Miranda NG is an open-source multiprotocol instant messaging application, designed for Microsoft Windows. Miranda NG is free software distributed under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later.
History
In May 2012 Miranda IM was forked to Miranda NG (New Generation). The reasons were a shift in the development team and the slow-paced development of the original Miranda IM. The main differences between the original client and the fork are: a switch to Visual Studio 2010's compiler, dropping support for Windows 95/98/ME and non-Unicode plugins, and the fact that the core and plugins development was combined and that they share a unified repository.
the latest version of Miranda NG is 0.96.3, released on 9 June 2023.
Architecture
Miranda IM provides a basic client framework, GUI, and an advanced plugin architecture. Support for various IM protocols and additional features is implemented through optional plugins, some of which come bundled with Miranda IM by default; the rest (over 500) were in the past available on the official addons site. Unused protocols can be removed.
Features
Customized look and function according to each individual's needs. Management and organization of hundreds of IM buddies on many IM networks Contact renaming Full message archive database Simple recall or deletion with the DB Tool or History Sweeper plugin. Contact details or photos visible with mouseover. (Needs additional plugin) No advertising Compact and portable: with few plugins Security/Privacy: Saves history on hard disk Low memory footprint
Connectivity
The protocol plugins included with Miranda IM are AIM, Gadu-Gadu, ICQ, IRC, Microsoft Messenger service (a.k.a. MSN, .NET, Live, etc.), XMPP (& Google Talk), and Yahoo! Messenger. Other protocols available via plugins include Bonjour Fetion, Facebook Messenger, Inter-Asterisk eXchange, Lotus Sametime, NetSend, Myspace, Tencent QQ, SIP, Skype (requires Skype), Tlen.pl, Xfire.
History
Early days
Miranda IM was first started by Roland Rabien (figbug) on 2 February 2000. At that time, it was a minimalist ICQ clone and officially called Miranda ICQ. The first public release, version 0.0.1, was released on 6 February 2000. This release used LibICQ, had no support for message history, database, and plugins, and had a distribution size of less than 100 KB.
A major new feature of version 0.0.4 was the MegaHAL chat bot, which enabled automatic chatting between Miranda and other ICQ users. Plugin support was added with version 0.0.6. Logger Plugin was the first plugin bundled with the official release.
Version 0.1.x
After the release of version 0.0.6.1 on 26 December 2000, the original developers left, and Richard "cyreve" Hughes took over the project. His first release, version 0.1.0.0 on 8 April 2001 was improved through a major rewrite. The split message dialog bundled with this release became the first messaging module to be put into a plugin. The .Net Messenger Service protocol plugin appeared around the time of version 0.1.1.0 release becoming the second messaging protocol to be supported by Miranda. This was also the first official release to support language pack translations. Miranda hence had multi-protocol, multi-language instant messenger features.
After v0.1.0.0, Miranda plugin development grew rapidly. With version 0.1.2.1 (28 February 2002), there were approximately 50 plugins available. At the time the new Lizard plugin enabled skinning support; the only time Miranda supported skins. Lizard development stopped soon after, due to the instability it caused.
Version 0.2.x
After the mysterious disappearance of cyreve in June 2002, the developers Martin Öberg (Strickz), Robert Rainwater (rainwater), Sam K (egoDust), and Lyon Lim (lynlimz) took over the project. The MSN protocol was taken over by Rako Shizuka who also developed the first version of Yahoo! Messenger protocol, which was the third protocol supported by Miranda. The Yahoo! plugin was closed source, and lost reliability as the official Yahoo! Messenger protocol changed over time – it was later re-written by new developer Gennady Feldman.
The first of the non-IM plugins, including RSS News and Weather, were released within this period. These added a contact to contact list for the purpose of displaying information to the user rather than chatting.
Discussion about renaming of the program and removal of ICQ from the core began about this time. Due to the increase of protocol support, the project was officially renamed to Miranda IM on 17 December 2002.