The speed of skin at plugin updates at the official website is really disappointing, and I shudder to think how many other people it makes think the same thing you are… but the funny thing is there are loads of unofficial skin and plugin updates going on all the time. Here’s the real source of Trillian stuff:

• Plugins: Trillian Civillians
• Skins & Emoticon packs: deviantArt
• Interfaces & Icon packs: thread on official Trillian boards

The third one also has some skins & emoticon packs, but not as many as deviantArt. In case you don’t know, an icon pack changes the contact list icons (and the icons in the corner of message windows) and an interface changes the layout of a skin. Emoticon packs, interfaces and icon packs only work with some skins (known as flexible or “/stixe” skins).

The error messages you’re talking about is because, although Trillian 2.0 skins should work on Trillian 3.x (as should all previous skins in fact), you won’t be able to access the new video/voice chat features of Trillian 3, simply because the skins don’t include buttons and stuff for them. I have to admit that I was rather disappointed to find my favourite Trillian 2 skin broke in Trillian 3 though 🙁 but I’d made a few customisations to it, so maybe it was something I’d done wrong.

As for the rest of it, well, personally I’ve never had the troubles you describe. I guess encryption over MSN and Yahoo would be nice (it works on ICQ too btw) but I can think of plenty of other features I’d rather they did first.

Making Trillian act as a server is only necessary for incoming file transfers. For MSN just make sure you can connect outwards, specifically to port 1863.

Well, it would get shown if someone opens a window to you, thinks about sending a message then changes their mind – a little bit like dialing someone’s number but stopping at the last digit, I guess. As I said in my last post, I’m surprised that this happens enough to bother people. (Of course if they actually do send you a message then it makes no difference whether the message is there or not, both in privacy and practical terms.)

Also it was needed to show when the window has more than two people chatting in it. But, from Trillian 2.0 onwards, group MSN conversations showed up properly with a list of names down the side, so it wasn’t needed for that anymore either.

Sorry, this was taken out as it was viewed as a privacy violation. I don’t think it’ll ever come back as a feature.

Welcome to you too Les. To use yahoo chat rooms in Trillian you have to be using Trillian Pro. If you are click the yahoo connection icon (the red circle) in the Trillian contact list window and choose “Join Room…”.

Have you tried the preview of Trillian 3 stimpy? The basic version has voice chat for all four media, and the Pro version also has video chat for all four.

Turns out this is a bug in the current alpha release. According to one of the devs it should be fixed in the next build, you’ll have to wait till then.