until something breaks, so excuse any inaccuracies I may include!

Installing

Installation was a breeze (as it should be) but I did notice the installer added the visual C++ runtime library to my system. Not a big deal, and it probably mentioned it somewhere in the license that I accepted, it’s just something I didn’t expect to see.

So first up, I sign up for an account. It appears it uses a central database of some kind to store account information. The advantage of this is being able to install the application anywhere (other PC, friends place, etc etc) and have it automagically grab your connection details and contact lists. As with any system like this, a percentage of the general public will be a little concerned about having their account details stored in a central location. I personally would trust Digsby more than the actual IM providers themselves the least (AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo, we’re looking at you!). If you’re one who likes to know how their data is stored elsewhere, you can check out the privacy policy at their site or read about their security here at their wiki.

Into It

After adding an IM account (just my AIM account as it lets me log in multiple times without too much complaint) and I have a contact list happening! It’s funny to see it referred to as the Buddy List, as the buddy list is what Trillian used to call it way back in the dark ages (2001). See the pic below, on the left is Digsby, on the right is the original Trillian skin applied to Astra as a custom window. What’s old is new again! :)

Old School on the right, New on the left!

I also added a couple social network details and my Twitter account to see how it handles them - and it handles them quite well. I’m still one of these old-school internet users who struggles with the whole concept and popularity of social networking sites. There’s only so many attacks by zombies or fight club invites I can bear, so having them at hand from my desktop is something I don’t care for, but I can see that some people really do need to know when they’ve been poked or attacked.

The Twitter side of things would be handy though, but I tend to either use the web interface or just send an IM to the Twitter-Aimbot when I update mine.

That’s a Big Ram!

One thing I had heard about Digsby was the huge amount of ram that it used. I was curious to check it out, so did it the only way I really know (Task Manager) which I have heard isn’t the most accurate thing around (due to the way some apps handle their memory issues or something) but it gave me something to work with at the very least.

On firing up Digsby and connecting to just one medium, it was sitting on a whopping 83mb. To compare this to other apps I was running at the time, Flash CS3 was using 79mb, firefox 96mb - so it was quite large.

I had read an article recently on how Mozilla had reduced the ram usage of Firefox, and in that they had mentioned that ram is cleared at certain times (so what you see now, might be reduced in the future), so I thought I would leave it running over night, and see how it was in the morning.

After leaving it for about 8 hours, I see it’s settled to a much more reasonable amount, roughly 33mb - not so bad after all. I’m just not sure “when” this ram was cleared (or really why for that matter?? maybe related to Visual C++??)

But onto the skinning side of things.

I’ve been skinning Trillian since the early days, so I’m always keen to see more skinning options out there and prospective applications where I can convert my skins over to. I saw this feature listed on the Digsby website, and thought I may have found something to skin:

  • Customize digsby with application skins to give it a personal look and feel.

However, I’m really hoping this feature hasn’t been fully fleshed out, because so far it doesn’t appear to be very skinnable at all. The window runs in native mode (that is, it uses a standard windows frame so takes on the look of your OS or current OS Theme) so you are limited to skinning the inside the window. This in itself should be pushed as a feature as it’s something Trillian users have been asking for since day zero.

If you want to change the look of the entire window, you really need to load up a new Windows theme (via Window Blinds or similar app) as skinning Digsby is currently limited to just what’s inside the actual window. As I said earlier, this is something that should probably be promoted as a feature as there are a lot of people who prefer this, but unfortunately it also limits the types of skins you can expect to see. With the current system every contact list is going to be much the same looking, but with just some new colours, gradients, or images thrown in (menu, status, etc are all in the same place). I personally like the freedom to put things where I want and change how the whole thing looks (but that’s just me!).

So, in my opinion Digsby’s skinning is more theming than skinning. Some new colors and a changed icon or 2 (imho) doesn’t equal a skin. That’s a theme in my eyes, but I guess it all depends on the persons interpretation of the words!

Switch “skin” to Darkness

or one of it’s variants

I had a bit of a poke around in the files for Digsby, but unfortunately couldn’t see anything that was an obvious skin/theme file. After checking out the forums and then a tutorial posted on a wiki it just seems I didn’t dig deep enough and the skinning side of things is achieved using yaml. I am wondering if there are any plans in the future to open up the skinning options a bit more and maybe allow for the removal of the native window border/edges or something similar. The devs have posted in the forums that the skinning API isn’t complete, so things might change in the coming future.

On a positive skinning note, I noticed the conversation themes (which really are closer to a skin than the contact list skins are… lol) are very nice. I think I did see somewhere (again I could be wrong) that Digsby uses Adium message styles and I did notice some familiar ones when I checked them out. After checking the wiki, Digsby does indeed use Adium message styles, so that means there are oodles of existing themes out there that could be put to use. (A good thing!)

So on the skinning side of things:

  • Contact List skinning = bad
  • Message Style skinning = good

It’s only early days, so I’ll keep an eye on this in the future.

Like it Or…?

Like it. :)

So, overall Digsby feels polished. That in itself is an achievement for something so new. (how long since the very first private build is it?)

In the usability stakes, it’s great - does what it’s meant to and does it well (love being able to reply to a message in a notification window), and I can see why it’s getting a growing number of fans out there. It’s nice to have a “works out of the box” application to play with much like Trillian. Thankfully it’s not like Miranda’s “add-this-to-make-this-happen” style system of plugins.

So in conclusion, I will be keeping an eye on things over at the Digsby farm and see what directions some things go (skinning stuff). If they head in the same direction they have with all the other features (the right direction) it will be interesting to see the end result. Good job. :)

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