new live messenger

someone at www.mess.be just posted this download link

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/e/0/3e0467fc-a26f-4001-b352-cd1a274f957b/EN/Install_Messenger.exe

it runs alot better then the beta i had

Does it...

• Have eye-gourgingly bad adverts liberally sprinkled around the UI?
• Use bitmaps for every UI element, slowing down windowing operations?
• Allow people to "nudge" me and block my view of Messenger conversations with oversized and generally pointless flash animations?
• Make it harder to work with contacts by hiding necessary info like their email address behind two cascading menus?
• Prevent me from renaming my contacts?
• Store conversation logs in an unnecessarily bloated and verbose XML format?
• Integrate heavily with existing Windows Live services that are useless to users of non-Hotmail passport addresses, yet shows the links in the UI anyway?
• Allow users to put emoticons in their names and have the emoticons show up in the conversation window?
• Allow amazingly annoying animated emoticons?

If so, then I'm sticking with good ol' fashioned Windows Messenger 4.7

Sorry sticking with AMSN.  Lots of different platforms in use and aMSN supports them all.  Sorry Microsoft, but as long as you keep a Windows XP only approach to your software, I dont think I will use it all that much.

Refrax wrote:

someone at www.mess.be just posted this download link

http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/e/0/3e0467fc-a26f-4001-b352-cd1a274f957b/EN/Install_Messenger.exe

it runs alot better then the beta i had

W3bbo wrote:

Does it...

• Have eye-gourgingly bad adverts liberally sprinkled around the UI?
• Use bitmaps for every UI element, slowing down windowing operations?
• Allow people to "nudge" me and block my view of Messenger conversations with oversized and generally pointless flash animations?
• Make it harder to work with contacts by hiding necessary info like their email address behind two cascading menus?
• Prevent me from renaming my contacts?
• Store conversation logs in an unnecessarily bloated and verbose XML format?
• Integrate heavily with existing Windows Live services that are useless to users of non-Hotmail passport addresses, yet shows the links in the UI anyway?
• Allow users to put emoticons in their names and have the emoticons show up in the conversation window?
• Allow amazingly annoying animated emoticons?
• If so, then I'm sticking with good ol' fashioned Windows Messenger 4.7
  

• the adverts are not that bad
• looks like it does
• those are fun, but i keep them turned off at work under options.
• click the up/down arrows and select show details
• rightclick contact, add a nickname
• turn that option off?
• ignore them?
• ignore them?

everyone likes different things. don't like it, don't use it. but so far i like it.

Charles wrote:

I'm interviewing the Live Messenger team (Windows Live Messenger, to be official branding compliant...) on Thursday.

What do you want to know?
C

FINALLY!

Charles, I've got dozens of questions to ask the MSN Messenger/WLM Messenger guys about all the seemingly boneheaded design descisions they've made.

The big ones are:

• Why winks and nudges? WHY?! What could be a HUMANE explanation!?
• Why are there so many adverts in the program now, compared to earlier versions of Messenger?
• Obviously your Messenger product won't be liked by all (myself included), so why aren't there any other up-to-date official first-party client products available (besides Office Communicator, but that's not publically availalbe)
• What do you feel about third-party clients to the service and programs like Messenger Plus?
• Why did it take you until Messenger 6 to add chat-log support? And why did you opt for a seemlingly bloated XML format instead of a more efficient plaintext format like Messenger Plus?
• Why should I, a disaffected former-MSN user, use Windows Live Messenger?
• Animated emoticons in display names: why?

I think that pretty much sums it up

I understand if you can't fit all of them in, but can you at least include the first two questions?

Charles wrote:

I'm interviewing the Live Messenger team (Windows Live Messenger, to be official branding compliant...) on Thursday.

What do you want to know?
C

Why can't we right click a link from 'Live Favorites' in WLM8 and select 'Copy-Link' OR be able to drag'n-drop links to a conversation window.

w3bbo ,

an xml log format is essentially good even though there should be the option of saving in plain text. for instance i would love it if my irc chat logged in xml so i could easily reformat the transcripts for the web. its also potentially better for indexing.

Charles wrote:

I'm interviewing the Live Messenger team (Windows Live Messenger, to be official branding compliant...) on Thursday.

What do you want to know?
C

I want to know why I keep getting these annoying error messages with regards to scripts errors in the ads section of the main window. This happens when a firewall is installed, like Outpost firewall, which might block pop-ups. But in my case it does not block the ads, I see them fine. But I keep getting script errors from that browser that is hosted on the windows forms.

here is the error msg
---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
A Runtime Error has occurred.
Do you wish to Debug?

Line: 87
Error: Object expected
---------------------------
Yes   No  
---------------------------


They need to suppress these errors somehow (script error on line something something.) I tried to suppress script errors from all browsers (IE7) but that did not affect the Ads browser in Windows Live messenger.



Second thing, What security improvments did they add? Are IM messages still not encrypted? If not, why not encrypt them especially over lan, where packets can be sniffed.

Can exploits be used over the Display picture? does messenger check if an image is malformed somehow ?

WHY is there no Auto-Update feature in the program? A way to check for new releases under the Help menu?



Just to remove a misconception: Ask them if its true that someone can find your online status if you block them or not. Just want to know from a technical side.



Thanks

W3bbo wrote:



• Why winks and nudges? WHY?! What could be a HUMANE explanation!?
• Why are there so many adverts in the program now, compared to earlier versions of Messenger?
• Animated emoticons in display names: why?

I second these three questions, and add on the following of my own:

1. Why isn't there an option to use standard Windows gui components and turn off skinning?¿?

2. Why can't we get rid of all of the extraneous buttons on the chat interface and just have two text boxes, one for receiving messages in and one for typing messages out of. Instead, can we have "normal" menus for these, or an option to get them?¿?

3. Why isn't messenger going to be bundled in Vista anymore?¿? I really like Windows Messenger 4.7, and it no longer works under Vista.

4. Why isn't there support for custom status messages, so instead of saying something like "Busy" or "Away" I can say whatever I want?¿?

5. Why isn't there an option to uninstall and remove all of the extra non-messenger functions?¿? Why are those even in there in the first place?¿? I'm referring to the nudges, winks, backgrounds, games, activities, etc. Sure provide such functionality as plugins or something, but give us an option to not even have such things at all.

6. How many people actually click on those advertisements?¿? And just how much are people paying you to advertise there?¿?

anyone else having to confirm there e-mail address? What a pain in the I'll watch my language but it's ridicilous. Takes you to five pages to confirm then have to open up outlook....and so on.

andur wrote:


6. How many people actually click on those advertisements?¿? And just how much are people paying you to advertise there?¿?

I click on the videos of people doing stupid things and getting hurt, but not the ads. Of course I never look at the main messenger window, so it can display all the ads it wants.

I can't blame them for catering to the mass market and not to channel 9 readers, although a tad more customization would be nice.

*Edit: removed an extra comma

W3bbo wrote:



• Why winks and nudges? WHY?! What could be a HUMANE explanation!?

Because people want them. And people love them.
They do, you know. Also the themes and skins and dynamic backgrounds and the rest of the features that make it look like a tinkertoy. Not just schoolkids.. PEOPLE.

You don't. I don't. Many other techie people don't. Alas, we are not the target demographic.

W3bbo wrote:

• Why are there so many adverts in the program now, compared to earlier versions of Messenger?

What sort of answer do you want the TECHNICAL team to give you?

W3bbo wrote:

• Obviously your Messenger product won't be liked by all (myself included), so why aren't there any other up-to-date official first-party client products available (besides Office Communicator, but that's not publically availalbe)

Now that's a good question. Mintaining two seperate codebases against the same protocol and keeping similar features, like the Windows Messenger/MSN Messenger split - is obviously a bad idea. But as long as the WLM has some skinning support, it should support a classic, retro skin.
I'm sure the WLM team have thought of it. What are their thoughts about it? Are they considering it? If not, why?

W3bbo wrote:

• Why did it take you until Messenger 6 to add chat-log support? And why did you opt for a seemlingly bloated XML format instead of a more efficient plaintext format like Messenger Plus?

Again, what sort of answer do you expect to get for "Why didn't you do what I wanted in the first place?"? Especially considering they DID implement it quite a while ago.

And as for the XML logfiles - my total History folder weighs about 2.5MB of uncompressed logs. I'm not a heavy chatter, but I do use it daily with several people. Using plaintext would, what, cut it in half? It's peanuts. The benefits of having an easy-to-use XML format (the history display itself uses it - it's just an XSLT transform) are obvious.

W3bbo wrote:

• Animated emoticons in display names: why?

See answer #1 above. Because people like them. Good enough reason, isn't it?

Charles wrote:

I'm interviewing the Live Messenger team (Windows Live Messenger, to be official branding compliant...) on Thursday.

What do you want to know?
C

• Why can't we dock Messenger to the side of the screen yet?
• Have the WLM team thought about sidebar integration?
• Why such large adverts?
• Why such a large memory footprint, even when minimised or in the tray?
• Why was the "signed in" tray icon changed to have a faded look? To me, that conveys the state "away".
  

Hmm, let me try this from a different angle:

Is it fair to say that the target audience for live messenger is not the average developer, but the average home user?

Is it fair to say that a lot of those users click through the ads, which generates revenue?

Without that revenue would there be the current level of development on messenger?

I would think it also likely give then above assumptions that we are likly to see more things like nudges and winks, as these are popular with the target audience. Would that be right?