Just in time for the weekend.
We’d like to again extend our sincere thanks to all of our customers and alpha testers for your constant support and patience. We still have a few tricks up our sleeves before this thing is done, and one of our next steps will be to open the testing doors to all Trillian Pro customers with active memberships; if you’re a customer, please keep checking the blog for information on how you can join the Astra team. We expect to be finalizing this process in the next 1-2 weeks but will update you here if that schedule changes.
Technical specifications and other assorted geekery after the jump, including some current limitations that may be of interest to you. We hope you enjoy the new goodies! 
General Details
Trillian Astra for iPhone and Trillian Astra Web are powered in part by the Cerulean Studios Octopus, a high performance server architecture we engineered in-house to meet the demands of a busy web application. We initially considered using both Apache and lighttpd for this purpose; while both are wonderful technologies in their own right, we ultimately decided that building something custom would be more cost-effective and provide us with superior performance and reliability. (The poor little octopus to the right lost two arms in The Great IM Wars of 2002 and has yet to grow them back.)
Trillian Astra for iPhone Specifications
- JavaScript and CSS fine-tuned to work well within the Safari browser environment.
- Pure HTTPS; JavaScript cross-domain/cross-protocol requirements made this a necessity, as we didn’t want to bandy your passwords around in plaintext.
- Designed to match the UI of the iPhone.
- Basic IM functionality: Message sending/receiving, status changing, contact list, conversations panel, user is typing.
- Emoticon window.
- Automatic reconnecting on connection loss.
- Supports backend server stored accounts, to connect you automatically to your other networks.
- Limitation: Currently only working with ASTRA, Yahoo! and AIM. We’ll be adding the rest of the standard Astra interop set in the coming weeks.
- Limitation: Speed hasn’t been heavily audited quite yet; expect more sluggishness than normal when using EDGE. We will be optimizing this alongside the rest of Trillian as we move forward.
Trillian Astra Web Specifications
- Flash 9 interface using combination of HTTP and HTTPS techniques; should work with all major browsers.
- New Connection Manager.
- Supports backend server stored accounts, to connect you automatically to your other networks.
- Theme support.
- Backend, in general, should be much more responsive.
- Revamped HTTP communication to be more proxy-friendly; if you use a proxy, please let us know if any problems or incompatibilities exist. That means you, Dossy!
- New vector-based status icons.
- New tool icons.
- /clear support.
- Display name rendered at the bottom of the screen.
- New fonts throughout (Arial, Segoe UI).
- Message window widgets support.
- Window snapping.
- SSL security whenever a password needs to be transmitted.
- Tabbed Containers.
- Browser tab flashing on out-of-focus message receipt.
- Updated header text.
- Fixed: Metacontact selection.
- Fixed: Ordering of items in contact list properly matches desktop.
- Fixed: Drag and drop of message windows made easier.
- Limitation: Currently only working with ASTRA, Yahoo! and AIM. We’ll be adding the rest of the standard Astra interop set in the coming weeks.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Awesome! And yes, you just made it.
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 pm
It looks great!
August 4th, 2007 at 1:25 am
When do you plan to release this to more iphone users?
August 4th, 2007 at 1:41 am
Concerning your iPhone application. You should consider integrating Astra with the phone’s core functionality. How will Astra respond to making calls? to clicking email links? to looking up locations on Google maps? Afterall, Apple’s intention was to encourage developers to take advantage of the iPhone’s built-in native services. So far, you’ve completely ignored these features! Furthermore, how will Astra respond/compare if Apple decides to create their own version of instant messaging, i.e. a mobile version of iChat? I understand that Astra is in early alpha; however, you should consider all these factors beforehand in order to fully take advantage of your situation as developers, especially since you are the first ones to launch such a product. Designing a product that ‘matches the UI of the phone with emoticons’ isn’t enough. It’s a good start though.
August 4th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Charles – Apple does not currently allow the development of core applications on the iPhone. All you can do at this point is create a website and point users to it via Safari. Should Apple open up a method for developers to create native and integrated iPhone applications, we will certainly be investigating it thoroughly. Thus, we haven’t “ignored” anything – the things you suggest simply do not exist to third-party developers at present. We’ve done the best we can.
August 4th, 2007 at 3:01 am
@Charles
It’s absolutely amazing what the Trillian devs have been able to do with the iphone interface. Given that all they’re allowed is a simple, DHTML interface with no Flash or client-side Java, I think they did pretty well!
That said, I’d be curious to see if they’re keeping an eye on the iPhone Dev Wiki, which has now managed to get a compiled application working with appkit. Should be interesting to see how this progresses and if it affects Astra down the road – given that it *is* a hack and probably (though I’m not a legal expert) invalidates the warranty.
August 4th, 2007 at 4:22 am
@willsc8forwings: If you look at this post: http://blog.ceruleanstudios.com/?p=162 they specifically asked for iPhone users to sign up for alpha testing and I think due to the limited amount of those users they will most likely invite you if you add that you can help testing the iPhone alpha. Just an idea…^^
August 4th, 2007 at 7:01 am
omg I want to use trillian on my iPhone! Im using it right now. Just waiting for my invite.
August 4th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Scott, Daniel, I could have sworn hearing Steve Jobs & Scott Forstall at the WWDC07 say something about developing Web 2.0 + AJAX applications that behave exactly like the core apps on the iPhone. In fact, there’s even a demonstration of it in the WWDC Keynote: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/wwdc07/ at the 01:14:00 mark. I think you misunderstood what I meant by taking advantage of the native iPhone applications. The application you see in the Keynote runs from Safari, just like Astra does, yet it’s able to place a call, format an email message, etc. I don’t know whether Apple has released this information, but it’s certainly something to look into…
August 4th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Great job on the web interface. Runs much better.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I am having two issues with the iPhone Astra interface…
1) When I login it just freezes at loading and never actually loads…
2) There is no remember password option or anything and well sorry there is no way in the world I am able to remember the default Astra Password I was given. So is there anyway I can change my Astra Password?
August 4th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
@SoWhy: well i did, its just I’m wondering if they have any plan to accept more of “us”.
August 4th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
So, the Octopus’s arms represent the IM clients. I have only been around since 3.1, and the only two I have seen leave has been IRC and Rendezous, both of which still work in Astra, and they weren’t dropped until 06-07. So, which two were dropped?
August 4th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Hot digity that is cool. The “Help” did not seem to do anything though.
August 4th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
XeSolutions…
Mine also flashes now loading and hangs at logging in (on the web version)
And there is no way (yet) to change your Astra password. This functionality will likely not show up until they open the flood gates and make it public.
August 5th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
I, too, am having problems logging into the web interface. I put in my username and password, and it tells me it is now loading, but then never loads. It just bumps me back to the login screen. No errors. No nothing. Hmmm Anyone else having this problem?
August 5th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Sorry for my question…
In preview you said: multiply devices etc… Is Astra will works on Linux or not?
And your all updates are awesome! Thanks for trilly
August 6th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Hendrick … they are using that phrase only temporarily because ICQ and MSN(WLM) do not currently work on the web/iphone versions.
DimazzzZ … no it does not work on Linux natively.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Wow. The web interface is absolutely wonderful. My office was broken into over the weekend. Two computers stolen and I can’t install astra on my temporary computer but the web interface came to my rescue!
August 6th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Doesn’t work for me on either Firefox or Internet Explorer. As also my login doesn’t work on Astra build 51 I assume that something with my login is not ok. Dev’s could you pls look in to this ? You can see my email address and Astra username in my profile. thanks a lot
marco
August 6th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
I tried the iPhone interface, but it will not allow me to log in. It gets stuck at Parsing User List. It states that it is done, and it does not do anything else. Since I have done this, I cannot log back into Trillian Astra. It tells me that I am already logged in, and that I can only log in once. So if any developers are viewing this, could you please get the system to allow me back in. Thanks!
August 7th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Hey – is there any way I can change my Astra password? It’s a pain to have to look it up every time I want ot log in from a new place
August 7th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
ianargent if you were to actually read the other comments you would see that someone already answered this.
“And there is no way (yet) to change your Astra password. This functionality will likely not show up until they open the flood gates and make it public.”
August 9th, 2007 at 7:44 am
I want to get test Astra for pc and MAc. How to get it. Have been waiting for an invitation since long but never got it!
August 9th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
nahidrains … you just keep waiting.
August 10th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Ok, so I have been using the web interface all week and I have only had a few hiccups that were all easily solved by leaving the page and then logging back on. I have no idea why, every once in a while, I would be unable to send or receive anything though I still looked logged in but at this point it was just a minor inconvenience. Until I get my new computer and can install the Astra client on it the web interface is all I can use and I have to say that, while limited, it does a good job.
August 11th, 2007 at 4:01 am
I tried again to login with the webinterface with the credentials you have mailed me. Still doesn’t work on firefox and internet explorer. I would love to help you test with my astra alpha account that you have mailed me butunfortunately it doesn’t work and nobody has contacted me yet to troubleshoot this. thanks for any help
August 12th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
i just bought the pro version, please i want to become an alpha tester!
thanks
August 16th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
[...] which anybody can use (just go to http://www.ebuddy.com on your iPhone), and another option is Trillian. The only downside with Trillian is that you’ll need to be an alpha tester to try it out. [...]
September 1st, 2007 at 12:48 am
Too bad about the iPhone not supporting core applications. You know what mobile phone platform DOES support native applications… Windows Mobile!
I know a lot WM phone owners who’d love to see a Trillian release for that platform. (The IM apps out there for Windows Mobile are, generally akward and kludgy.)
October 9th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
[...] very early stages of development and there might be some bugs in the system. Check out the company blog for more details on Astra fro iPhone. It will be interesting to see the finished version of this [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
At what point wilil it be possible to do remote login to your Astra account from Safari on a Mac?
Every time I try it says: Error #272 during server poll.
I even tried logging into http://www.astra.im/iphone but it said Octopus Down so I figured it recognized that I wasn’t on an iPhone…