Updated Pidgin Plugin

<p>We just uploaded an updated version of our plugin for the Windows Pidgin client. You can find it in the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/libraryh3lp/downloads/list">Downloads</a> section of the wiki. This version corrects an issue with the first release of the plugin where Pidgin crashes when the patron sends an empty line before a librarian has responded to a new, incoming the chat. The <a href="http://libraryh3lp.blogspot.com/2008/05/plugin-for-pidgin.html">original plugin features</a> are unchanged at this time, but in a month or so, we'll be releasing some new features in another version of this plugin.<br /><br />This might be a good place to mention one of the design goals we had when providing customized client features. Plugins are relatively easy to install and update on large numbers of computers; systems administrators can do things like push them out using a batch file called during a login script, even if they don't have fancy software deployment tools at their disposal. This is a lot easier than fully installing a complete client across goodness-knows-how-many-computers, each time features are updated. So, one of our goals was to limit customization of locally-installed clients to plugins if at all possible.<br /><br />Eric is working hard on a fully web-based client for librarians. We hope to release that in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!</p>

We just uploaded an updated version of our plugin for the Windows Pidgin client. You can find it in the Downloads section of the wiki. This version corrects an issue with the first release of the plugin where Pidgin crashes when the patron sends an…