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Re:AIM will be discontinued today by Cknight70 on Friday December 15, 2017 @10:16AM (#15932361)
Something I'll miss about AIM and older chat clients is how compact they were. Most of these newer chat programs seem to assume you're going to have their application take up the entire screen.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by SilasX on Friday December 15, 2017 @12:13PM (#15933256)
Yes, and will continually bloat with upgrades since "computers get faster, what's the problem?" (See: Electron platform.)
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by volkl48 on Friday December 15, 2017 @02:50PM (#15934483)
The main AIM client was notorious for this itself (at least in the 2000s when I used it), ads, growing installation size, bloat "features", etc.

It's what pushed a lot of users to use alternate clients or stick with old versions.

Re:AIM will be discontinued today by mkhalil on Friday December 15, 2017 @03:08PM (#15934633)
Or install "AIM Ad Hack". Ahhh Nostalgia.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by mrweasel on Friday December 15, 2017 @11:32AM (#15932956)
Most modern audio players have the same issue. WinAmp/XMMS took up very little of your screen, while most modern players will assume that full screen is what you want.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by Cknight70 on Friday December 15, 2017 @12:03PM (#15933176)
That's the reason I'm still using Winamp. Its aged surprisingly well and it has more features than a lot of modern media players.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by Consultant32452 on Friday December 15, 2017 @12:58PM (#15933660)
It really whips the llama's ass.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by ansgri on Sunday December 17, 2017 @06:37AM (#15945335)
There's also http://aimp2.us/, which, AFAIR, in some respects whips Winamp's ass. Sadly nothing comparable to either on Linux.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by nasredin on Friday December 15, 2017 @04:15PM (#15935205)
Winamp 2 or 5?

Version 5 kinda sucks.

Re:AIM will be discontinued today by Cknight70 on Friday December 15, 2017 @05:21PM (#15935744)
Maybe its because I don't know what I'm missing, but I didn't start using Winamp until version 5, and I think its great. Sure it has a lot of unnecessary or even broken features (looking at you audio converter), but those are easy to ignore and you can even remove some of them.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by reaperducer on Friday December 15, 2017 @12:33PM (#15933439)
This is one of the (few?) things that iTunes gets right. Though it's a little hidden, the entire program can be minimized into a small floating album cover.

And if that's not small enough, you can minimize it altogether and just get updates and controls via Notification Center.

Re:AIM will be discontinued today by digi_owl on Saturday December 16, 2017 @06:34AM (#15939053)
Foobar2k on Windows and Deadbeef on Linux seems to do much the same job of playing music while staying minimal.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by ansgri on Sunday December 17, 2017 @06:44AM (#15945361)
Sorry, but I see nothing minimal in their screenshots [0]. Same iTunes for my taste. I do believe the performance footprint is minimal, but that't not the first aspect for an everyday app.

[0] http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/screenshots/0.6/screenshots....

Re:AIM will be discontinued today by ReverseCold on Friday December 15, 2017 @01:24PM (#15933866)
Vox on MacOS does this by default. Very simple/fast/small music player.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by cortesoft on Friday December 15, 2017 @11:23AM (#15932883)
They need all that room for ads.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by 0x445442 on Friday December 15, 2017 @10:56AM (#15932651)
One thing I hate about most IM clients is the buddy/friend/roster list runs in a separate window from actual chat sessions.

I much prefer the one window paradigm of IRC.

Re:AIM will be discontinued today by jakebasile on Friday December 15, 2017 @11:35AM (#15932981)
Funny, I'm the exact opposite. Most of the chat programs I use (or have used) use the combined approach. Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and so on all have the "buddy list" permanently attached to the conversation window such that you can only see a single conversation at a time. I prefer the MDI of yore since I can have multiple conversations open at once (on desktop, I realize this isn't feasible on mobile).
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by ReverseCold on Friday December 15, 2017 @01:25PM (#15933872)
What chat apps use separate windows? The only one I can think of is Steam.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by Cknight70 on Friday December 15, 2017 @01:35PM (#15933940)
Pretty much every older chat program used this at some point including Google chat, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Pidgin, and even Skype.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by yoz-y on Friday December 15, 2017 @12:44PM (#15933525)
True. This is probably due to the fact that many applications are "ported" from the web and web does not grok floating windows.
Re:AIM will be discontinued today by syntheticnature on Friday December 15, 2017 @10:26AM (#15932428)
Good point! Perhaps it's a holdover from smartphone chat apps, most of which were designed full-screen.