I haven't signed up for the Live messenger beta, so I don't know if microsoft has implemented this.

In MSN messenger i sort my contacts by group, mobile and group all offline contacts, I would like very much if there was a way that in my contacts list, groups with no online contacts would automatically collapse/contract. Also the reverse, wherein groups with contacts automatically expand. So i don't have to look at anything but online contacts.

Of course we should be able to turn it off for specific groups or all of them, for people who like it as it is now. I'm sure there are many other options that could go into it that i haven't thought of so comments are welcome.

This would go a long way into keeping my contacts list neat and tidy without me having to close groups without contacts online manually, as I have many contacts as i'm sure most people do. It would also save some screen real estate and time.

thanks for your time.

Yea I like this idea, I often have to close/open groups to fit them all on screen.

If no-one else creates this I might have a go at doing this somewhen.

U can do it with MSN 7.5 only...

There u can sort ur contact list by groups and auto-collapse the offline users.

But, i'm trying to make windows messenger more powerfull: i'm searching for a plugin or anything what enhance then.

There isn't an auto-collapse feature in Messenger 7.x, or WLM. However, I'll put it on the WLM newsgroup and see what the response is.

Besides autocollapsing a complete group, I would also like to be able to (de)block a complete group.
I guess this isn't possible at the moment, but would come in very handy

This is very possible.... with Messenger Plus! you can block and unblock complete groups at a time...

Say you have 3 groups... guys, girls, and other contacts.... If you want to unblock all the guys.... type in:

/blockgrp guys

then that should block the group guys...