The Download Blog

Editors' note: At 2:30 p.m., April 14, we added information about the Instant Lookup feature and other in-chat features. Updated information can be found at the bottom of the post.

Trillian Astra sports a modern look--but Trillian's skins have never failed to impress.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

The first of the multiprotocol chat clients, Trillian got its start nine years ago and had been updated with some regularity through 2005 and 2006. It was included in the Google Pack, a collection of freeware that Google was supporting. On the heels of Trillian 3.1, Cerulean Studios announced that Trillian 4, code-named Astra, was in development, and would finally port the service to Mac and Linux.

Except for the occasional minor announcement, that was the last big news about Trillian. Competition from more frequently updated services like Pidgin, Digsby, and Adium has drawn away fans, but now there's a private beta of Astra that seems to be accepting invitation requests from everybody who wants one. You can sign up for the Astra beta here--let us know if you don't get an invite, because it seems that Cerulean is taking all comers.

Back when it was announced, Astra sounded great. Support for even more chat protocols, better encryption protection, and a downloadable contact list were just a few of the tantalizing features. Facebook integration was added to the list, eventually, but by that time, many users had moved on. Astra, as it stands now, is good at what it does--but the competition has caught up.

It does everything that it should do at this point. It services multiple chat protocol, including mainstream services like Yahoo, AOL, Google, and ICQ. MySpaceIM is supported, and Skype is included, but it requires the program to be running before it can be accessed through Astra--just as Skype does with other multichat applications. It includes POP3 and IMAP account notifications rolled in alongside the Facebook and Web mail notices.

There are other useful tweaks and changes. By default, a pop-up window will appear when you receive a chat. Click on it once and you'll see two options, one for a standard Reply and the other for a Quick Reply. The Quick Reply will open a text field in the pop-up that you can write your response in, while hitting Reply will bring up the main chat window. Video chat and Webcam support are supported by default, and three view modes are available for changing up your chat window appearance.

The main chat window can feature individual contacts or chats grouped in a tab, as well as three styles for viewing the chat text.

(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)

Astra is extensible, and impressively only crashed once, when I was jumping from a Gmail notification to the actual mail message. When you install though, don't just cruise through the process on auto-pilot or you'll wind up with the Weather Channel toolbar and the Ask.com toolbar. Two other problems stuck out: the news ticker that appears at the top of the chat window can't be removed or even configured to run headlines that are useful to you, and the search function in the Options menu doesn't work. This makes it difficult to navigate through the overhaul, since many features have changed in the update.

It feels faster and smoother than previous versions of Trillian, but that's the least it should be, considering when its last update happened. The Astra skin feels slick and modern, but it can be a bit irritating at first as important features blend into the background because of a lack of contrasting colors. Overall, the experience feels smoother than I remember Trillian being, although I probably haven't touched it in about two years.

Trillian Astra is a good chat client, and it doesn't suffer from a "too little, too late" syndrome. This is a solid, modern multichat client. The question that won't be answered until it finally comes out, though, is whether anyone still cares.

Update: What I referred to above as the news ticker, Trillian calls the "Instant Lookup." It's accessible in Preferences under the Chat option. Users can configure which feeds or Instant Lookups appear, although that's not readily apparent. Click on an item to modify it and an X will appear on the right side. Click the X to remove the item, and remove all of them to remove the news ticker completely. You can add RSS feeds or "lookup" services using the buttons at the bottom of the window, but overall it's not an intuitive process. The X's could appear by default, for example, or there could be mouse-over instructions.

There's also a default feature that I neglected to point out that underlines in certain words green. Mouse over the word or phrase and the Wikipedia definitions will appear. Click on one of those words and a menu appears from which you can Copy the definition to the clipboard, Search for the term on the Web, or View the Wikipedia entry by loading the Wikipedia page. While the first and third options worked flawlessly, the Search feature took me to the Cerulean Studios Web page and tried to download an app without an extension.

I stand by my initial analysis of Astra's new features that while they're useful, they're hard to configure and some are still buggy or nonfunctional.

Rooms is the first IRC client for the iPhone

(Credit: Nicole Lee/CNET)

Rooms is, so far anyway, the first and only IRC client for the iPhone. It's pretty stripped down as far as IRC clients go, but for simple chatting, it works really well. That said, it has quite a number of bugs, probably because it's only version 0.5. For the uninitiated, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and involves real-time Internet communication on chat rooms called channels. There are hundreds of IRC servers located around the world, and is probably one of the oldest forms of Internet chat rooms.

When you first start Rooms up, you'll be prompted to add a new server, a port number, as well as a desired nickname, which is typical with most IRC clients. Then you can decide if you want to always connect to the server, plus you can set up default rooms (or channels) to join upon connecting. Rooms also has a nice console view that lets you see the connection status. Other settings include the ability to save chat logs, the choice to disable the iPhone's autolock feature (meaning it'll prevent the phone from going to sleep), plus the choice to stay constantly connected. The latter means that even when you get disconnected, the client will automatically try to reconnect you.

You can join multiple rooms on multiple servers

(Credit: Nicole Lee/CNET)

From there, you can join any channel you wish, and you can even switch between different channels by swiping your finger horizontally across the screen. However, when we tried to connect to two different IRC servers simultaneously, we sometimes found that channels would freeze and not show up. This is probably a bug with the first version of the software, but just keep that in mind.

The channel layout is pretty self-explanatory. The nicknames are along the top, while the chat goes on beneath it. Typing out chat messages is as easy as tapping the empty field on the bottom and then typing away on the iPhone keyboard. You can also toggle auto-correct off by hitting the "ABC" button. To send a private message to someone, you can tap the person's name or select the name from the pop-up menu on the bottom right.

There are a few limitations, though. You can't do the typical IRC slash commands, like /op or /me, so you'll be pretty useless as a channel moderator. Of course, chat and data transfers in the form of DCC (Direct Client-to-Client) aren't supported either. Also, as we mentioned, there are several bugs that can occur with this first version of the app. For example, one of the bugs I encountered was that the Disable Autolock feature sometimes crashed the app altogether.

If you can live with the occasional bug, though, I think this is a well-executed app, especially for those of us who simply must continue to chat online even when out and about. Rooms costs $0.99 cents on the iTunes App Store.

My favorite IM application, Trillian, has just put out a brand new build of its upcoming Astra product for alpha testers. New are Facebook notifications and quick shortcuts to jump straight to things like photo galleries and user profiles. Sorely missing from that, however, is Facebook's chat, which is what I think many Trillian users have been pining for (myself included). Free competitor Digsby has had Facebook chat integration since the beginning of May, shortly after the service was launched.

Scott Werndorfer, co-founder and head developer of Trillian, tells me his team is waiting on proper XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) integration with Facebook chat to be finished, something that might be announced at next week's F8 event after originally being promised in mid-May. Until then developers have had to cobble together their own solutions that require the use of your browser--something nobody wants to deal with with their desktop chat application.

The good news is that the new build brings with it support for IRC--the chat medium that has proven to be invaluable for things like live blogging and customer care chat in enterprise businesses. Trillian has full support for administrative controls and server surfing. You can also encrypt the contents of your chat room in case you're sharing personal or business information--something AIM and many others don't provide.

Trillian Astra is currently in private alpha, meaning you'll have to sign up to be a tester to give it a spin. You can find the sign-up page here.

Facebook chat and IRC join Trillian as supported chat protocols.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) clients don't usually get the exposure that some of the other, more well-known chat clients do, but they can be even more useful than their big-name cousins. While most online chat has evolved into a way to communicate exclusively with friends, family, and co-workers, you can still meet new people with common interests if you use the right program.

Join Jason Parker in this First Look video to find out more about mIRC and to see if Internet Relay Chat is your cup of tea. Packed with useful features, it's easy to see how mIRC has remained popular for so many years.