But I really do think there's value in a Jabber client that's aimed specifically at obscuring the developer-nature that most Jabber clients expose, obscuring the complexity of Jabber while still retaining the power... that really would be of value to the Jabber community. It isn't wholly in keeping with the Jabber philosophy, but I think it'd still be of benefit in helping Jabber pick up users.
Shouldn't this be the point in all client projects? Trying to make a user centered product? IMO obscuring the complexity of Jabber is a given in anything that users should use. Even in something that admins should use. The question should be what the user expects/wants to see, not what's the easiest to implement protocol-wise. At least that's how it should be.
IMO most Jabber clients are a perfect example of a product that's created by techies, something that my lecturers (at the university) are warning us about.. Constantly :D
I think it's good for the devs to realise that Jabber adoption is increasing, fast.. It would also be good to realise that gaining a larger userbase of non-technies is a GoodThing(tm) :D It will help Jabber, it will make your work worthwile (IMO). For me the large userbase is a reason that I still enjoy working on phpBB a lot ;)
Users want something that looks good so I think it would be great if the client devs try to find someone that's good in the graphics/UI side of the story. In the case of phpBB we gained a LOT from our subSilver theme that was created by a graphics artist. He doesn't know much about PHP but he does know how to make something visually appealing and userfriendly... As I already said on the psi mailinglist, users don't care much about the advanced permission system, the ability to create usergroups, the fulltext search, etc, etc. Most of them care about the nice default theme and the cute smileys :\ Not something easy to understand for a lot of devs (including myself :D) but it's how things work in userland :\
Another example; a friend of mine was watching me use Psi and she asked me if she could use that too. She really liked the cute little stars in front of the contacts... :D Do you think she cares about the fact that Jabber is using a distributed network? That it uses XML? That it's easy to extend/modify? Nope, not really :D She liked the cute stars :D
Regarding the other posts about the client side transport servers... I don't think that's a good idea. IMO we should focus on Jabber, not on perfect interoperability. Most of the people that I know don't use voice chat/file transfer and other advanced features of ICQ/MSNM, so IMO it wuold already be great if we had a stable set of transports for the big four.. If people want perfect interoperability they should go for Trillian or Gaim IMO.
But indeed, the transports need quite some work. I'm running my own transports now and that seems to be working quite a bit better than the transports I used on a public server. But still I experience quite a few quirks :\ That's the only reason why I haven't converted my girlfriend and other friends yet... (but I guess my GF will just keep using Trillian Pro now Jabber is coming to Trillian :D).
Hmm, maybe we could push the free Trillian as the recommended client to new users when (if?) that version supports Jabber? :D
Cheers,
BartVB
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