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AIM Plugins
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Thursday, February 15, 2007
One of my faithful readers asked a great question today:
What perplexes me is the complete lack of plugins for AIM 6 since it's release. Sure, we have the ones you guys do (which are very appreciated), but it seems like developers aren't jumping on board the bandwagon. Any insight into this? Have you guys discussed it at all?
I think the lack of plugins is about to change. Personally I think there were a few challenges in the beginning. First and foremost was the fact that no one knew if Triton was going to be the defacto AIM client, etc. Internally we knew what was going on, or at least I think we did. Second is that lots of developers are still skeptical that we are really supporting Open AIM. After all these years where we have had clients like Trillian, Meebo, plugins like DeadAIM and bots using libraries written in Perl, why change or move to an official platform. Some developers are concerned that there may be reparations for moving to an official library. This is all false, we wholly support Open AIM. Next, we need better hooks into the UI. For example Yahoo gives plugin developers really easy ways to incorporate the plugin into Yahoo IM. The trade off is that their API is really weak in terms of what you can build. Our API is uber powerful, maybe too robust, but our hooks into the client are limited. That will change big time. I think the last factor is that at the beginning the only plugin development has been in c++ or .net. Now that you can write plugins using javascript it makes a huge difference in the barriers to entry for writing plugins.
One other thought to all of this. We need to have a way to upload and distribute plugins in an easy manner. We see lots of questions on the boards basically saying how can I distribute what I built. Not everyone has webspace to upload their stuff. I think there will be some changes here as well.
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AIM Plugins
Green Day
One of my faithful readers asked a great question today:
What perplexes me is the complete lack of plugins for AIM 6 since it's release. Sure, we have the ones you guys do (which are very appreciated), but it seems like developers aren't jumping on board the bandwagon. Any insight into this? Have you guys discussed it at all?
I think the lack of plugins is about to change. Personally I think there were a few challenges in the beginning. First and foremost was the fact that no one knew if Triton was going to be the defacto AIM client, etc. Internally we knew what was going on, or at least I think we did. Second is that lots of developers are still skeptical that we are really supporting Open AIM. After all these years where we have had clients like Trillian, Meebo, plugins like DeadAIM and bots using libraries written in Perl, why change or move to an official platform. Some developers are concerned that there may be reparations for moving to an official library. This is all false, we wholly support Open AIM. Next, we need better hooks into the UI. For example Yahoo gives plugin developers really easy ways to incorporate the plugin into Yahoo IM. The trade off is that their API is really weak in terms of what you can build. Our API is uber powerful, maybe too robust, but our hooks into the client are limited. That will change big time. I think the last factor is that at the beginning the only plugin development has been in c++ or .net. Now that you can write plugins using javascript it makes a huge difference in the barriers to entry for writing plugins.
One other thought to all of this. We need to have a way to upload and distribute plugins in an easy manner. We see lots of questions on the boards basically saying how can I distribute what I built. Not everyone has webspace to upload their stuff. I think there will be some changes here as well.
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This entry has 5 comments: (Add your own)
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totally agree with the belief that its about to take off soon.. i was waiting on the bench to see how triton developed... looks like now is the time to start jumping in with plugins! hopefully mine will be out in a week :)
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I think the doubts over Triton becoming "standard" were compounded by the existing client and add-on communities. When Triton first came out, while most mainstream users were unaware, the developers and fans who were used to trying new things with AIM went and downloaded the first versions. It was neat to see something completely new, but Triton lacked existing AIM 5.x features, was a bit buggy, and took up ungodly amounts of resources.
So, those who would be most likely to work with and support OpenAIM now were turned off by their first glimpses of the client plug-ins would be built on. Even now, if you look for mention of AIM 6 on the middle_man forums, the immediate responses are "yuck", etc.
Hopefully after long enough (Real Soon Now?) without touching it, some will try it again and realize that it turned out just fine, and some plugins will be made. -
Thanks for a reply Greg.
As for dickgroper, I don't think that is the case. Look at the guys who have worked on AIM related projects such as Aimutation, DeadAIM, Middle Man, etc. All those guys are very talented and those are only the hugely successful plugins, nevermind the smaller ones that permeated the net over the years. -
Perhaps there is a small percentage of people who can write code and feel a need to change AIM's default behavior.
7/14/07 12:33 AM