Our Download of the Day today is Pidgin 2.7.1.

Pidgin is a chat program which lets you log in to accounts on multiple chat networks simultaneously. This means that you can be chatting with friends on MSN, talking to a friend on Google Talk, and sitting in a Yahoo chat room all at the same time.

Pidgin runs on Windows, Linux, and other UNIX operating systems.

Pidgin is compatible with the following chat networks out of the box: AIM, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr. It can support many more with plugins.

Pidgin supports many features of these chat networks, such as file transfers, away messages, buddy icons, custom smilies, and typing notifications. Numerous plugins also extend Pidgin's functionality above and beyond the standard features.

Pidgin integrates with the system tray on Windows.

The latest version includes the following changes:

Changes in Version 2.78

* General
- Build fixes on OpenSolaris. (Brian Lu)
- Add configure option --enable-trayicon-compat which installs tray icons into directories that are compatible with older versions of hicolor-icon-theme (0.9).

* Pidgin
- Restore the tray icon's blinking functionality.
- Fix a crash setting moods when an account is disconnected.

* Bonjour
- Fix a crash on disconnect.

* ICQ
- Fix bug that caused HTML to be displayed in incoming messages.

* MSN
- Fix unnecessary bandwidth consumption for buddy icon requests when buddies have capital letters in their passport addresses.
- Support for direct connections, enabling faster file transfers, smiley and buddy icon loading. (Gábor Szuromi)

* XMPP
- Allow connecting to servers that advertise EXTERNAL (broken in 2.7.0)

* MXit
- Replace the MXit-specific mood management with the new standard Moods API.
- Add the standard MXit emoticons.
- Improve the handling of users being kicked from MultiMX rooms.
- MXit doesn't allow you to see your buddy's Email Address or Title, so remove those two fields from the "Buddy Information" page.
- Show buddy's Registration Country in their profile.
- Increment protocol version to v6.0
- If an invite you sent was rejected with a reason, display that message in the buddy tooltip.
- CAPTCHA value is a required field during account activation. (Resolves issue on Maemo)
- When your avatar image is changed, don't forget the user's profile information.

* Windows-Specific Changes
- Fix a regression introduced in 2.7.0 that caused Window Flashing not to work.