Mercury - Sametime Messenger for Mac OS X

Coming in 0.2...

I know this may not be at the top of peoples feature lists but the screenshot to the right shows the tooltips that are going to show up in the next release so you can see the status messages of users in your contact list. Here are some other features currently under consideration, let me know which ones are most important to you:

• File transfer
• Meetings (or Places if you prefer with at least whiteboard sharing)
• Audio Chat (does anyone use it?)
• Video Chat (does anyone use it?)
• Changing your status message(i.e. allowing multiple away messages)
• Anything else you may be interested in...

Just use the comments or trackbacks to let me know what is important to you.

v0.1 alpha Released!

I am proud to announce the first publicly available alpha version of Mercury for Mac OS X. The v0.1 release contains basic functionality as described in the previous entries. Users are encouraged to download the client, use it, and I would love to hear from you about any issues that you may run into. This is the first release so there are bound to be bugs. Mercury should run just fine on either Jaguar or Panther. If there is interest I may look into supporting older versions of OS X, at the moment 10.2 and 10.3 are the only operating system versions supported. The icons and buttons used in this version are a bit rough, but they should be getting better in the future as I have a much more talented artist working on revising and enhancing them. For the technically enclined out there the client is written mostly in Objective-C using some Java code to bridge the gap from the client logic, to the Sametime toolkit provided by IBM. It has proved to be a versatile and powerful combination. Welcome to Mercury, attempting to give Mac OS X users a first class Sametime experience one line of code at a time!

Contact window......

The new Mercury messenger for Mac OS X supports both public and private Sametime groups (those whose members are stored on the server and set by administrators and those created by individual users using a Sametime client. The following are supported for user status:

• Active - Contacts shown in green.
• Not Using - Contacts shown in yellow.
• Away - Contacts shown in yellow.
• Do Not Disturb - Contacts shown in red.
• Offline - Contacts shown in grey.

The contact list window also provides the mechanism for logging in and out of Mercury, these buttons are located in the lower left hand corner of the window. The contact list can be modified by using the two buttons in the lower right hand corner. The remove button will remove either an entire group or only the select user. The add contact window allows one to enter a name, resolve any conflicts that may arise, and add that user to a new or existing contact group (the groups tab will also allow public groups to be added to your contact list). Starting a chat with another user is as simple as highlighting their name and double clicking (support for contextual menus providing the ability to do more than chat i.e. meetings, etc... is planned for a future release). A user is only available to chat with if they are in the Active, Away, or Not Using States. Offline users and those indicating a Do Not Disturb status will result in no action if double clicked on. Users are encouraged to leave comments about features they would like to see added or bugs you find (until we get a formal bug tracking solution installed here).

Add contacts...

The add contacts window supports two mechanisms for enhancing an existing contact list, the user can add either of:

• Contacts, or
• Public Groups

Once the user has decided to lookup a contact, they are presented with a tab view to select one of the above options. The user addition process is very simple:

1. Type the name or a portion of the name.
2. Resolve any conflicts that may exist by selecting the desired user.
3. Choose a group name from one of the personal groups or type a new group name in the combo box.
4. Finally hit the "Add Contact" button to add the user to your contact list

When working on the groups tab things are even easier. When attempting to add a contact, the user can type only a portion of the name and they will be given a list of matching items to choose from. The Sametime system does not support conflict resolution in public group lookups, therefore you have to know the full name of the group before you can add it. When you type in the name the group and its contents are added to your buddy list automatically.

Chats...

The chat windows in Mercury are modeled after those found in Apple's own iChat. The message viewing area identifies your partner in the chat by highlighting thier name in green. Future addtions to the chat window will include the ability to have a timestamp printed with each message, the ability to use smiley faces in chat conversations, and any features that may be suggested by the user base. Incoming messages are brought to the attention of the user by way of the traditional combination of a bouncing dock icon and a momentary sound. Feel free to leave comments indicating any additons you would like to see!