quote:
Originally posted by duck!
Oh, Okay..
Personally i think Windows Live Messenger beta tester, should have no addons or patches, as they could course problems, but of course this is my opinion, we should all worship your opinion 
Edit: Also if you can post your opinions, does that mean the rest of the forum can to? 
Agreed.
@riahc4
Each product is targeted towards a certain audience, and as such, each product, it its beta stages has certain QA and various other requirements that it must qualify for (this is set at a corporate level, varying from company to company).
I can tell you one thing though, although many a time a blind eye is turned towards addons and such, but just because they turn a blind eye towards it doesn't mean that they endorse it. This is simply because this conflicts with the goals of beta testing, which is to check program stability and usability in a regular environment, such as conflicts with other programs and so on.
Things in beta are still experimental. If a skinner like myself decided to support a beta, it would be due to the fact that I am a gambling person, on a whim, nothing more, nothing less. Do you remember when messenger was in beta in 8.0?
If I made a skin then, I would have had to re write the whole thing when it became final, because that is the great amount of change that the uifiles went through.
Patchou can vouch for me when I say that 9.0 is significantly different than how 8.5 works. Many of the functions that were in 8.5 were split up and so on, so for me to write an advanced skin that would support 8.5 and 9.0 would be a pain in the ass, if not impossible. Hell even the custom filetype that the messenger team created, which they named RLE, has even changed from 8.5 to 9.0. Of course you wouldn't know anything about that would you now... because if you did we wouldn't be having this thread.
So when you say your ideology of beta testing is to test it in a regular environment, then test it in a regular environment.
I can assure you that doing tech support for over 5 years now that most people fall under the category of using their computer for basic needs. Most people tend not to skin or modify their UI and they certainly don't know enough to fall under the category of willingly modifying the programs they use unless a person such as the people on these forums do it for them. So how is it that you are testing a small niche in a big sea? Instead of looking for bugs that affect proper usability, you however are looking for little nit picky things that are more towards the RC stage. I think if anything, you have confused the roles of a beta tester.
As far as messenger's beta testing goes, it is not there so that you can test out your own modifications of the current program. People are NOT supposed to modify the program, period. It's stated very clearly in the EULA. Try posting in the newsgroups that you modified the client and that it crashes or doesn't perform well and see what the response of the beta team to that will be.
I rambled on too long if I don't make sense, ask for clarification.
P.S.
@duck! - Awesome avatar man, mind if I steal it for personal use
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