I'm sure you are all wondering, what exactly does Messenger Plus! Live have in store for the ten million users+? Well I'm going to introduce you to the new product as well as give some detailed information on the new product. Keep reading!
First off, lets look at the installation. With a brand new product, you can expect a new user interface. Plus! Live has been completely re-designed from scratch. Patchou, Guido, and a to my knowledge a new designer
Nicholas has made a huge face lift to Plus!. The new user interface is very clean, minimalistic, and matches Windows Live Messenger awesomely. The installation is quite the same as the old Messenger Plus!, but I've noticed a very considerable difference in the install time of the new Plus! Live. The sponsor package is still included in Plus! Live, but is
completely and totally optional like always. You still have the ability to choose where to install the program. There is also various changes in the layout which you can see from the screenshots (See bottom of the post
).
Lets talk about features, we know everyone wants to know what's the latest things coming from Plus! Live. What's my favorite new feature? Some of you have probably already seen this via beta tester's screename's, but let me tell you more. My favorite new feature of Plus! Live is
screenname and personal message gradients. Gradients are a fade of a color from light to dark, dull to bright. Besides that, we all know what you all have been anticipating,
XML logs 
. The way Plus! logged in the past has completely changed in Plus! Live. You can now choose to save your logs in XML files which means you keep color, emoticons, winks, custom emoticons, hand written pictures, and all that good stuff in a XML log that looks freaking awesome! A new Log Viewer has been created to view these new log files, as well as TXT log files. Another new feature is you have the ability to use BBcode formatting instead of IRC formatting. Another major feature that was removed from Plus! some time ago has been added yet again. Who can guess it
? Wait I'll just tell you,
polygamy. However, I'm well aware that this does NOT patch your WLM installation so no worries. Oh yeah, in the conversation window there is now a color chooser
.
Wait, one of the most important things I've forgotten to mention! Messenger Plus! Live no longer uses an EXE to run
! Instead it uses DLLs and attaches itself into your local memory. Some of you are thinking, WOAH more memory usage. This, however, is not the case. Although there is not a way to determine how much RAM Plus! Live is using, I can tell you that I've not encountered major RAM usage at all (It will tie in with the WLM RAM usage).
I'm not done yet; keep reading
.
Messenger Plus! Live will no longer have plug-ins. Wait, don't fret I have another surprise for you. Plus! Live is featuring a new scripting feature that will add immense possibilities for scripts and other add-ons. I'm not a scripting person myself, so I've asked a few people to explain the new functionality of the scripting feature.
What other things can I tell you guys? Well I do have to spill the beans and tell you something that you are not going to like. With the first release of Plus! Live, not
all features are going to be included. This should come as to no surprise because Plus! Live is a COMPLETE re-code, that has to be thoroughly tested to make sure that the release comes as non-buggy as possible. I can assure you though, that the
major features will be included
(Tabbed Chatting, Custom Sounds, Logging, Messenger Lock, Contacts on desktop, etc etc). You can expect full functionality and all features to be exposed in later builds of Plus! Live.
With all of this said, as a beta tester here are my views:
The new Messenger Plus! is going to be the best release yet. The new features that are being added, or already added, are going to be a great hit as well as a opportunity for developers to re-think ideas for their plug-ins. The overall look of Plus! Live is freaking awesome and I have no complaints about that. I must mention, the user interface color of Plus! Live will change as you change the color of WLM
. I personally think that was a awesome idea, but I'm not really sure if we're going to be seeing this exact design with the next release of WLM (Which should be the public release, scheduled for late April). Tabbed chatting is better than ever, and works very very smooth. It has had some major improvements, and I'm very pleased with it.
Now for the good stuff, the screenshots
Plus! Live Installation1
Plus! Live Installation2
Plus! Live Installation3
Plus! Live Installation4
Plus! Live About
Contact list + Plus! Color Gradients
Plus! Live Preferences 1
Plus! Live Preferences 2
Plus! Live Preferences 3
Plus! Live Preferences 4
Plus! Live Preferences 5
Plus! Live Preferences 6
Plus! Live Preferences 7
Plus! Live XML Logging + Log Viewer
Conversation + Plus! Live Color Chooser
Notes:
This post is merely my views, opinions, and looks about things. We've received permission to post this information. Do NOT request links to the beta, or request someone to send it to you. You cannot sign-up for the beta. We do not know when Plus! Live is going to be released. We don't know exactly what features aren’t going to be included.
Other than that if you have any questions regarding Plus! Live, please post them here and I or others will try to answer them. If you have any suggestions for features I've discussed, feel free to post those also
.
Feel free to spread this information around news websites, but please
link back or give credit to this post (I would have posted this on my own website, but the server is offline
).
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