Using Miranda For Local Users

This is a follow up to my previous post , but reading the previous post is not required if you know what is going on.

This guide is going to be a follow up to my previous one (Setting Up Miranda for local IM) .So things that i expect the user to have done is the following.

1. Setup Miranda to connect to a local only server
2. Created a account on the local jabber server
3. Successfully logged onto the server and have a list of contacts displayed to them.

Brief Explanation

Ok so i am going to take this from the top down. Each of the points being discussed is highlighted in red.

• Miranda Icon : This is the equivalent of a file menu in any other application. When even i refer to the Miranda Icon this is what i am talking about. This menu will allow you to reach most of the important things such as the options menu.
• Active Service : In the previous article we registered with a local server and then registered for services we wanted to use on the server, the services that we registered will be listed here. You cant really chat with the service , but some of them allow you get notifications via them. e.g. If the account you are using for Gtalk is the same account you use for your email then when ever you receive email the google talk transport will flash and notify you of the mail.
• Contacts : These are the people that you want to chat with . The different bulbs before a persons name indicates their current status. In the picture above my first contact azharessop was available ,the second contact Ewoudt was not available and the 3rd contact joubert.di was away. I will explain this a bit more in the next section.
• Minimized groups : One of the features that a lot of other applications don’t allow is the grouping of contacts. In the picture above the minimised groups section shows a group that i created and minimized. Groups allow you to well put many contacts into a group for east sorting since in Miranda we can have a lot more active users than normal (due to the fact that we can register for as many services as we want and its displayed in one window).
• Currently Active Transport : This will show you what transports that you are using is currently online. In out case the only transport that will be online will be jabber as that is what we use to connect to the local only jabber server.

Grouping

The grouping in Miranda is really useful because of the sheer number of contacts that a user can have. Below are a few tips to help out.

• Right Click on any gray area to display the grouping menu.
• Choose Hide Offline Users to well not show any users that are offline , as you can see in the picture above i use this very option since it helps reduce alot of the clutter.
• Hide Offline users out here is a weird option but still useful. This option hides all users that have not been assigned to a group.
• Hide empty groups servers 2 functions , the first is that it will hide a group that does not have users , the second is that it will hide a group in which all the users are offline.
• Disable groups , this does exactly what it say’s in that it will remove all your grouping and put all the users into one long list.
• Hide Miranda puts Miranda into the task bar.

It should be noted that when you choose the new group option a new group will be created , at this time you can give it any name that has not already been used. Also the group will be empty , to add new users simply drag them onto the group.

The Chat Window

I thought that since you are going to be spending most of your time chatting i might as well explain the chat window a little bit. I will be explaining from top to bottom and from left to right.

• Users Name : This is really simple , its just the name of the user you are chatting to.
• Status : This is quite important as it will allow you to determine if the user is available to chat or not.
• Initial Message : This is basically showing all messages sent by me. Things to note : The text of my messages is Grey, there is a red arrow at the beginning of all my messages (only one ) and the fact that the time is included.
• Reply Message : This is basically showing all messages sent to me. Things to note : The text of my messages is Black , there is a blue arrow at the beginning of all messages and the fact that the time is included.
• Chat area : This is the place where you type your message to send , nothing fancy here.

Not the end

While i would like to continue , there is just too much stuff that i can put in here so i will be splitting it up into multiple posts ,also depending on the input i get i will submit more posts explaining more sections in detail.

As always please leave a comment for help and any critisim.

~stalkerh