Edit: It was recently brought to our attention that the OS X version previously released contained a bug that prevented the client from starting. This bug has now been fixed in the version available from Google code, we urge OS X users who previously downloaded and tried to use this version of DMDirc to try again with the fixed version.

After a long period of testing we have finally released DMDirc 0.6, and we think this is the best version of DMDirc to date with over 250 feature additions, bug fixes and other changes, including:

• Themes system revamp to allow multiple themes to be loaded at a time
• Completely redesigned Actions Manager and Actions Editor dialog (see our previous coverage of these)
• New installer for OS X
• The Linux installer can now be used for BSD-like OSs that have Java pre-installed
• The Linux installer can now be used on Open Solaris
• The automatic updater can now update plugins

As of DMDirc 0.6 we now support running on more platforms than before: we have installers for Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X and Windows, as well as a standalone Jar file for any other platforms that we don’t currently provide an installer for.

Users of DMDirc 0.5.6 (or the recent unstable releases) should be prompted by the updater (if enabled) to update to the latest version of DMDirc. Alternatively, you can visit our downloads page to grab the latest version yourself.

With DMDirc 0.6 (finally!) released we are looking forward to our next release, DMDirc 0.6.3. This will include support for SOCKS proxies, improved support for SSL Servers, a nicer looking Preferences dialog, server lists and more.

As always, we welcome bug reports and feature requests on our issue tracker, irc channel or as comments on this post.

In DMDirc 0.6, we have made some back-end improvements to the functionality actions groups which allow authors of action packs to specify meta-data such as a description of the pack, and also list the settings available. We obviously wanted to include this new information into the actions UI, and we were aware that the current actions editor wasn’t as user-friendly as it could be, so we took the opportunity to redesign and rewrite the actions UIs.

As you can see from the screenshot we now show an info blurb, version and author for all action groups that provide them. In the future, we plan to allow users to edit action groups’ meta-data from inside the UI. This will make it a lot easier for end users to create action packs and make them available to a wider audience through our addons site, but for the moment only the name of the group is editable.

Settings for a particular group are now displayed underneath the group and are editable using the same components as the preferences dialog. Exposing these to the end user has added a lot more flexibility to actions and should enable them to be used in much nicer ways.

Finally, in the previous incarnation ‘wrapped’ actions groups (such as profiles and aliases) were visible but appeared empty. This was rather odd behaviour, so we remedied this and now show the contents of all groups. This allows users to edit the automatically created actions, so they can see how they work or use more advanced features that the wrapper UI doesn’t expose. The new UI is also a lot more pleasing to the eye.

Of course, the Actions Manager is only half of the actions UI; the Actions Editor has also undergone a revamp in 0.6. In DMDirc 0.5.5, we introduced Condition trees, but at the time they were only usable if you manually edited the action’s file in your profile, something which we don’t expect normal users to do. The new Actions Editor UI exposes condition trees and allows for easy selection of ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ trees, which should bring the added power of condition trees to more users.

As with the Actions Manager, we think the new Action Editor is much more user friendly than its previous version. You can, for instance, now see all the information about the action on one screen and edit them easily without having to switch between tabs. Of course, we’re always willing to improve further, so if you have any suggestions, please leave a comment!