#escargotchat — Public Fediverse posts

***Attention! If you miss MSN/Windows Live Messenger, AIM, and/or ICQ, this is for you! If you use a screen reader and want a 100% accessible messenger client, this is also for you.*
This works with Windows XPthrough 11, and I'm logged into it as I write! It's called Escargot, and it revives Windows Live/MSN Messenger. This is the original software, but it has been patched so that it connects to the escargot.chat server and not the Microsoft one. It is 100% free and accessible with NVDA and I'm sure JAWS as well. They also have projects for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and ICQ, including for Android and IOS, and are working on a web client for MSN. (I don't know if AIM or ICQ are accessible with screen readers, as I have never tried them). Anyway, if you're over twenty-one (my personal request), have read my profile here, and wish to add me, I am [email protected]. You can find everything here.

http://www.escargot.chat

Note: If you already have Windows Live/MSN Messenger on your system, you will still need to download their version and create an account. Your Microsoft, MSN, or Hotmail one won't work for signing in. Also, remember to click on RUN_AFTER_INSTALL.exe, in order to patch the program to the Escargot server.

#accessibility #AIM #Android #AOL #blind #chat #Escargot #EscargotChat #ICQ #IOS #Messenger #MSN #MsnMessenger #Microsoft #NVDA #Talkback #technology #Voiceover #Windows #WindowsLiveMessenger

My friends had been messing around with #escargotChat -- Which if you don't know, is a fan-revival of the old #msnMessenger with a pirate server.

It made me realise a few things about #UIdesign -- I feel like there were a lot of things that we allowed to become lost over the years. Things from computer programmes of the past that were super clever and we should have kept around.

Chiefly here, I wish modern applications weren't so terrified of opening more than one window.

Having your contacts list be a separate window that you can minimise and flick around saves a lot of screen real estate. And while having each conversation be its own window is wasteful, maybe a web-browser like system where you have tabs but can drag them out into their own window would be nice.

Heck, most modern applications are just web browser tabs in disguise anyway. So why not?

Also frutiger aero gradients are inherently prettier than modern flat-everything design, but I thought that'd go without saying as something outright obvious