Welcome to the Second Life Forums Archive

These forums are CLOSED. Please visit the new forums HERE

"Trim" low-bandwidth IM client
Ricky Yates
(searching...)
Join date: 28 Jan 2007
Posts: 809
09-06-2008 00:49
Playing with Day Oh's low bandwidth IM client ...

(Announced here: /327/ba/280293/2.html#post2136504 )

From: Day Oh
Okay, one low bandwidth IM client :) You can add and remove friends, and you can send and receive IM's. No bells and whistles.

Full source and binaries on Google Code http://code.google.com/p/trim/

Feel free to do whatever you want with it 'cause I'm going with BSD license... but remember, I'm broke and I love you :>

Maybe I'll add a feedback and donation thing in the future but for now I have that feeling I should go try to concentrate on something that will make me less broke :)

For those who are interested but puzzled by the source, the key to the bandwidth trick is simply to never send AgentUpdate messages, not even one. You stay in this state where you're not physical, you can't move or see objects or anything at all, and you save boatloads of bandwidth because the sim doesn't subscribe you to the usual stream of object updates, sound/animation triggers, terrain/wind data, etc etc etc.

Hope you find it useful :}

.. I find it quite well working. Bandwidth usage really is negligible. Loading a normal web page is sending more bytes through the ether.

I believe that this one would even be safe for work. What do you think?
Matthew Dowd
Registered User
Join date: 30 Jan 2007
Posts: 1,046
09-06-2008 01:07
From: Ricky Yates
I believe that this one would even be safe for work. What do you think?


Depends what you mean by safe!

It doesn't require an installer - just dropping the three files somewhere (e.g. a USB stick) and running them would work. However this in itself my be against your work's policy or prevented by the set up of the computers.

It is very low on bandwidth making it ideal for slow networks - a Symbian or Windows Mobile version of this for smart phones would work extremely well (although porting the underlying libraries may be non-trivial). However, it still has the requirements on firewalls that the full SL client has (i.e. needs a number of open ports). It is probably more firewall friendly than SLim though - as SLim uses Vivox it probably has the same firewall requirements as voice in the full SL client (which requires far more open ports, and is far more fussy about firewalls that the SL client itself).

That said, trim is what SLim should have been (the UI obviously needs tweaking - tabs would be nice).

Matthew