Since October 09 all we’ve had to play with was a public beta of Trillian for Widows 4.1 (version 4.1 is also known as Trillian Astra). But as of this month Trillian Astra Beta is old news – the final, stable version of the multi-protocol instant messaging application has been released to the public.

“We’re happy to announce the full release of Trillian for Windows 4.1! 4.1 includes hundreds of new changes, including mail improvements, Windows 7 integration, an improved status control, and powerful new Twitter and Facebook features! We’ve already started working on version 4.2, and will continue to support and maintain 4.1 should any new bugs appear,” announced Cerulean Studios, the company behind Trillian.

If you’ve played with the Beta release, then you already know what Trillian 4.1 has to offer. The stable release takes the features we’ve known about since the release of the Beta and makes sure they work without any snags. Here are the features I’m talking about:

Windows 7 Support

• Trillian 4.1 works with the user interface provided by the latest version of the Windows-based operating system, Windows 7.
• Tanks to Windows 7 API’s Trillian 4.1 can provide these handy functions: set your status from the Jump Lists, see the progress of your file transfers in the taskbar, see your status in the taskbar, enhanced taskbar thumbnails.

Enhanced Status Control

• You can change your status without changing your status message
• You can tweet from the contact list; when you set your status, a character count will appear (the Twitter plugin must be set to match your Trillian status)
• You can set a separate status for individual connections
• The options to set a status message as “away” and auto-responses have been brought back
• The option to activate a "hide button"; activate it from Preferences
• Disable buzz locally
• Screen capture supported for secondary monitors

Mail improvements

• Display mail in compact mode, full mode, or show them like Gmail
• More lines of text are displayed in the contact list
• Right click context menu to easily mark mail as read, spam, archive or delete the message.
• Improved email preview
• Notification windows are grouped together
• Next and back buttons for notifications
• Place notifications in any corner of the monitor
• Multiple monitors support for notifications

Twitter and Facebook Features

• Follow and unfollow from within Trillian
• Option to filter tweets
• News Feeds has a new layout
• The Contact List comes with several new Twitter features: Twitter searches, tweet from the contact list, Twitter “floater” windows
• The tweet window comes with TwitPic integration, character count, shortened URL support (bit.ly and TinyURL), an edit window for retweets
• Support for the new Facebook stream API

The final version of Trillian for Windows 4.1 is available for download here.