Cerulean Studios is the creator of Trillian, a desktop instant messenger that lets you connect to multiple networks simultaneously, but they are looking to move into the world that Meebo has already well established themselves in. Personally I’m a huge fan of Meebo because of how easy they make it to connect to your friends no matter what computer you’re on, but looking at what Trillian has come up with could really give some competition to Meebo. Checkout this demo that Cerulean Studios put together to demonstrate how their web-based chat client would work:
That pretty much left me speechless. The look of their online chat service closely resembles what we have already seen in their upcoming Trillian Astra release. What really shocked me was being able to pop the chat client outside of the browser so that you can use it in a way that feels completely like a desktop application. You can even close the browser and the program will continue to run! That is something I would love to see in a web-based chat client.
Here are the things that Cerulean Studios had to say about the online service:
- This technology, like Trillian Astra Web before it, requires Flash 9.
- This is the real deal – with it, we can access the system tray, task bar, the local file system, dock the contact list, etc. The goal of this project is to emulate 99% of common Trillian functionality in something incredibly lightweight and easy to grab on-the-go. While we won’t likely be doing anything incredibly advanced here (that’s what Trillian “regular” is for), we will strive to do enough to make it worth your while.
- This is currently internal technology and not available yet to anyone. It will be made available to our team of testers as soon as its ready, but at this point your feedback and suggestions would be great!
I was disappointed that they haven’t opened the service up to the public for testing, but it definitely does a good job of making you want to use it first hand. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one, and if Cerulean Studios decides to make this freely available (their professional version of their desktop chat program costs money) then Meebo will surely have some competition.
Source: Webware
Wow! That’s really incredible. Thanks.
You probably know that you can already do that with meebo.
Yes, that would be a large plus. I wonder how they’re implementing that… I look forward to checking this out when it’s a bit more available.
curious! i wonder how they do the systray icon. i didn’t think that would be possible without *some* kind of system-installed bit… hmmm. then again i haven’t looked at all the features of flash 9!
Yes, I do know that you can do that with Meebo…but it feels very much like a part of the browser still. Being able to close the browser and continue operating the chat client is more of what I thought was amazing.
Flash continues to become more and more amazing so I am not surprised to see these “independent” applications being developed. I too have started working with Flash for a project and it continues to amaze me how easy it is to do some of the things that is normally really difficult.
Just a little nit-pick, but Trillian has always been an “online” messenger. (Unless I missed the Psychic Communication preference somewhere.) The term you meant to use was “web-based”.
That’s kinda funny…that never even crossed my mind but you are absolutely right!