Probably the most requested feature for Wildfire and Spark is the ability to chat with users on the public proprietary IM networks: AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo (Google Talk already works great with Wildfire and Spark since it can federate through the open XMPP protocol).
I'm happy to announce that we've been working with Daniel Henninger on a new Open Source gateway plugin for Wildfire. Daniel has brought his experience working on the Python gateway components to create a very easy to use gateway system. At the moment, there's support for AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo, with IRC support coming soon. The code is still in the very early stages, but there's already some things that make these gateways different than what's been done before:
Installation and setup is trivial since it's a Wildfire plugin. Existing gateways for XMPP servers have to be installed as external components, which means installing dependencies, config file edits, etc. Also, working as a Wildfire plugin gives the gateways internal access to the server, which allows nice features like dynamic changes to users' rosters.
Web-based administration of the plugin allows each network to be enabled or disabled along with features and permissions, and to view and edit gateway registrations.
Tight integration with Spark: we're building extremely easy to use Gateway support into Spark. Of course, any other client with gateway support will work as well.
The current plan is to have beta releases available in the next several weeks. We'll also provide continued updates on development progress in the forums.
[forums|http://www.flickr.com/photos/50884898@N00/203286219/] 
[forums|http://www.flickr.com/photos/50884898@N00/203286220/]
Comments
This post has 8 comments. We encourage you to please post your own!
wroot
Aug 1, 2006 at 9:53:19 AM
Screenshots looks very sweet. Though, probably not every user will agree to refuse to use original legacy clients. Not at once. They are still too much used to smileys, banners and similar stuff:)
Tha bad thing that it will create more load on the server.
sander
Aug 2, 2006 at 3:56:40 AM
The next software project that could be useful is a Jabber server independant MSN client/AIM client/Yahoo client to Jabber bridge. For example ,with this bridge users of MSN Messenger can connect to this bridge (using a proxy maybe). The bridge will then send a message to the user in which it asks to reply the Jabber account details. The bridge will then store this information for that user and connect to his Jabber server. Besides that the bridge also should allow normal access to the MSN servers.
wroot
Aug 8, 2006 at 8:33:41 AM
trying to figure out what should i need to have along with Wildfire forum. Mabe someone would find useful linkings to py-gateway developers forums/tutorials. Though this should be a history after releasing Gateway plugin. Maybe Spark users would find useful to search other clients forums. To be able to find features which Spark is missing
tsmelser
Aug 8, 2006 at 6:13:29 PM
This is GREAT stuff! It will be interesting to see how well it handles the all but abandoned Yahoo transport.
Johann
Aug 20, 2006 at 10:31:45 PM
I m really interested in this feature. Do you have a more precise idea about when we'll be able to take a look at this project? I m willing to be part of alpha/beta-tester if needed, and help report bugs, if needed. Thanks!
Derek
Aug 22, 2006 at 5:39:17 AM
Any idea when a public beta will be available for these plugins?
Tarjei
Aug 28, 2006 at 7:15:23 AM
I'm realy interested in the IRC client. My main reason for not migrating everything over to jabber (and wildfire) is that I want screen irssi to just work, and although there are some solutions, I've never found one I realy liked wrt to commandline jabber clients.
michael
Sep 27, 2006 at 2:36:22 AM
I upgraded to the Beta Wildfire yesterday so I could try out the plugin and it has works nicely with only a few minor glitches. This enhances and compliments the Spark client nicely; and gives a nice alternative to using the larger - somewhat clunky - clients like Gaim and Trillian.