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> Pidgin and Adium do not support (transferrable) chat history and do not show messages when I'm offline, which is a huge usability hit. This times a million.

> Pidgin and Adium do not support (transferrable) chat history and do not show messages when I'm offline, which is a huge usability hit. This times a million. GChat (now "hangouts"), though their XMPP interface, attempts to send new messages only to the "active" client, which means that if you try to use Pidgin or Adium (I used both myself for a number of years; they're fantastic applications) or any other XMPP client, you'll lose messages in Adium/Pidgin for a few minutes whenever you move the mouse cursor in gmail or peek at messages in the hangouts phone app. You'll never see those messages in Adium/Pidgin, and there's no way (afaik) to tell that you're not getting messages, either; it's like they don't exist. Google, however, sends all the messages to its own clients; you never miss messages there. And so, to me, this smells like a clever (and intentional) strategy to cripple third-party clients.

stusmall 11y ago
Whoa! Thank you for this. I stopped using pidgin because of this and couldn't sort out what was causing me to miss IMs.
jgrowl 11y ago
It's happening less frequently recently, but I occasionally miss messages even in hangouts. Technically they get sent but no notification is ever shown. It's happened to both my fiance and me. I am not sure if our accounts are bugged or what. I did see a google group thread where other people were complaining about the same issue.
- foldor 11y ago
  This happens to me as well. I've found the workaround is to always make hit "home" after finishing with the app before turning off the screen again. I've tested it, and if I leave hangouts as the on screen app when I turn off the screen it doesn't notify me of new messages.
cma 11y ago
> Google, however, sends all the messages to its own clients; you never miss messages there. And so, to me, this smells like a clever (and intentional) strategy to cripple third-party clients. They miss notifications and occasionally messages on their own clients too, but I guess it isn't as consistently repeatable.

stusmall 11y ago

Whoa! Thank you for this. I stopped using pidgin because of this and couldn't sort out what was causing me to miss IMs.

jgrowl 11y ago

It's happening less frequently recently, but I occasionally miss messages even in hangouts. Technically they get sent but no notification is ever shown. It's happened to both my fiance and me. I am not sure if our accounts are bugged or what. I did see a google group thread where other people were complaining about the same issue.

foldor 11y ago
This happens to me as well. I've found the workaround is to always make hit "home" after finishing with the app before turning off the screen again. I've tested it, and if I leave hangouts as the on screen app when I turn off the screen it doesn't notify me of new messages.

cma 11y ago

> Google, however, sends all the messages to its own clients; you never miss messages there. And so, to me, this smells like a clever (and intentional) strategy to cripple third-party clients. They miss notifications and occasionally messages on their own clients too, but I guess it isn't as consistently repeatable.