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It’s been a while since Linkinus has been updated. This has several reasons but none of which matter that much right now because the update is about to be published soon live! We like to call this major update Linkinus 2. So, what’s Linkinus 2 like? — Hundreds of new and cool features, improvements and resolved issues of course.

Let’s begin with the user interface. Linkinus 1.3 was already very similar to the iTunes interface and played along very nicely. The updated interface integrates even better with OS X Leopard and at the same time offers more functionality. Drag and drop items around to add e.g. friends to the (new!) buddy list and then attach them to your Address Book contacts. Drop channels, queries or connections out of the source list to remove then, or simply reorder them in the sidebar.

Other changes to the user interface are a reworked network list. Sorted by size and importance you can quickly get to the hot spots on IRC. If you are looking for something in particular simply use the search and let Linkinus filter the lists for you. With over 330 built-in networks, connecting to your favorite networks is as easy as it gets.
Pretty doesn’t mean stupid though. Linkinus will smartly cycle through all servers in a network until it finds the best one for you.

Didn’t find the network you are looking for or want to modify an existing one to e.g. use SSL? Now is your chance. New networks can be added easily using the network list or modified through the new inspector.

A thing before you connect, you need an identity. With Linkinus you can have any number of IRC identities each with separate name settings, even NickServ passwords attached to the enclosed nicknames. Identities enable you to separate network settings from one another and at the same time quickly duplicate setups for connections.

Linkinus supports automatic authentication to multiple nickname services, including NickServ, NickOP, Q, X, G, SrvAuth and AuthServ.

Linkinus is much more user friendly, allowing IRC newcomers to quickly find their way. A good example of this is the connection hint box. Upon successful connection to a network, new users will be presented with an optional box detailing the next steps.

Browsing, searching and joining channels in a given network is pretty straightforward, as you can see below:

So, now that you are connected to your favorite network and joined a couple of channels why don’t we assign these channels to some groups and enjoy the improved combined chats interface? Distinguishing between different channels and queries is now easier than ever and thanks to grouping you can save any selection for later use – you can even call them up by using shortcuts you assigned.

After a while you might feel the urge to check a few channel settings or even modify the connection settings. Just double click the according item and voilà the new inspectors will appear. They let you modify a great deal more than the previous settings view that 1.3 had to offer. Exclude items from sidebar counts? Disable logging? Tinker with channel modes or add channel bound automatically executed commands. You can even add specific highlights or mute growl and sound for any combination of channels, connections and queries you want to. It’s your choice!

If you like to log IRC conversations, you probably know how annoying ti can be to browse the Finder and look for log files to open— Not anymore! Linkinus now features a built-in log viewer. It’s a complete overview over everything, and it’s searchable.

Also a new feature, you can know quickly view all your the highlighted messages you’ve received. Say you’re coming back to your computer after a few hours of being away; the Highlight and Stars window will show you most of what you’ve been missing: it automatically gathers all your highlighted and starred messages Stars you say? What are those? Starring a message is what ow would call bookmarking a post. You know, keeping it around for future reference.

The “Highlights & Stars” window supports anchors. Just click ‘em and Linkinus will locate the relevant channel in the main window or the log viewer and will scroll to the destination on its own.
Speaking of highlights, you now have the option to use PCRE regular expressions to define what highlights you.

This update allows much more control over the way Linkinus displays IRC for you.
You want to ignore someone completely? Or maybe just don’t want them to be able to send you files or CTCP requests or highlights? Want to disable media embedding for this or that person? The new Filters window lets you do all this and much more.

You want to toggle emoticons if a style supports them? You want to group consecutive messages from the same people? You want to know when you left a conversation and easily find that time in a log? You want a more distinguished styling of consoles, queries and channels all within the same style? You want to quickly highlight everything a single person has said within a channel? You want to change the topic bar style? All this is yours to command now. Really.

Now back to business: Plugins. Linkinus now allows plugin developers to manipulate incoming or outgoing data and perhaps change it before Linkinus has a chance to handle it. On top of that, the included scripts have also been updated to the latest version.

The whole style engine has received a major overhaul. I will not list all the improvements and new features because the list is very long. By popular request, media embedding has been taken to next level and now supports Pastie.org Flickr, IMDB, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, College Humor, Revision 3, Funny or Die, Hulu, Metacafe, Slideshare, Viddler,Qik and well as links to mp4, mp3, swf, avi, wav, m4a files and all images. URL expansion is also supported: hovering over tinyurl.com, is.gd, bit.ly and tr.im URLs to see the full link.

You get the picture: the user interface is great and allows for much more flexibility than it did in 1.3. But don’t think for one second that our main focus hasn’t been core IRC improvements.

One of these improvements is increased feedback about security. When connecting to secure (SSL/TLS) servers, Linkinus will let you know if the remote certificate is invalid, and give you a chance to connect anyway or give up. Chat encryption has also been improved. Linkinus implements full BlowFish support for channels and queries, including for topics. “+p” support has also been implemented to temporarily bypass encryption.

Linkinus still benefits from the rock-solid Agent architecture, which means that Linkinus allows you to quit the application and still remain connected. A problem you might have encountered along the way, you have no idea of knowing what is going on then. With the update, Growl is no longer attached to the GUI but to the Agent and hence you can get notifications about highlights or connection interrupts without needing the GUI. Speaking of Growl, Alerts & Growl Alerts can be toggled globally or on a per-channel basis.

Linkinus now supports UPnP for automatic port configuration when initiating or being invited to file transfers or DCC chats.

Support for channel modes, proxies, various text encodings, as well as support for receiving and displaying IRC colors, as well as underline and bold formatting in chats, have been greatly improved as well.

Pfew, I could go on for hours and 2000 more lines about new features and bug fixes. But I think I’ll stop for now. Keep checking us out and follow us on Twitter. We hope you’ll enjoy using Linkinus 2 as much as we enjoyed making it.

Edit: I guess I should have covered the pricing questions here in the first place. So let’s do this. Linkinus 2 licenses are available to new users for 21.99 € the introductory price of 19.99€ and contains free 2.x updates. A 15-day trial is available to all users.
Note to Linkinus 1.x license holders: if you placed your order on or after April 1st, 2009, then you qualify for a free upgrade to a 2.x license. Linkinus 1.x users who purchased their license before April 1st get a 50% discount. Click here to go to our store!

Tags: Linkinus