That will never be done.
Lets say that you have 70 people online, then your computer has to download every single one of the 70 DP, that could get nasty. And if you have a 56 K connection (I have 1Mbit), then it would take forever.
Edit:
quote:
From an "old" news on mess.be (The week of October 31 (2004)
UPDATE: I just received a major heads up from Bot2K3's Inky which the unlearned me is very thankful for. Thumbnail Display Pictures would NOT be protocol/server specific. The client has to support the little thumbnails and right now it doesn't. Inky underlines that putting thumbnail pictures on the contact list will cause considerable bandwidth usage: "Try downloading 150 DP's on a 56k modem upon signing in." And he adds: "A nicklinei is maybe only 20 pixels in height. A thumbnail of that size is too malformed to even be able to see something." He's got two good points there and I guess I was a bit over-enthusiastic when I saw all the other estimated features included.