Adium help guide

Wengero · Post by **Wengero** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 4:42 am

i think im going to right a more complete adium help guide then the one featured on this site to help out all the people that are stuck. ill make two versions, the quick start guide just covering the basics to get adium up and running/chatting and a more indepth version where i try to cover every adium feature. of course i just happen to suck at html so if anyone feels like converting so that it works in help viewer go ahead. any suggestions or things you want me to add to the guide just say right here

the guide will be writen covering the .8b5 beta and ill update it as adium updates, ill probably be finished by friday and will start right after conan.

Wengero · Post by **Wengero** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:25 am

well i wrote a quickstart guide which covers the pure basics of adium:

The QuickStart Guide
This guide will cover everything you need to start up Adium and get chatting right away in just a few easy steps.

Set up your accounts
1. Make sure you have an instant messaging account. If you don't you can sign up for one of the more popular supported services at the following places:
MSN- https://registernet.passport.net/
AIM- https://my.screenname.aol.com/_cqr/regi ... ration.psp
ICQ- http://www.icq.com/register/
Yahoo!- http://edit.yahoo.com/config/eval_register
2. Go to the preference pane (Click on the "Adium" menu then "Preferences...").
3. Click on "Accounts", then the "+" in the bottom left corner.
4. From the drop down menu choose which type of account you want to set up.
5. Fill in the first bar with the account name you were given (with MSN you have to add @hotmail.com if you signed up from the hotmail website to the end) then put your password in the second bar.
6. The only other setting there that you should worry about is "Personal"; in there put what name you want to show up on your friends contact lists.
7. On the left of the personal screen you should see a empty white square with the words "Choose Icon..." underneath; click on it. Then in the window that pops up go to the bottom and click "Choose..." this will let you pick what picture from your computer you want as your icon. Then click "Set".
8. All that's left is to click in the bottom left hand corner "Automatically connect on launch". Then press "OK".

Starting Conversations
1. Add contacts to your list (Click on the "Contact" menu then "Add Contact...", pick the account type from the drop down menu and type in their screen name, then hit "Add").
2. Double click on the person who you want to start up a conversation with and a window will pop up.
3. In this window type your message in the white bar at the bottom and hit enter(or return); inside the big window space you can see the complete conversation.

And that's it, now you're ready to use Adium!

now im going to start writing the full guide were ill cover every button in adium execpt a few i dont understand perfectly(proxies)

Post by **evands** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:37 am

Excellent

There's been talk of setting up a wiki so people can work together on fleshing out a full guide like this... anyone following this thread know the status of it?

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:42 am

A couple notes...

Set up your accounts
2. Say "the 'Adium' menu" or something instead of just "Adium"
5. You don't necessarily add @hotmail.com for MSN usernames. Your username is whatever email address you use for your MSN passport. It can be any email address, hotmail or otherwise. The majority are hotmail, though.
7. Empty white what?

Did you mean square?

Starting Conversations
1. Again, I would say the "Contact" menu rather than just "Contact"

Other than those minor things, I'd say it's looking pretty good. This would definitely be helpful to new users. I'm interested in seeing how the full user's guide turns out. One other thing...I think it's best if this looks as professional as possible, which means that grammar and punctuation should be correct. Here are some things you should probably fix:

Set up your accounts
6. semi-colon after Personal
7. semi-colon after Choose Icon... underneath
8. All that's (apostrophe) left is to click "Automatically connect on launch" in the bottom left hand corner. Then press OK.

Starting Conversations
1. and type in their screen name
3. semi-colon after (or return)

And that's (apostrophe) it, now you're ready to use Adium!

Sorry to be so anal but I think this type of stuff matters to some people (such as me) so we may as well make it look as nice as possible. Thoughts?

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:45 am

evands wrote:Excellent There's been talk of setting up a wiki so people can work together on fleshing out a full guide like this... anyone following this thread know the status of it?

That would be great. I'm not really familiar with how wikis work (though I've been to wikipedia.org)...so any of us would be able to edit it? Then I could fix meaningless grammar errors for myself rather than nagging at someone else to do it

Wengero · Post by **Wengero** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 6:54 am

well if someone wants to set up a wiki ill write for that instead but im not to sure the right way to set one up so ill just keep writing on my own. and ill fix those suggestions now. ps i did this in textedit because i felt like just jotting it down and not waiting for word to startup. for the big thing i guess ill do it in word im going to start that tomorow night or something, i havent had school for the past week+this week so i have more free time.

edit: i found a wiki hosting site, i dont know if its really that great cause just about anyone can completly destrory the project(ill keep daily backups) but unless someone can find something better [url]http://adiumxhelp.xwiki.com/[url] ill start posting there its pretty cool it comes with a blog with rss and some wiki pages

Strifer · Post by **Strifer** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 9:33 am

i want to help out!!

i can make afancy pdf of it when it's ready.. much better than a lame word file

FredAkbar · Post by **FredAkbar** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 3:52 pm

I guess that "xwiki" site will do, but Evan (and others) might have been thinking of an actual wiki (that site is just a wiki lookalike). That site has more of a commercial feel to it, whereas with a real wiki site (which I would prefer) it's clear that it's just a source for information. Check out [url=http://en.wikipedia.org[/url]the English version of wikipedia[/url] if you haven't been there.

Wengero · Post by **Wengero** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 5:00 pm

well i tried searching around for a place to make a wiki site on google and thats the only one i found, i dont like it very much thou so if u are going to make on of your own go right ahead, im going to start right after i start reading to kill a mocking bird

Post by **The_Tick** » Tue Mar 22, 2005 10:12 pm

A few of us were looking into wikipedia for this, and found wikibooks:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Probably a good solution.

zaudragon · Post by **zaudragon** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:53 am

Strifer wrote:i want to help out!!

i can make afancy pdf of it when it's ready.. much better than a lame word file

I assume it's LaTeX?

twopeak · Post by **twopeak** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 6:48 am

I'm proposing myself to help...
I've been trying to learn to code in order to contribute, but it's not working that well...
I'll keep on following this tread!
I can do translations to dutch, french and basic norvegian

Strifer · Post by **Strifer** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:27 am

zaudragon wrote:
Strifer wrote:i want to help out!!

i can make afancy pdf of it when it's ready.. much better than a lame word file
I assume it's LaTeX?

latex? wtf? umm.. no?

twopeak wrote:I'm proposing myself to help...
I've been trying to learn to code in order to contribute, but it's not working that well...
I'll keep on following this tread!
I can do translations to dutch, french and basic norvegian

i'm doing dutch, contact me and we can work on it together

Strifer · Post by **Strifer** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 3:23 pm

okay...... quick set-up including this quick start thingy from before:

http://home.planet.nl/~jonk0600/roeland ... mguide.pdf

wunderwood · Post by **wunderwood** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 7:32 pm

Strifer wrote:okay...... quick set-up including this quick start thingy from before:

http://home.planet.nl/~jonk0600/roeland ... mguide.pdf

Why do we have a guide made for first time users included with the beta?

Strifer · Post by **Strifer** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:33 pm

wunderwood wrote:
Strifer wrote:okay...... quick set-up including this quick start thingy from before:

http://home.planet.nl/~jonk0600/roeland ... mguide.pdf
Why do we have a guide made for first time users included with the beta?

dude..

1. it's not included with the beta's we're running now, it's for the 0.8 release >>> 0.80. which will be available on the website for download while it's ready.
2. it's a set-up and my 0.8b means a beta guide as well as the beta of adium, since the guide should be based on the latest adium release and this one aint going to be ready before 0.80 is released. no use basing it on 0.77.
3. this is meant for all users, just to be included with the main download. i never stated it's for first time users or the beta with that.
4. i'm just starting this stuff since there have been talks about it for ages and there's still zilch. at least we have point to work from. i don't even think my set-up is bad.

Wengero · Post by **Wengero** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 9:02 pm

you think we sould throw some screen shots in there or keep it just text?

wunderwood · Post by **wunderwood** » Wed Mar 23, 2005 10:41 pm

Strifer wrote:
wunderwood wrote:
Strifer wrote:okay...... quick set-up including this quick start thingy from before:

http://home.planet.nl/~jonk0600/roeland ... mguide.pdf
Why do we have a guide made for first time users included with the beta?

dude..

1. it's not included with the beta's we're running now, it's for the 0.8 release >>> 0.80. which will be available on the website for download while it's ready.
2. it's a set-up and my 0.8b means a beta guide as well as the beta of adium, since the guide should be based on the latest adium release and this one aint going to be ready before 0.80 is released. no use basing it on 0.77.
3. this is meant for all users, just to be included with the main download. i never stated it's for first time users or the beta with that.
4. i'm just starting this stuff since there have been talks about it for ages and there's still zilch. at least we have point to work from. i don't even think my set-up is bad.

*Hides under a rock*

I was referring to the "About this release" section. Sometimes I'm needlessly anal, sorry.

lemaxou · Post by **lemaxou** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 3:57 am

Hi everyone!

I'm a french member of translator's team of our preferred duck

Don't hesitate to use me if you want Wengero!

(copros@fr.st)

Strifer · Post by **Strifer** » Thu Mar 24, 2005 7:48 am

lemaxou wrote:Hi everyone!

I'm a french member of translator's team of our preferred duck

Don't hesitate to use me if you want Wengero!
(copros@fr.st)

HEY MAX

Wengero wrote:you think we sould throw some screen shots in there or keep it just text?

hey man, i got your pm, add me on one of the im services i pm'ed you back

and yes.. i think we need some more image-support

wunderwood wrote:
Strifer wrote:
wunderwood wrote: Why do we have a guide made for first time users included with the beta?

dude..

1. it's not included with the beta's we're running now, it's for the 0.8 release >>> 0.80. which will be available on the website for download while it's ready.
2. it's a set-up and my 0.8b means a beta guide as well as the beta of adium, since the guide should be based on the latest adium release and this one aint going to be ready before 0.80 is released. no use basing it on 0.77.
3. this is meant for all users, just to be included with the main download. i never stated it's for first time users or the beta with that.
4. i'm just starting this stuff since there have been talks about it for ages and there's still zilch. at least we have point to work from. i don't even think my set-up is bad.
*Hides under a rock*

I was referring to the "About this release" section. Sometimes I'm needlessly anal, sorry.

neah man... it's allright. you are actually a little right about the about this release thingy, we will alter it accordingly when the real 0.8 comes out (provided this thing is ready by then!).. so.. want to help out, wunderwood?