Shoutbox

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Originally posted by MrTaco
dazjorz, I agree with you. Don't know why these guys feel like they have to be arseholes about disagreeing, but I guess that's just how people are.

To me and plenty of my friends, they aren't all the same. Away means they're still signed in, but not around. Might not even be in the house. Could be gone for hours. Brb, they're still around. Might be going to the toilet, off to check something elsewhere in the house. Even doing something else, could have intermittent returns to the computer. Implies a possibly short response time to any of your messages, possibly longer but you most likely will get one in the time you're still at your computer. I guess Out to Lunch is similar enough to BRB to disappear. Also implies a relatively short absence, as one usually has while eating. On the phone, again that's different. That means you've got someone pulling you away from the computer to talk to you, and you generally won't be able to say anything til you get back from it.

The fact of the matter is, some people use the status to let people know what they're doing, others keep it constantly on away to try and get people not to bug them, and others ignore it completely. Having them still there doesn't disadvantage those who don't use them, but taking them does disadvantage those who do. And why punish some when it makes no difference to the rest?


But then, what would I know. I'm still using 7.0

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I am so happy to find someone who agrees completely - what you are saying is exactly what I meant!

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Originally posted by Acc2pmWDZ
Erm.
To my information, Plus! sends the protocol command for the "/brb", "/lunch", and "/onphone" in the format of the earlier (WLM8.5 protocol), thus older versions of Messenger could display them appropriately. However, WLM14 converts them automatically to it's own protocol status-detection. Therefore, "Be Right Back" is displayed as away, and so are the other statuses.
Now, here is where Plus! fits in. Because Microsoft removed those statuses, Messenger Plus! Live comes in handy. It can display "Personalised Statuses." With personalised statuses, not only you can display your well favoured "BRB" status, but also an "AutoMessage" to it, so to tell people that they could leave a message and you would definetely get back to them at a later time.
The Messenger team are ignorant enough to not listen to what the "minority" (in this case 17 users) want, but look forward to what the virtual world needs as a whole. Thus, creating a perfect application that is used by millions of people. Use Plus!, it is an amazing application that can do the job.

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Maybe someone (me? I'm a programmer, just never looked into Plus! plugins before) should write a plugin to have WLM2009 display brb etc as "normal" statuses too. I don't know if that's really possible... Anyway the idea behind personalised statuses is great, only they aren't as integrated as WLM2009's own statuses - something should be done about that. That's primarily interface changes though, which may come automatically.