Shoutbox

Hey everyone,

I'm currently not at home and my remote desktop connection is not functionning properly so I can't work on Plus! tonight (and this rarely ever happens ). I thought I could take the opporunity to talk a little about what's going on in the Messenger community these days, after all, I'm not posting that much these days.

As some of you already know, Messenger Plus! is now 3 years and a 1/2 old and despite some feature names that have been kept unchanged (like the Quick Texts), the current version has almost nothing to do with the first one that was released so long ago. The same goes for Messenger itself which has come a long way since version 3.6. In all that time, I somehow managed to keep your interest, often by filling some of the obvious lacks of Messenger (despite the fact that it's always been my favorite Messenger client) but with the imminent release of Messenger 7, I have to say, I have some doubts.

Messenger is starting to become a fully mature program, with lots of good stuff included out-of-the-box, and it seems that Messenger Plus! doesn't "shine" as much as it used to shine. I'm still spending more time than ever on the program, however, I refuse to add gadget features that look good at first and are not being used more than 2 or 3 times, and now, it seems that I'm starting to touch the end of what can be useful in an instant messaging program. On top of that, Microsoft seems to finally be catching up and some people are already talking about offline messaging, personalised statuses and other similar stuff in the next version of Messenger. Of course, I can't complain about that, these features should have been in the client a long time, it's just that it feels like Messenger Plus! will lose too much of its appeal and of course, that's not a idea I enjoy a lot .

Note that I'm not complaining about the general popularity of my software, my download stats have never been so high, the sponsor is generating a nice revenue for me, everything on the business-side is fine. However, you have to admit that there are not as many posts on this forum as there used to be (this goes for almost any Messenger forum I know in fact), people are now just "used to" Plus!, some like it, some don't, but most people know it exists. Also, I just realised that the last real public update I released is more than 7 months old already... time flies! In all that time, I've been busy replying to people's concern, changing stuff in the sponsor program to make it les annoying for some people (and apparently, it worked), making all the necessary adjustements for a full Messenger 7 compatibility etc... it pains me to realise that I won't be able to release the new version before at least another month. However, there's good news in all this.

The version I'm preparing will not be labeled 3.40 but 3.50. Just like I did for Messenger Plus! 2.50 last year, I want this update to be worthwhile, I want to make sure people still have a couple of good reasons to reinstall Messenger Plus! right after they reinstalled Windows. Unfortunately, as I said above, it's becoming increasingly difficult to add new stuff that will be fun for more than 5 minutes, however, I think I can now announce you that in the past 3 weeks, I've been working on one big new feature for the next version. This feature will be compatible with any Messenger version from 4 to 7 and should boost everyone's interest . I won't tell you now what this feature is but I can tell you that I never spent so much time on one given feature and I still probably have 2 weeks of work to put on it before it's ready to be beta tested (private testing, no more public beta before the release). The bad point is that it's the kind of feature that more "advanced" users will probably find to be useless, however, I'm pretty sure that everyone else will enjoy it a lot. How can I say such a thing? because I have my feature statistics of course! They've proven to be extremely useful and showed me how much this new feature could be appreciated, that's why I started to work on it in the first place.

So, I'm still working on it, there's a lot of stuff to do and I want it to be perfectly packaged by the time of the final release so please, be patient. If everything goes according to plan, I'll post screenshots in the middle of the month of January. Messenger Plus! is still packed with a lot of unique features, the new version will bring a couple of intersting improvements but I'm still putting all my hopes on this one big new feature. It is my hope that it will help Plus! to keep its place in your everyday chats, but in the end, you'll be the ones who decide about that. I'm just here to try to code what my users wish to see in the programs they use.

Thank you for reading, Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year!
Patchou