Just a quick update for those of you following the development of
Build 84, as promised. The burning questions: what's been going on,
and what's left on our task list before the next build?

Progress. This week we will be preparing for the server upgrades we've
referenced in previous posts; if all goes well, this will be taken
care of late this week or early next. After that's complete, the rest
of Build 84 is ready to go! We've already fixed over 250 bugs since
Build 83 alone, and Build 84 is also the first of our "graphics
finalization" builds, which means we're trying to polish up the skin
and user interface to a near-final state. Things like icons, logos,
and other seemingly minor (but very important!) touches have been
worked on for Build 84. We'll outline the full scope of changes and
fixes once we're finished.

"I want a build already!" Once Build 84 is released and has stabilized
(it's likely that we'll bash out a quick 85 to fix any major issues),
we'll begin the process of opening up the testing team to an
additional group of testers. We know a large number of you are (and
have been) waiting in the wings for quite some time, and we're working
non-stop to get you Trillian Astra. Whether you're a current Trillian
user, a former Trillian user, or a new Trillian user, we want you to
get a chance to test and evaluate Astra and let us know what you
think, and we'll be making sure everyone has the opportunity to do so
before a final product is released.

"Why is it taking so long? What are you actually *doing*?" There are
a large number of technical things going on behind the scenes, but
we're never quite sure if the blog readers are interested in hearing
these details or not. Let us know in the comments if you would like
to see more technically-oriented posts from us; we don't want to bore
folks with things unrelated to build progress, but if enough people
are interested we'd certainly enjoy discussing some of the
nitty-gritty details of what's going into Trillian Astra, How Stuff
Works, and Why Some Stuff Takes Forever. :)

Thanks for all of your patience and support. See you soon with Build 84!