Cerulean Studios recently introduced an impressive new "continuous client" feature in its Trillian instant messaging software. It automatically synchronizes conversations between multiple devices, allowing users to seamlessly carry their chat sessions between multiple computers or from a computer to a smartphone and back again without any disruption.

Most of the mainstream instant messaging protocols already allow users to establish multiple connections or run multiple client instances at the same time, but they don't echo the full conversation on all connected devices or allow you to see the contents of your existing conversations when you establish a new connection on a different device. Trillian's continuous client functionality remedies those issues by fully synchronizing the contents of your open chat windows between instances of the client.

When you step away from your desktop computer, you can launch Trillian on your phone and see the same exact conversations that you had open on your desktop. The backlog of messages in all of your chat windows will be replicated exactly on your phone. You can chat with your contacts and continue those conversations without skipping a beat.

When you get back home, you can launch Trillian on your desktop computer again and it will sync back up with the chat activity that took place on the phone. All of the incoming and outgoing messages will be there. It even tracks when you close a conversation and will synchronize that activity accordingly across devices.

Trillian is essentially moving your entire chat session into the cloud and making it accessible through desktop and mobile clients which can seamlessly detach and reconnect as needed. This feature is made even more compelling by the breadth of Trillian's platform support. Cerulean offers Trillian client applications with conversation synchronization enabled on Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac OS X. The feature is also fully supported by the Web-based Trillian client, which means that users can also pick up their ongoing conversations in any Flash-enabled Web browser by logging in at the Trillian website.

When Cerulean first announced plans for the chat sync feature earlier this month, it explained that the concept was inspired by an Engadget editorial in which writer Joshua Topolsky called for a more portable desktop computing experience that could be moved seamlessly between devices. Topolsky coined the phrase "continuous client" to describe such a computing environment—a sort of modern-day reimagining of the thin-clients of yore.

Cerulean's sophisticated backend communication infrastructure made it possible to deliver a robust continuous client implementation for instant messaging. The secret sauce is a server-side framework that Cerulean developers refer to as the "octopus." It manages all of the users' connections to instant messaging services and routes all of the incoming and outgoing messages.

The new continuous client features build on Trillian's existing support for synchronizing buddy lists and managing log-in credentials for the user's chat accounts. Users won't have to input all of their account information on every new device where they want to use Trillian—they just have to supply their Trillian username and password.

Putting it to the test

The flagship Windows version of Trillian was the first to gain support for the continuous client functionality. The Mac client just got it during this past week. I tested the feature across several different devices and operating systems, including a Windows-powered HP netbook, a Mac Pro desktop computer, a Nexus One smartphone, an iPad, a hacked Nook Color, and Google's Cr-48 Chrome OS prototype laptop. The message syncing worked impressively well across all of the supported environments.

Messages appear on all devices, but Trillian will attempt to intelligently direct notifications to only the device that is currently in use. This is highly advantageous because it means you can leave Trillian actively connected on your phone all day and not have to worry about it beeping or buzzing when you are chatting on your desktop computer.

The notification handling works pretty well in practice, but it took me a few days to adjust. In one case, I failed to notice a message from a colleague because the notification went to my phone in another room and I wasn't paying attention to the chat window when I sat down at my desktop computer.

The availability status that Trillian broadcasts to the various chat networks is based on the consensus of all of the connected clients. If I have Trillian running on my phone and my desktop computer, for example, it won't tell my contacts that I'm "away" unless I set my status as "away" on both devices. This is pretty sensible behavior, but there are times when I want to be able to override it universally. It can get a bit annoying when I just want to set myself as "away" and have to do it on a bunch of different devices.

Trillian clients

The Trillian clients applications are sort of a mixed bag. The flagship Windows client is wonderful, but the rest are all slightly deficient in a handful of minor ways. The continuous client functionality is the killer feature that makes them all worth using.

The iOS version of Trillian was only designed for the iPhone and consequently has to be used with pixel doubling on the iPad. Cerulean unfortunately only has one developer working on both the iOS and Mac versions of the client, so there are understandably some prioritization challenges.

The Mac version of Trillian is significantly less powerful and configurable than Adium and is still missing some key features like multiuser chat. There isn't a way to pull conversations out of the chat window and organize them as desired. It also lacks support for configuring the appearance of conversations, so you are stuck with bubbles.

The Android client is pretty nice by Android standards and has a relatively decent feature set, but it lacks a log viewer and a few other desirable features. My biggest gripe with the Trillian client for Android is that it tends to spontaneously terminate.

Trillian 5 for Windows, which is technically still in beta, is the best of the Trillian clients. It's slim, elegant, and packed with features. It's got a lot of complicated bells and whistles, but it wears them well, so they aren't too intrusive. I think it marks a return to the enlightened design philosophy of Trillian's glory days, before the era or eye-searing gradients and obscenely oversized user interface elements that made the previous version of Trillian for Windows utterly intolerable.

The Web-based Trillian client, which I tested on the Cr-48, is unfortunately stuck in the ugly duckling era. From a functionality standpoint, however, it fared pretty well.

The mobile clients cost $4.99 and the desktop clients are available as free downloads. Users can pay $25 for a Trillian Pro license (currently discounted to $15), which will add a number of features. On the continuous client front, the pro license will get you server-side chat logging and the ability to remotely disconnect various clients.

Conclusion

Cerulean is delivering something truly unique with its continuous client functionality. It neatly fixed one of my biggest gripes with instant messaging and has made Trillian a must-have for me across all devices. Some of the individual Trillian platform ports are a bit weak and need more work, but the general direction that Cerulean is going seems exceptionally promising.