Shoutbox

Hello everybody,

today, I decided to make an exception to my usual no-public-beta policy and released a beta version of the forthcoming Messenger Plus! 3.40. There are two reasons for that: first, I'm going to France tomorrow to attend a special MSN Event. If Microsoft France takes this opportunity to tide me up and wash my brain by forcing me to look at XWindows for several hours, at least, I'll have left something useful to my users. The second reason is that I'm planning several things for Messenger Plus! 3.40 and I don't know when I'll be able to release the final version. By releasing a beta today, I'm sure that some of you won't keep waiting for Messenger Plus! to try out the new Messenger version when it becomes publicly available.

The beta version will be available for download on this page only. The download link will change from time to time and you are strictly forbidden to redistribute this version directly (no exception). If you want to link to the beta, please link to this page. Why am I doing that? again for two reasons (I'm a complicated man) : there are many things to improve and fix in this beta before it's suitable for the general public and I want everyone who download the beta to read the following important message:

Note to official MSN Messenger 7 Beta Testers: the MSN Messenger Team is counting on you to beta test their product. This version of Messenger Plus! being a beta itself, it is imperative to follow a simple procedure before reporting any bug to Microsoft. If you think you found something to report, close Messenger, kill MsgPlus.exe (or uninstall it; reinstalling Plus! will just takes 10 seconds), restart Messenger and check if the bug still occurs. You must not report anything that has not been tested without Messenger Plus! running. Being a developer myself, I know how frustrating it would be for the Messenger Team not to be able to differentiate bugs coming from their software with bugs coming from a third party plugin. Thank you for your cooperation.

So, what can you expect in this beta? almost nothing except good ol' Plus! . However, to spice things up a little, I did add a nice improvement in this beta: contact names are displayed with their colors and formatting attributes almost everywhere in Messenger, including in the contact list and in the toast popups. The feature is not complete yet but it seems to work pretty well already so I left it in the beta (note that there will be an option in the preferences panel of the final version to disable this feature). Apart from that, I added an enlarge button on the sponsor agreement window for people who want to take a closer look (I have nothing to hide), you can set auto-messages while being online, the creation of new contacts on desktop is more friendly and richedit controls all have a nice themed border when you run Windows XP (I'll release the code of that improvement on CodeGuru later this month for the two of you who may be interested).

Here is a list of known bugs/limitations in Messenger Plus! 3.40 Beta. Bug reports are always welcomed (mplus@patchou.com) but first, be sure that your bug is not listed here. If you want to help but can't download Messenger 7 for now, you should know that it is as important for me to know that the new version works as well with older versions (4, 5, 6) than it works with the new one.

• The "Hide advertisement banner" is not available in MSN Messenger 7 anymore. The reason is not entirely technical, I just felt this option had not its place in Messenger Plus! anymore, thank you for understanding.
  
• No Plus! Enhanced Icon in the contact list for now, I'm working on a solution that will integrate nicely in the new Messenger 7 interface.
  
• The POP3 E-Mail feature will display popups for new emails but won't update the email count in the contact list (will be fixed too, somehow).
  
• and... that's it! everything else is supposed to work as well as before. I know it sounds natural for all of you, which is just sad for me as a lot of work was required for some features to be back and you'll never see it .

Beta Update from December 2nd (3.40.112) :
I didn't plan on releasing another beta before the final (next year) but I got a report today that the previous beta was causing the Hebrew version of the public Messenger 7 Beta to crash so I had to fix it asap.
Most of the new stuff I've been talking about inthe past weeks have been disabled from this version so don't expect much compared to version 3.40.110. However, a couple of memory optimisations have been left and I'm pretty sure this version of Messenger Plus! now uses less memory and less system resources than any other version released in the past year .
A special auto-update will be performed this week to auto-update every current Plus! beta user to this latest version.

Beta Update from November 14th (3.40.110) :
The troublesome memory leak/slowdown problem is finally fixed. Anyone using an older beta must install this new one. Please report any slowdown problem/UI glitch you may have with this version (note that the memory leak was very minor but also present in all versions of MSN Messenger 6, if you have some time to spare, please test this beta with Messenger 6 and check for new problems that may appear).
A new DLL is now distributed with the software. This should help solve problems related to the global impact of Messenger Plus! on older/slower systems. It may also fix several incompatibility some people may have encountered with other programs (like with Photoshop 5). Note to dedicated beta testers: please test the installation of Messenger Plus! as much as possible with different scenarios (Windows versions, no admin privileges, etc...).
Your contact names should never appear blank anymore in your chat windows for no apparant reason.

Beta Update from November 8th (3.40.109) :
The font problems in yoru contact list should be fixed
Bugs related to contacts not showing in your list have been fixed
New feature: you can now add formatting attributes to your custom names. The final version of Messenger Plus! will make it more user friendly, meanwhile, you can simply use the usual tags and shortcuts.

Beta Update from November 8th (3.40.108) :
The /nick command works in Messenger 7
Personalised Status Tags are working in Messenger 7
Custom Names do not crash Messenger 7 anymore
There is now an option in the preferences panel to disable formatting in the contact list (Messenger 7)
I'm not sure the memory leaks and slowness problems have been fixed... please test, with and without the multi-format option enabled (restart Messenger when you change the option). Thanks.

Thank you for your help and support, I always say the same thing but your support DOES count, especially nowadays .

Sincerely,
Patchou

Edit by Tochjo: updated thread title