Messenger 8 Beta feedback

Messenger 8 Beta has a "send feedback" button, but it just has a bunch of multiple choice answers to irrelevant questions.

Even though I posted on their blog, it's so full of unrealistic feature suggestions and chatter that the critical suggestions are probably drowned out, so I figure this might be a better place to talk about feedback.

What sort of suggestions do you guys have?

Here's what I posted on their blog so far:

reinux wrote:

****Conversation window aesthetics
-Colorized title bars waste of space, defeats purpose of collapsible title/menu bars. At least put the conversation name/email address there, or just get rid of it.
-Just use custom colored wallpapers for the default wallpaper instead, like Windows Media Player.
-Automatically reduce buttons and collapse toolbars upon shrinking a conversation window.
-Space between "Send" and "Search waste of space.
-Image border is ugly; the left and right sides need more spacing.
-Ads at bottom of conversation windows should be left aligned.
-"Last message sent 2006/..." should be left or center aligned.
-Ignore button is in an area too crowded; I find myself clicking it by accident often.
-Clicking on own image in conversation window should bring up display icon menu; sudden change causes confusion.
-Send button should be visibly enabled when typing a message.
-Indicate the time of the last message from the logs as well.
-Send normal file request to users with older clients automatically, otherwise they don't see them.
-Title bar bottom looks ugly with black background.
-The "voice memo" button is the only one that doesn't set the mouse cursor to "link". Personally I prefer using the normal arrow cursor since it's a Windows button, not a Web button.
-Resizable border between input box and output box is bigger than the actual draggable size.

****Logging (IMPORTANT)
-Conversation logs should be saved progressively even if it takes the effort of not using an xml document object, because:
1. it defeats half the purpose of logging if the messages don't get saved upon crashing.
2. saving xml all at once is excruciatingly slow; closing a window is often so slow that it feels like it's crashed.
-Logging should start once logging is enabled in the options, NOT on the next time the conversation windows are opened.

****Buddy list window aesthetics
-Ad space needs to be SMALLER.
-PLEASE no Flash ads. GIF I can tolerate.
-Margins need to be SMALLER.
-Top bar with name/self icon etc should be collapsible.
-Mouse over user should bring up contact's email address.
-Display by display name should show user names, NOT nicknames, because people often have important messages in their user names, and it's way too late to change that habit now.
-Need a way to go shuffle through users' edit profile windows really quick; otherwise the search bar at the top is inconvenient to use.
-(Online) (Away) (Do not Disturb) need to be put back in.
-Use old 16x16 icons -- green/light green makes no sense; even though it's easier to see from a distance, it's useless to the colorblind and nearly defeats the purpose of having numerous away states.
-I can only fit 19 users on a 1152x864 monitor with the window maximized. This window REALLY needs to be cleaned up.

****Bugs
-Send dies at 2kb before end.
-Multiple user conversation crashed MSN a couple times already. No idea how to repro except to keep trying it.

****Performance on a P4 2.4 HT with 1gb of RAM.
-Unbelievably slow performance -- 3 hours total CPU time running for just over a day (probably due to a few animated emoticons, but still inexcusable).
-Scrolling through buddy list window NEEDS TO BE OPTIMIZED.
-Start the log window on a separate thread.

****Etc
-Japanese translations need some revision.
-Feedback page only brings up multiple choice answers to irrelevant questions; defeats purpose of beta. Fortunately you guys have a blog
-"Has just signed in" boxes are huge, title bars waste of space, but the names are truncated way too early. It's too late to convince people not to use names for messages.
-Volume control on voice chat should not mess with both main volume and wav volume -- it's extremely inconvenient. Muting mutes all sound as well.
-Make display message API available to public; otherwise you might provoke another lawsuit by Real Networks etc.

- Make the main messenger window dockable.. maybe even the chat windows too

- Fix those random crashes I keep having

Actually there is a feedback alias "msgrfdbk" at a microsoft alias (not typing it out due to spam)

Ensure your feedback is clear and understandable in which area your describing. Also provide your messenger client build number.

Please also note tht some of the feedback your giving has already been taken by other users and is being addressed

What do you mean by

"-Send button should be visibly enabled when typing a message."

barrieo wrote:

Actually there is a feedback alias "msgrfdbk" at a microsoft alias (not typing it out due to spam)

barrieo wrote:

What do you mean by

"-Send button should be visibly enabled when typing a message."

hmm funny the "nick is typing a message" works for me. are you running build 0365? whats ur status set as?

You need to allow more developer access to your Messenger client and most importantly to your Messenger Service. You should open up your client to customization through its own api and the ability to write add-ins for the product. Also, you should allow any developer to be able to connect to your service by writing his/her own client. For this to happen, the apis for communicating with the Messenger Service should also be published then, much like Google does with their own im service.
If you do not push and deploy yourself im standards then instant messaging will never become as popular as e-mail. Im should become and has the potential to become as pervasive as e-mail. I strongly believe that there is a lot of potential in this area and the company that produces progress in this field will be the one to succeed in the long run. An im standard should be agree uppon and an identity standard. Instant messaging should be free and seemless, independent of which messaging service the user chooses. There should be true interoperability. What are you thinking on this and on the availability of more Messenger apis?
Your blog is more like an advertisement. It is  mostly advertising and there is much less technical and serious talk. You say: "Come and see this new thing and the other new feature" and there is a lot of humour. Fine, but we need also more serious discussions around the above topics of where the future of im is going and what should be your general plans and strategy in regards to standards and api/platform support.
In addition, you should take note of the fact that your messenger client is getting more and more overloaded and heavy with each release. Still there is no Mac or Linux/Unix (other oses) support to the extend of Windows and not all features are supported in all regions, eg. the Search Cabability is only for the USA. If you advertise an activity and make it available everywhere. And I am sure that this is not a language issue but a resource (money) issue!
Finally, your client is not getting the attention it deserves regarding its voice (calling) cababilities. Moreover, the Activity api is used very little. I believe that there is a lot of potential in expanding the Activity api and promoting more and encouraging developers to write more apps for the Messenger client. You do not promote this a lot. Plus, Application Sharing although it has been there for a long time, it has not been used by many people due to user interface issues, I believe, and other NAT traversal issues which make both App Sharing and Voice Conversations difficult to carry out. It would be much easier for a compeditor to provide a better interface and overall functionality for App Sharing and Voice Conversations with minimal efford. So, please fix and enhanse these functionalities now before they become the next "big" thing for your competitors.

the biggest problem i have with messenger is:

i use it for business, family and friends

having all three on one account makes it impossible to use the features i would like to, i cannot attach a myspace, show my currently playing music, put any personal messages in, etc. As it would innapropriate for work and in some cases family.

since it is also not possible to run two instances, i just ignore these features.

i also prefered in msn 7 how the thumbnails showed next to people's names when it was cached, rather than the standard msn icons until you roll over them in live.

also none of the interactive advertisements work for me - they all open in firefox and indicate i must install internet explorer... (though it is installed) i think advertisers would be pretty upset!

also, i think the concepts of cards is pretty useless

either make it so you can open more than one, and reduce the clicking... the flip card thing is annoying, too much work to get to that info

or make it expand/collapseable inline with the contact list

barrieo wrote:

hmm funny the "nick is typing a message" works for me. are you running build 0365? whats ur status set as?

It would be nice to have the ability to use multiple accounts. Having the ability to have a work/personal system as posted above.

Hmm, I haven't had any problems with Messenger except for when you use the sharing folders option, you'll find yourself - 8GB free space.  If you examine your application data/microsoft/msn folder after using sharing folders for a bit, you'll see what I mean.

I'd love them to fix this.

MSN Messenger 8 uses MSN Messenger 7.5's Microsoft Installer database (I know, I pulled it apart using Orca!).  This means it has the same bug that MSN Messenger 7.x and 6.x did - namely, it wont install into an Active Directory environment from Group Policy.

The fix is well known and pretty simple, as constructed by Carolyn Napier of Microsoft's own Microsoft Installer dev team:

Here's what you need to do:
1) In the Feature table, you need to change the MsgrFeat attributes value from 24 to 16 (this removes the disallow advertise attribute)
2) You need to add a populated AdvtExecuteSequence table to the package. The easiest method is to export the AdvtExecuteSequence table from the sequence.msi sample package included in the Windows Installer SDK. Then use the import table functionality to import the advtExecuteSequence table into the messenger package.

Here's what my AdvtExecuteSequence table looks like:

CostInitialize 800
CostFinalize 1000
InstallValidate 1400
InstallInitialize 1500
CreateShortcuts 4500
RegisterClassInfo 4600
RegisterExtensionInfo 4700
RegisterProgIdInfo 4800
RegisterMIMEInfo 4900
PublishComponents 6200
MsiPublishAssemblies 6250
PublishFeatures 6300
PublishProduct 6400
InstallFinalize 6600



Its not that its difficult to do, and I do this with every update of MSN Messenger, but, really, admins shouldn't have to edit the tables of MSN Messenger because the team is too lazy to implement the fix and make their MSI even slightly correct.

They aren't so much problems as they are small annoyances as of Messenger 7 that are beginning to seriously build up. Summed up, my biggest gripe is that it needs to waste less screen space. The margins have to be smaller and the useless title bars and stuff need to go away.

The only real problem I have is with logging. If I can't rely on it to keep record of everything that's being said, I can't use Messenger for business.

The margins I have a feeling will be glass on Vista. 

If my feeling is correct, that would be really cool.

mVPstar wrote:

The margins I have a feeling will be glass on Vista. 

If my feeling is correct, that would be really cool.

I have this feeling because WMP11's non-glass UI has everything grey where the glass should be. 

Live Messenger seems to have everything grey so -> glass?

Has anyone run it on vista here?  It might already have glass there (at least it would be nice).

Screenshots would be nice.