Colloquy (freely available at http://colloquy.info) is a very nice Mac OS X desktop application for IRC. However, it is in serious need of some design help. All of its built-in Styles would make even the most inexperienced graphic designer weep.
Last week I was introduced to the Campfire style for Colloquy. It had a very nice, clean design. But it too closely mimicked the Campfire web application it was based on, so its design elements conflicted with the usability of a good IRC style. For example, it framed all “nickname has left the chat room” messages in blue; highlighting the noise.
But the Campfire style was just too close to what I wanted. Before I was content to use a crappy-ish Colloquy style as long as I could get my work done reasonably well. Now that Campfire had hinted at what I really wanted, I had to work on trying to get the best, most usable style possible.
So, after some hard work, I give you…
The Succinct Style for Colloquy
It includes inline display of images, deemphasized IRC events, lightly-highlighted channel/server notices, and highlighted keyword and self messages. Plus all the background colors are customizable, so you don’t even have to agree with me (the Style author) on which colors get used.
You can download the style at GitHub: https://github.com/JohnAlbin/succinct-for-colloquy. Just click the big “Download” button for the latest release.
Comments2
Looks great! :)
Looks great! :)
Thank you very much! All this time, I was stuck on the "Typeable" theme, but this is much better :)
Nice, i like the design and
Nice, i like the design and what a wonderfull option to leave the background colors customizable. Like this everybody can fit it to their likings. Great job and way better then Colloquy!