It was announced yesterday that Facebook Chat is soon going to use the open standards XMPP. This means that in the near future you will be able to use Coccinella and any other XMPP client to connect to Facebook Chat. We don't even have to provide you with a new Coccinella release, thanks to the merits of open standards.

Today the Openfire Team announced the open sourcing of the Client Control module for Openfire. This module promises it "allows to specify which XMPP clients are allowed to connect to the server".

In this guide I will give you instructions about how you can bypass this restriction and always use Coccinella. Don't be afraid that this tutorial will be too difficult for you! Thanks to Coccinella's flexible branding features, even a child can do this. No, you don't have to recompile Coccinella or apply some difficult hacks. It's only a matter of adding 1 small line to Coccinella's preferences file and then restarting Coccinella! Read further to see how easy it is to bypass OpenFire's Client Control module.

The Coccinella project is pleased to announce today the immediate availability of Coccinella 0.96.8, a free and open-source cross-platform chat client with a built-in whiteboard for improved collaboration with other people. Coccinella 0.96.8 sees many usability improvements in transport integration. Staying in touch with people on networks which do not yet interoperate is now easier than ever as you can see:

Other highlights of Coccinella 0.96.8 include:

Adding an ICQ contact to Coccinella is the subject of the fifth Coccinella screencast. This tutorial instructs you how to add an ICQ contact or buddy in Coccinella to chat with. Stay tuned for more screencasts!

Add ICQ Contact