cocoaforge

Adium always grabs your contacts display pics
So if they have any plugins that tells if someone opens a window with them it says that you do

So it kinda makes you look like a stalker

Is there anyway to stop adium from getting their pic until you actually open a window with them?

on what protocol?
what program can have a plugin to see if they take the display pic?

do you realise it means you can't see the display pic of people untill you really chat with them?

msn messenger for windows has a plugin called StuffPlug-NG that notifies them when a contact opens and closes a chat window

and i think theres a plugin for yahoo messenger on windows also

when adium gets the contacts pic its like opening a chat window

yeah i realize that but why do you need to see a contacts pic before you click their window?

First example that comes to mind: icons in the contact list.

So far though you've only listed optional plugins for a couple specific clients, I don't know that this represents a large enough obstacle to justify coding around all the 'normality' of how icon fetching works [currently.]

Another example: caching.

Instead of downloading the icon when click (which could potentially introduce a delay) the icon can be fetched lazily in the background and then updated when it receives a notification that it should.

well, if it would be possible, i would see this as something that could be requested, and added in Adium 2.5 (or something like that). You could file a trac ticket for this.
I guess no dev will put this on their priority list, but i don't think they're against the fact that a better way of fetching icons would be implemented.

in short: you'll have to code it yourself (i suppose)