Shoutbox

tbh, (and also from the POV of a noob) you're making it much harder than it actually is...

The only thing new people should be learning is that /nick is a command and that Plus! commands are given in a conversation window.

After that it is self-explaining...

And for those who even don't understand that I would suggest to train a bit in handling a computer. Because, if this isn't understood I really wonder what they are doing with a computer. It is basic computer knowledge.

And for those people, the suggestion of Chris4 will not help either as they would be clicking like hell on the "color" button and nothing will happen as they, of course, forget to first select the part they wish to color...

Not to mention, what are you going to do when they want to color the background instead of the foreground? What if they want it bold, or italic or underlined? etc... etc... are you going to implement a whole series of buttons for that? It will make thing far more complicated (not to mention messy GUI) in the end than it really is...

If people don't understand how to use a command (and that a command is always followed by a space...  every command in whatever program, OS or environment), they wouldn't also understand how to use 75% of all the stuff in Plus!.

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Nevertheless, the option to use IRC style shortcuts directly in the preferences of the nickname textbox Messenger is a good suggestion (although not easy to implement).