#mac_review

Adium support a wide variety of services, and the setup is super easy. Adding additional accounts is even easier-simply enter the usernames and passwords of the various IM Services you use in the Preferences screen.

  UI/DISPLAY:

Adium seamlessly integrates itself into the Mac OSX™ Interface-which is very nice if you care about the beauty of your desktop. The basic UI is an AIM™ style messenger bar that you can float around the screen, and a chat window similar to Skype™. The chat windows are beautifully simplistic, yet just complex enough to include all of the features you need.

The UI is heavily customizable-as is much of the rest of the client. Buttons can be moved around, colors can be changed, Skins are available to change the background/settings of all windows, and much more.

The IM chat window is, as stated earlier, much like a Skype chat window. The chat windows are tabbed, meaning you can see all of your conversations in little rows of tabs. The tabs can be set to the sides, the top, or the bottom of the window. Hotkeys can be programmed to do almost anything in Adium, including switch between chats. You can also customize the UI to have a separate chat window for each chat or just for specific people.

Adium has a customizable index of emoticons slightly larger than that of Facebook. The more complex emoticons in Adium seem really cool at first, but they are almost useless because they only show up in Adium. Smileys attached via Adium often do not display on the other en, unless the other party is using Adium. This is kind of a downside, but the fact that they include the icons in the first place is kind of cool. You can switch to different emoticon sets-more or less complex.

TL;DR-Great, Customizable and Simplistic yet Sophisticated UI. 

  NOTIFICATIONS:

The notifications in Adium are amazing-but a little overwhelming. Every time someone logs in or out, you receive a message, a file transfers or fails to transfer, or just about anything else happens-you get a pop-up. Pop-Ups appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen in a small transparent box. This pop-up is accompanied by a notification noise (which is customizable). Essentially, you are inundated with noisy dings and annoying pop-ups if you have too many contacts.

Facebook is especially annoying, because people log in and out all the time without the intent of chatting and you are notified every time. Thus, I wouldn't suggest setting up a Facebook chat account unless you are willing to put up with constant notifications popping up on your screen and the little dinging noise (unless you turn it off). The same goes for twitter.

Of course all of this is customizable, and thus it can all be turned off. You can select specific events to notify you and specific events to never notify you. The customizability is really the saving grace of the notification system for Adium, otherwise it would be completely overwhelming.