Connecting odd ends with Pidgin

Pidgin is actually one of the most comfortable and feature-rich Instant Messengers around. Still, there are some things missing. I think there always would be something lacking, as trying to get to please all possible people with just one program is close to the plight of Sisyphos. Still, the open architecture of the orgram llows for people to create own replacements for things they believe to need. Still, there are some amazing toys around because of that. And while there still is no support for Audio/Video-features like there is in other clients (that would be my favourite), they are working on it. (At least it looks like that).

There are a few interesting plugins for the application around, but concerning the usability I find these the best of the lot:

1. The Skype plugin

Skype lately has become one of the most important instant messenger as well as the VoIP Client. Unfortunately it has had some problems in all his incarnations until now. Connections are regularily lost, or off really bad quality, even when both parties have a perfect connection, the interface is unintuitive,  and, what counts even more when using multi-client messenger like Pidgin, it doesn’t work inside any other client than it’s own. Which leaves me running it as the only other client next to Pidgin, a waste of precious memory and difficult to navigate when taking to different people at the same time. The Plugin by Eion Robb doesn’t get rid of that either, Skype still must be running in the background for it to work, but at least you can switch between chat-windows now without having to first call up another program from the taskbar.