Is there an actual tutorial somewhere?

[Evan Platt]

At 09:04 AM 2/9/2009, you wrote:
>Last Friday I installed Pidgin on my WindowsXP 
>system so I could chat with one of my clients. 
>His company uses SameTime, and someone pointed 
>out that Pidgin supports this protocol. I’ve 
>even managed to send my contact a test message – 
>and received a response, but the process has been PAINFUL!

Pidgin for me has been one of the most user 
friendly and easy to use IM clients... That's just me though.

>Furthermore, none of the resources I’ve been 
>able to find on-line have been very helpful – 
>including the “user’s guide” and the FAQ on 
>pidgin.im. For example, the user’s guide says 
>the following: “Use the Account Editor 
>(Accounts->Add/Edit) to add the account of the 
>appropriate messaging service.” There’s nothing 
>here though that tells me where to find the “Account Editor”.

Well, it does appear that the FAQ is incorrect. 
But if you go under Accounts, there's only a few 
choices, and the top one is "Manage Accounts". 
Seems pretty self explanatory to me.

Pidgin isn't a big complicated program. It would 
probably take you 10 minutes to go through every 
page of every option to configure it. Maybe even less.

>   Is there a nice, simple tutorial somewhere 
> that tells/shows you how to use the program??????

I just read through the FAQ, and it seemed to do 
a prretty good job for me... Granted I've been using pidgin for years.

>
>Some specific questions/comments:
>
>- When I launch the program I get a bare window 
>with a drop-down at the bottom that says 
>“Available”. I assume this is supposed to 
>contain my buddy list, but nothing I do on the 
>main screen in this window (double-click, 
>right-click) causes anything to happen.

Once you've added accounts, go to Accounts, Enable Account, or hit Control-A.

>
>- After much searching I finally found the 
>Pidgin link in my system’s tool tray. This, in 
>fact, is what allowed me to add a SameTime account and to send a new message.
>
>- So far I haven’t been able to find anything 
>that resembles “add name to buddy list”

Buddies, Add Buddy (or Control-B.

>   Like I said earlier, a nice, simple tutorial 
> – preferably one complete with screen shots – 
> would really help me figure out how to use this tool.
>
>
>   (BTW – I was originally directed to 
> <http://www.pidgin.com>www.pidgin.com for the 
> downloads, but I couldn’t find anything there 
> that looked reasonable. I did eventually find 
> pidgin.im, which looks like it’s the official 
> pidgin site. Did someone tie up the former so you can’t use it?

Sure looks like a cybersquatter to me...  I'm 
curious and the developers may be too, what directed you to pidgin.com ?