On Wednesday AOL (this blog's parent company) released AIM 6.0 for Windows. The first major update to the popular instant messaging program since AIM Triton a year ago, AIM 6.0 comes with another visual update and a few new features.Some of the features are ones we've been enjoying a long time in our other IM clients, like IM logging, but I'm finding them pretty well-executed. AIM now supports up to 1,000 buddies and does offline messages, too. There's also a new picture-sharing feature that takes the form of a slideshow window you can drag and drop photos onto, integration with AIM Pages and AIM Phoneline, the latter of which will be especially welcome to VoIP lovers. I'm a fan of AIM 6.0's new look, which is cleaner and less clunky than AIM Triton, which wasn't bad itself. The client also seems to have gotten some much-needed performance improvements--it runs a bit faster, but still uses about six times as much memory as Trillian.

Like AIM Triton, AIM 6.0 was built with AOL's GUI toolkit Boxely, which is based on XML and JavaScript, and which allows for some very interesting customization opportunities. For example, it took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to remove the ad box from the top of my buddy list, and all I needed was Notepad (shhh, don't tell anyone I told you that). A more dedicated hacker could take the opportunity to completely re-theme the interface or even add new functionality. And I really hope they do.

All in all, AIM 6.0 still isn't a program I'm going to use every day. However, I am impressed with the direction AIM seems to be headed, and its VoIP and file-sharing capabilities mean I'll probably break it out once in awhile. If you're already happily using AIM Triton or an older version of AIM, I highly recommend AIM 6.0. If you're a power-user, you're not really AIM 6.0's target market, and should stick with Trillian or GAIM--unless you're intrigued by Boxely's hackability.

You can find a couple screenshots of AIM 6.0 in action after the jump.

One thing I didn't know about AIM Triton before now is that the whole thing is built on AOL's Boxely, a toolkit for building full-fledged desktop apps with JavaScript and XML. This probably sounds familiar, especially if you're familiar with Mozilla's XUL (which Firefox is built on) or Microsoft's Avalon/XAML. Boxely was created by notable Netscape and Firefox developer Joe Hewitt. Hewitt has since left AOL, but Boxely is alive and kicking, and is now available as a free download from AOL. If you want to quickly get an idea of what Boxely is capable of, I recommend downloading the OCP (Open Client Platform) Preview from the Boxely web site and checking out the ocpSamples folder. It contains a bunch of demo applications that show off its various features, from windowing to animation to graphics. In a the third of three posts (1, 2) about Boxely's genesis, Hewitt writes about what sets Boxely apart from XUL and Avalon, and I must say between that, the Boxely documentation, and the demo apps, I'm definitely going to be checking it out if I ever decide to write a Windows app. I am in whole-hearted agreement with Hewitt when he suggests to AOL, "If you were to port Boxely to OS X and Linux, and maybe, oh I don't know, open source the library, I think you'd have a real winner on your hands!"