new to adium

[osutuffy]

well, I am a former pc user (although still have the pc's this mac is so much better), and I used trillian. Through a forum on trillian, someone recommended adium, said it was alot like trillian and would do many of the same things, I also downlaoded the trillian sounds from the adium site..loved it! I do have a few questions concerning setup and use. Bare with me if there is a link you can refer me to answer these questions that would be great. I have done some searches myself, but can't find what I am looking for and as to I have also been learning to use a new computer (never owned a mac) and new programs, I am getting burned out on searching for answer after answer.
First, how do I get notified of new mail? I have gone to events, for email notification it is set to have the little duck bouce repeatedly and to play a noise, but I have yet to see even a little bounce other than when I sign in or get an IM.
I have yahoo, hotmail, and aim for mail and IM.
Two, with trillian, I could download skins and plugins. Is there anything like that for adium?
Third what is growl? It is in one of my folders, I see it on this site, but not a lot about what it is.
Finally, it is sorting out my contact wrong. For example..under msn it has two aim contacts. Then under contacts it has 6 aims, 2 yahoos, and 2 msn contacts. Other has a yahoo contact, it has a friend of mine that is an aim user as a mobile user, which he is not. What are merged contacts and individuals?
Oops, is there a way to edit the group name...it doesn't have an aim contact or yahoo contact heading.

[troplin]

First, how do I get notified of new mail? I have gone to events, for email notification it is set to have the little duck bouce repeatedly and to play a noise, but I have yet to see even a little bounce other than when I sign in or get an IM.
I have yahoo, hotmail, and aim for mail and IM.

You have to go to the account-settings, and for msn accounts you can enable it there. don't know how it is for aim/yahoo because i haven't accounts.

Two, with trillian, I could download skins and plugins. Is there anything like that for adium?

Adium Xtras

Third what is growl? It is in one of my folders, I see it on this site, but not a lot about what it is.

Growl is a notification system that applications like adium can use for screen notifications. you can configure it in your system preferences, it adds a new preference pane. I think that is the right thing for your mail-notifications

Fianlly, it is sorting out my contact wrong. For example..under msn it has two aim contacts. Then under contacts it has 6 aims, 2 yahoos, and 2 msn contacts. Other has a yahoo contact, it has a friend of mine that is an aim user as a mobile user, which he is not. What are merged contacts and individuals?

In general, contacts are sorted by groups, not by accounts. But you can make a group for every account and move the contacts manually. Sorting by group has the advantage that you can merge contacts. That means that if you have a person on two different accounts, you can combine these and then it shows up as one contact in the list. you can do this manually by dragging one onto another (holding cmd-key) or you can set up an address book entry for that person in the address book (comes with the system) and fill in both user names there as IM-entries.

[osutuffy]

Ok, mail notification solution worked. You are now my new best friend. Hate constantly checking to see if I am cool enough to have someone send me mail. It works with all the accounts..aol, yahoo, and hotmail.
However, is there a way to have ducky jump UNTIL i check the mail? I do have bounce repeatedly checked, but he only bounces a couple times.
Finally, didn't really see any plugins in extras. Not sure if plug in is a term that crosses over into mac world or if I'm using it properly. but trillian has a site for plug ins and I can add things like a weather icon built in to trillian, a google bar on trillian, etc.

[m2e]

Ok, mail notification solution worked. You are now my new best friend. Hate constantly checking to see if I am cool enough to have someone send me mail. It works with all the accounts..aol, yahoo, and hotmail.
However, is there a way to have ducky jump UNTIL i check the mail? I do have bounce repeatedly checked, but he only bounces a couple times.

It should bounce until Adium comes to the front. Maybe that is what stopped it?

Finally, didn't really see any plugins in extras. Not sure if plug in is a term that crosses over into mac world or if I'm using it properly. but trillian has a site for plug ins and I can add things like a weather icon built in to trillian, a google bar on trillian, etc.

At adium extras the Misc category is for plug-ins though theres none that i know with similar functuality to what you described.

[Kepi]

However, is there a way to have ducky jump UNTIL i check the mail? I do have bounce repeatedly checked, but he only bounces a couple times.

As m2e mentioned, the Dock icon will only bounce until Adium is brought to the front, so you can't do it that way. However, what you can do is in Preferences --> Events, under the New email notification entry, add a new event and set it to Display a Growl notification with the Sticky checkbox checked.

This will pop up a Growl notification and it will hang around until you click on it.

[osutuffy]

Yeah, haven't got into using growl yet, think it downloaded it, but don't know how to use it

[stAdiumarcAdium]

a weather icon built in to trillian, a google bar on trillian, etc.

As far as I know, none of the Google services which require download (Google desktop, weather bar, google bar, etc...) are available for Macs, which to the extent of my computer knowledge (minimal) would also mean that those plug-ins wouldn't be available for Adium.

[The_Tick]

Yeah, haven't got into using growl yet, think it downloaded it, but don't know how to use it

http://growl.info/documentation/adium.php might help some. If it doesn't, it has a link to a more extensive document on the Adium trac site.

[djmori]

Yeah, haven't got into using growl yet, think it downloaded it, but don't know how to use it

Adium probably installed it. Check your system preferences to be sure...

and check Growl's Documentation