Trillian Pro 2 'Public' Beta Review
Reviewed by James on 09.15.2003
Retail Value: $25.00

Customer Friendliness.
Subscription
CS has not been known for dealing well with their community, though, as with just about every company in the universe, you will see the Trillian/CS 'fanboys' on the forum defend CS's actions under all circumstances. The attitude was reasonable when CS was providing the program for free, thus the "We'll release the new version when we decide to" was acceptable. However, now that regular users are paying a full $25 for an IM-client, on a yearly basis (basically a subscription service), when part of that subscription promised feature updates for a year and patches for life, users expect to see consistent upgrades to the program. CS has waited to the last minute of the 1st wave of expiring subscriptions to release the first true upgrade to their product. This impunctual release is a big disappointment to a significant number of Trillian users who were expecting to see a semi-annual or so rate of release.

Feature Fulfillment
A long list of features (a 15 page thread in the Trillian Member's Forum) was created by many active members of the forum as well as the normal user who simply found something lacking in the program. Obviously, not every feature could be included, but I think it would be reasonable to say that for a group of developers making money off their program they should at least attempt to include as many features as possible requested by the user base. Listed here will be some of the most requested features and some commentary on their importance.

Notice that one file transfer attempt still fails...

1. File Transfers
   1. Do They Work? - The short answer is, kinda, which has always been the case for Trillian. Users have consistently experienced inconsistent direct connections with other Trillian users in addition to users of the standard program of the different protocols. In our testing, this inconsistency has not been improved whatsoever. No interface is given for identifying an external IP address or any other tricks for getting around firewall issues. This is something that has been aggravating users for quite some time and should have been better addressed in their 2.0 version (TWO).
   2. One file at a time... - Another problem plaguing Trillian users has been the inability to accept or send multiple files or a folder of files in one send command. The request for this feature was on par with the request for a fully functional file-transfer system.
   3. Do You Have? - A more minor request from Trillian users has been the "get file" functionality where a user can specify a folder that their buddies can browse without intervention (or with approval if desired). Again, CS did not pull through for people who often send files back and forth over IM.
2. Message Power
   1. Mulit-Medium Group Chat - Often, a user is in a position where he wants a group of people in the same chatroom, but he is talking to one on Y!, one on AIM, and one on MSN, making the group chat impossible. Several users came up with the notion of using the Trillian client as a server so that all could communicate together, sending all their messages to the Trillian client and having the Trillian client sending the messages out to the other users. The idea is so simple and perfect for Trillian's purpose, breaking the bridge between the different mediums, many assumed that such a function would have been quickly built into the client. Obviously, this may create some window bloat with every message containing <trilluser>:<buddy x>:<message> and possibly even a timestamp. Also, if the Trillian user was disconnected or just signed off, it would break the entire connection, but users would probably accept this problem given the benefits of the added feature. However, no trace of any such functionality exists, a major disappointment.
   2. Mass Offline Messaging - Most people have had a situation where they needed to contact everyone on their buddy list or in a particular group. However, everyone is not always online, making mass messaging quite difficult. The request was for Trillian to be able to cache a mass message and to send the message as each buddy signs on. A list could be kept in the preferences of who had and had not received the message. Using the concept of Meta-Contacts to the fullest extent would make it such that once one buddy under a MetaContact was sent to, the others would be signaled as sent (at least optionally). Of course, being able to delete the message for those who had not yet received it would be a necessity as well.
3. The Random Complaint List: Warning, this section may be considered a rant. Proceed with caution
   1. Connection Modularity is the logical conclusion to additional mediums as plugins. If adding/removing the Jabber plugin can change skin layout and load size, why isn't this functionality allowed for all the mediums? Making Trillian completely modular in this way could decrease its memory footprint and reduce preference clutter for unused mediums.
   2. Preference Backup has been begged for for sometime. Many people use Trillian on mulitple machines and would like to be able to quickly back up all of their preferences. Unfortunately this cannot be done. Most programs don't have this functionality either, but including it would be a major plus to Trillian. Something that would be incredibly convenient would be to have the buddies.xml file exported, optionally, as separate medium specific files. So the AIM buddy list would be exported as a blt file, and one for each screenname per medium.
   3. Dynamic, Databased, Secure Logging is currently unavailable. The logs are simply plaintext files that are appended on each chat. They are easily accessed by any user on the computer and are not easily viewed. By making a database of the log files a user could more easily refer to a day of the week or hour of the day to see the messages he was part of at that time. Furthermore, by using such a method of logging, the logs could easily be merged, so that your conversations on your laptop and desktop could be continuously updated and thus viewable from both machines. Encrypting the logs would make the SecureIM feature much more complete, in addition to providing robust privacy for the user.
   4. Make Sorting, well, sort. As it is, the buddy list can be sorted by the alphabet, away status, or connection medium. However, once a buddy signs on or comes back from away or idle, the list is NOT updated. I was amazed the first time I saw that this did not happen automatically. What use is a sort function that doesn't sort?
   5. The Connection Manager closes after each connection is made. The Connect button acts as an OK button, closing the window each time it is clicked. For a program that is made for users who have a dozen or so connections, this seems like very poor program behavior. Not only does the connect button close out the window, but multiple connections cannot be selected. Thus, if a user would like to connect to 10 of his 15 connections, he may have to open the Connection Manager 10 times. Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but it surely is annoying
   6. The Default Browser is not used when clicking on many URL's. The reason for this is that the mini-browser, the plugin utilized to view HTML away messages, utilizes IE's rendering engine, thus any linkage is directed to IE. For those of us who open IE once a month, if that, this is an atrocity. Third-party browser users are constantly having to put up with abuse and lack of support for a program that fully utilizes open standards. One would think that a third-party, grassroots IM client would be sympathetic to such users and empower them to use their browser of choice, but no. It's IE, or the highway.