[messanger] Ten Must-Have Plug-ins to Power Up Pidgin

Cross-platform, multi-protocol instant messaging application Pidgin is very functional, but by default it's not what most people would call sexy. But like many great software projects, from Firefox to foobar2000, the looks and extra functionality are there—you just have to know where to find them. Today we're taking a look at 10 of the best Pidgin plug-ins for taking Pidgin from drab to fab.

NOTE: Unless linked elsewhere, the plug-ins listed are included with the default installation of Pidgin—it's just a matter of turning them on in Tools -> Plugins and, in some cases, configuring them.

Stay Smart Over IM with Text Replacement

It's easy to get sloppy on the grammar when you're chatting, but the Text Replacement plug-in's autocorrection macros seamlessly correct common typos on-the-fly. If you've got a particular grammar offense that's not included in Text Replacement by default, you can add your own corrections to the list. Wish you had this functionality in every program? Check out Texter (Windows), TextExpander (Mac), or Snippits (Linux).

Encrypt Chat Sessions with Pidgin-Encrypt

Keep your IM sessions secure without hassle with the Pidgin-Encrypt plug-in. Back when Pidgin was still called GAIM, we showed you how easy it is to set up a secure chat session with this extension. To use Pidgin-Encrypt, download the installer from the Pidgin-Encrypt homepage, enable it in Tools -> Plugins, and then start a secure chat by clicking the padlock icon. UPDATE: A lot of readers are pointing out the Pidgin Off-the-Record plug-in, a more popular peer-reviewed encryption plug-in. The OTR homepage appears to be down at the moment so I haven't been able to try it out, but if you're looking for IM encryption, you may want to consider OTF rather than Pidgin-Encrypt.

Start BitTorrent Downloads through Pidgin with Autoaccept

The Autoaccept plug-in allows you to set rules for automatically accepting file transfers from specific users. As I pointed out in the top 10 BitTorrent tools and tricks, this feature can, among other things, be especially handy for remotely starting up BitTorrent downloads.

Keep Notified of Chats with Guifications

The Guifications plug-in notifies you of user status and incoming messages with a small pop-up window in the corner of your screen, similar to how Growl works with Adium on the Mac. You can customize the look, location, and what events will trigger a Guification alert so you're only distracted by a Guification pop-up when you really want to be.

Get SMS Alerts of IMs While You're Away

If instant messaging is an extremely important part of what you do, the gSMS plug-in can keep you abreast of IMs even when you're away from your computer by sending an SMS message to your phone through Google Calendar, of all places. You'll need to download gSMS from the link above to add this plug-in to Pidgin.

Remember Where You Left Off with Enhanced History

Pidgin comes with a built-in History plug-in that automatically inserts your last conversation with the current contact in your new conversation—especially handy if you're rejoining a conversation and want to pick up where you left off (after restarting your computer, for example). If that's enough for your needs, just flip the switch on it and you're set with the default plug-in. If you want more functionality, like the ability to display anywhere from zero to 255 previous conversations or limit chat histories by how long ago they occurred, the non-default Enhanced History plug-in is for you.

Save Your Chat Sessions with SessionSave

This plug-in remembers the state of your Pidgin chat windows when you quit and re-opens your conversation windows just as you left them—sort of like the session saving function built into the Tab Mix Plus Firefox extension. Coupled with one of the History plug-ins above, you won't miss a beat if you have to quickly quit Pidgin or restart your computer.

Add Now Playing Status to Pidgin

If you're terrible at setting your status or remembering to change it, let the MusicTracker plug-in update your status for you. The plug-in sets your status to whatever music you're listening to, works with tons of digital music players from iTunes and Winamp on Windows to Amarok and XMMS on Linux, and exactly what it displays is very customizable.

Get Updates on New Releases with Release Notification

If you're a Pidgin die-hard, you'll definitely want to enable the Release Notification plug-in, which periodically checks for updates to Pidgin and alerts you whenever one is available.

Theme Pidgin with the GTK Theme Selector or GTK+ Theme Control

Pidgin runs on both Windows and Linux using the GTK graphical environment, so theming Pidgin is as easy as using GTK's built-in theming tools. Here's how it works on Windows.

First, you probably want to find a good-looking theme. A good place to start is at the Gnome Application Themes, where you can browse tons of GTK themes (like this one I'm using).

Found one? Download it and extract the contents to C:\Program Files\Common Files\GTK\2.0\share\themes (there should already be a few themes in there to give you an idea of what the results should look like). Now you just need to fire up the Gnome Theme Selector (it should be in your Start menu) and pick the theme you just installed.

Alternately, you could install the Pidgin GTK+ Theme Control plug-in, which allows you to adjust Pidgin's look directly from Pidgin.

Stone Age Cartoon

[vb6] Pause() function for Wait/Sleep

The best way to pause code execution is to provide a mechanism that gives the parent application such as Excel or Word opportunities to handle events as well as other operating system tasks. The routine below provides both and allows a pause of as little as a hundredth of a second.

Note that the declaration of the Sleep API function has to be placed above all other routines in the module.

[Begin Code Segment]

Public Declare Sub Sleep Lib "kernel32" (ByVal Milliseconds As Long)

Public Sub Pause( _
       ByVal Seconds As Single, _
       Optional ByVal PreventVBEvents As Boolean)

  ' Pauses for the number of seconds specified. Seconds can be specified down to
  ' 1/100 of a second. The Windows Sleep routine is called during each cycle to
  ' give other applications time because, while DoEvents does the same, it does
  ' not wait and hence the VB loop code consumes more CPU cycles.

  Const MaxSystemSleepInterval = 25 ' milliseconds
  Const MinSystemSleepInterval = 1 ' milliseconds

  Dim ResumeTime As Double
  Dim Factor As Long
  Dim SleepDuration As Double

  Factor = CLng(24) * 60 * 60

  ResumeTime = Int(Now) + (Timer + Seconds) / Factor

  Do
    SleepDuration = (ResumeTime - (Int(Now) + Timer / Factor)) * Factor * 1000
    If SleepDuration > MaxSystemSleepInterval Then SleepDuration = MaxSystemSleepInterval
    If SleepDuration < MinSystemSleepInterval Then SleepDuration = MinSystemSleepInterval
    Sleep SleepDuration
    If Not PreventVBEvents Then DoEvents
  Loop Until Int(Now) + Timer / Factor >= ResumeTime

End Sub

[End Code Segment]

The DoEvents call is used to give the managed environment such as Excel or Word opportunities to handle events and do other work. But DoEvents only works within the managed environment and can still consume a considerable amount of resources without some other throttling mechanism. By also using the Windows Sleep API call the Windows operating system is given an opportunity to let other processes run. And, since the code is doing nothing but waiting, it is the appropriate thing to do.

Often the task involves waiting for an asynchronous task to complete such as a web query. To use the above routine while waiting for such a task to compete, two time durations are needed: the total amount of time to wait until it can be assumed that a failure has occurred in the other task, and the amount of time to wait between checks that the other task has completed. Determining how long to wait until giving up requires consideration of the longest possible time that the task could reasonably take and how long the user is willing to wait for that task to complete - wait too long and the user gets frustrated, don't wait long enough and the risk increases of falsely assuming an error occurred when it didn't. This duration is the more difficult to determine of the two. The second time, the duration between checks for completion, is easier to determine. This duration should be long enough to not consume unnecessary CPU cycles doing the check, but short enough to respond quickly when the status of the asynchronous task changes. A duration of between a quarter of a second and one second is usually reasonable. The sample code below illustrates how to wait for an asynchronous task to complete that usually finishes in less than 10 seconds.

  Dim TimeoutTime As Date
  TimeoutTime = Now() + TimeSerial(0, 0, 30) ' Allow 30 seconds for the asynchronous task to complete before assuming it failed
  Do While Now() < TimeoutTime And Not IsTaskComplete
     Pause 0.5 ' Pause half a second to allow the ashyncronous task (and the rest of the environment) to do work
  Loop

The above example uses a function named IsTaskComplete to determine if the asynchronous task completed. The function can do anything such as checking if a cell changed, checking if a control's property is set, or checking if a file exists.

Bad Software Developement Cycle Illustration