I know that this has been discussed several times before and mainly suggested in the form of a plug-in, but is there any chance to consider to implement this feature in Messenger Plus! ?

I'm currently using MSN Shell (a bit of an obscure add-on for Messenger but it works very well) which has this 'auto hide to edge' feature and even an 'hide from taskbar' option. This way your desktop stays very clean and it just needs a mouse-to-the-edge movement to display the contact list.

Is there any reason why this was not considered before?

i dunno but that sounds like a great feature

True, I mean especially if people float their special contacts... what would be the point of having the main window?

You mean it fades out and then comes back when you drag your cursor over it??

I mean that if you place the Messenger contact-list window (the main window) on the side of your screen it would dissapear (hide) and if you mouse-over with your mouse it reappear. Just like with auto-hiding your Windows Taskbar, the same way of working.

why don't you use boss protection?

because he doesnt want to do that, he wants to dock and auto-hide it like any taskbar, or like what trillian can do, which i think is a great idea

i searched for MSN Shell but only found chinese/japanese (not sure) sites is there and english download for it anywhere?

yeah this sounds like a great feature although another way to do it would be dock the conact list then have a button on the right of that window that when u click it the contact windows slides into the far left of the screen with only this button visible on the side. either way would work nicely.

pfjew... finally some people understand what I mean

MSN Shell can be downloaded from http://www.msnshell.com/ (it's in chinese or something)... or direct download from: http://download.msnshell.com/messengershell531.exe

It works great actually but it's yet another process extra running on your machine. Would be nice if those auto-hide and hide-from-taskbar features would be implemented in MsgPlus!

This feature allows you to display the main Messenger interface without clicking any button, just simple slide the mouse to the edge of your screen and it shows up. No clicking needed (good point towards: R.S.I. ) hehe

I get it, Sounds like a great feature except it would annoy me when im browsing a webpage and move my mouse over there so somehow if it can be Auto hide, Always ontop unless full screen application is active or somthing like that. But great idea.

To avoid that you can resize the main Messenger window a bit to it doesn't 'conflict' with for example the Back-button in your web browser. I have my Messenger window set to the left side of my window so it doesn't interfere with the scrollbars while browsing
It just takes 2 days to get used to it and then you can't live without it anymore.

Probly a good idea atm mines positioned on the right side of my browser where the scrollbar is and i either have fullscreen browsing or mostly the whole screen of webpage and a small enough area to the right so that msn fits there with all the menu items (file, plus e.t.c) in one line.

Patchou ... what's your call on this ?

I'd like this feature as long as if it is a key shortcut, that it would ask you at least the first time so that you know whats happening. Otherwise we would have people complainging that "Plus! broke their Messenger"

When I first saw the title of this thread I thought that it mean't autohide contact window like it used to be with ICQ, this is the one feature in MSN Messenger I miss the most compare to ICQ. Basically one could go in options and set a certain time, for eg. 15 seconds, after which the Contact Window would dissapear. The window would popup each time someone logged in (optional) and or if you clicked on the Icon in the taskbar.

The most important reason why I miss this feature so much is, that ICQ upon connecting or starting would have the contact window open (to enable you to see if any contacts are online) and then if you had it set to autohide, the window would dissapear as per the time set in options. In MSN Messenger I don't like the window contact being open all the time, but the only way to stop that is to uncheck 'Open Messenger main window when Messenger starts', which means if there is a contact already online I would not see them. The other alternative is to manually close the window each time, which is a pain. Thus if the window would just open up long if for me to see it and then close, it would be great.

Indeed Sanjay, that would be nice to have too...

from time to time (say like every 15 minutes) I just have a peak who's on-line in my contact list and just for that it is very handy to move the mouse pointer to the side of my window and the contact list appears without clicking anything or using any keyboard shortcut. The contact list window hides back to the side if I move the mouse pointer away from the contact list window. That is the advantage of using MSN Shell add-on... but I would love to see this as a feature in Plus! (but perhaps that feature shouldn't be activated by default, users should have to enable it).

yes i agree with you renio you and sanjay both make great points. i remember the feature in icq that sanjay refers to it was great but yes renio your right adapt it so that you just hover over the edge of the screen to get the contact list back as opposed to having to double click the tray icon.