You can set up actions to auto-perform when someone sends a message, signs on and off, goes away, is no longer idle, starts typing, and so on, like opening an IM window, showing a notification, sending a message, opening a file or playing sound.īesides using a built-in collection of smileys, you can create custom smileys from any local image. You can set up multiple accounts, allow multiple simultaneous logins for the same account from different locations, transfer files, customize fonts and sound alerts, and load different UI themes.Īlso, Pidgin has features for creating chatrooms or joining existing ones, and organizing buddies from the chat list in different groups. It can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Amiga and Meego.

In addition to XMPP, Pidgin supports AIM, Bonjour, Facebook, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, MXit, MySpaceIM, SILC, SIMPLE, Sametime, Yahoo and Yahoo JAPAN. We've also prepared a video guide to show you how to connect to a server via the Jabber protocol using these five apps. To get a better look, scroll down to the end of this article to check out our photo gallery. There are numerous Jabber servers open to the public, which can be used as gateways for chatting, file transfers, video calls, and other means of communication.įor the following guide, we've selected what we think to be the best Jabber clients available for Windows users by taking into account ease of use as well as flexibility toward customization (including plugins): Pidgin, Miranda, Trillian, Jitsi and Gajim. Jabber (XMPP) is free and open-source technology broadly used by companies and individuals for communicating via instant messaging.

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