There are a lot of new things going on in the Studios! And since I don’t want the blog to degrade into just a place to check if there are any beta-testings soon, I’ll post about the thoughts that went into the designs of the UI and the graphics.

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One of the advantages of text messaging is the ability to record and organize every single detail of the conversation without consuming a big amount of space. Audio and Video messages are intimate, but are very hard to search for what was being said. In text messages, a recorded conversation can also act as the minutes of a meeting, which makes ideas very easy to be recalled and manipulated.There are a lot of text messagers out there, most of them have message history (or logging) functions, but not a lot (or almost none) of them are equipped with functions that let you use these histories effectively. Therefore, in Trillian 3.0, we aim to make text messaging more useful and effective by introducing a very powerful XML-based Activity History system.This screenshot differs from what we have now, probably because it is the first draft ever designed for Trillian 3, back in the hot summer days of year 2003. Trillian 2 wasnt even released yet! Many revisions were made afterwards to bring you what you got today.

Since then, we had decided to adhere to the Windows visual style instead of making it skinnable, since it would slow down development and create another hell for skinners (they got 10+ windows to skin already). The interface was streamlined to use tabs instead of toolbars on both left and right panels.

One of the disadvantages of the old History is that it is very hard to locate important messages. Bookmarks are probably one of the godsends of Activity History. I had always had a habit of jotting down the dates in the Extra Info when I had important conversations. A right-click menu on the message window solves the problem wonderfully. We are planning to add an ability to rename bookmarks, too.

Another problem being addressed is the difficulty to locate the time and date of the message. The calendar and the timeline formats intend to visualize meaningfully a conversation by displaying time intervals graphically.

Being able to ’see’ when the file is being transfered is great. Being able to see what files were sent and received in a ‘person-centric’ way brings the computer as a tool back to the people instead of the file system.

XML-based history makes the log easily manipulable, searchable and extendable for future functions.

The ability to trace back what you had done and what you had said – though eerie at times – aids or questions the authenticity of one’s memory. For example, one might have been very angry during a conversation, but if he looks back at the log a few weeks later, his perception might change.

What you see right now in 3.1 might just be a tip of the iceberg. In the future, we will add more features into Activity History to make Trillian one of your most indispensible tools, and confirm another reason why text messaging is sometimes more superior than a phone call or even video chat.