Shoutbox

The old OSD plugin worked like this:

It displayed x lines of text (irc style), no matter from what chat it came from. When there need to be more than x lines of text to be shown it simply scolled all the lines up and the first line dissapeared.

Aka, it was a list with a fix amount of lines which it could display. This is actually a must, it would not be cool if the thing eventually took over the entire screen when a contact desides to flood you with messages.

The plugin was also not meant as a replacement for a conversation (so no text input required), it purpose was simply to display the new incoming messages in minimized conversations. (not sure about this anymore, but it could also be that it also displayed all incomming messages when your screensaver was active)

The UI was very simply, yet extremely effective: it showed a darkened bar across the lower half of your monitor (with a bit of transparancy), and the shown messages where opaque white. Also note that emoticons or any other graphics were not shown (too keep things simple, clean and slick).

IIRC, the whole bar was only displayed a few seconds and then vanished. When a new message arrived, the whole bar was shown again (incl. previous messages)

I can't remember if clicking on a certain line would have opened and focused the conversation window where that chat line came from. But it would be nice if it did.

The ability to configure the next things would be cool:
- the maximum amount of displayed lines
- the color and transparancy of the background bar
- the color of the text
- the size and font of the text
- the time the OSD is displayed before vanishing again

Note also that one of the 'powerful' and most usefull things about the old OSD plugin was that it displayed on top of everything, including your screensaver! This was what I loved about it, and I would again use something like this if it did the very same thing. Otherwise I don't have a use for it personally.

I still have the plugin and I wouldn't be surprised if it still worked (using a script stub to load it)