Shoutbox

Hello

For a regular user, when one receives an offer to exchange via WLM, either by text or video, the following happens :
- the down below button blinks
- a sound goes off

But, when an old person is in this very same situation, sitting in front of his / her PC :
- he / she does not see the blinking most of the time
- he / she does not hear the sound or wonder where it comes from

My question : does Messenger Plus offer some additionnal function to help old / slightly handicaped persons to have a normal access to exchange ?

As an example, I would love that, via an install parameter, the exchange invitation would trigger the opening of the WLM conversation window ; going this way would show the old person that a conversation offer comes in.

To illustrate my suggestion, I can add that, when I want to start an exchange with my mother these days, I first go to her PC via VNC and then open the WLM conversation panel.

This works great but is a bit too heavy and complicated, and limited to myself (how about the rest of the family?).

Thank you in advance for your help.

Francois

quote:

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Originally posted by francoisch
As an example, I would love that, via an install parameter, the exchange invitation would trigger the opening of the WLM conversation window ; going this way would show the old person that a conversation offer comes in.

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Back in the days when Messenger first started out, yeah it was probably very easy to have a notification for when a conversation was started, but now days it has become harder as now they are called "sessions" and many things can trigger a "session", such as opening a contact card for one of your contact's getting a contact's display picture, etc, hence why this kind of feature is removed from a number of programs. There is one or 2 that still do it but not accurately making developers scrap the idea all together. The closest thing you can get is similar to what Windows Live Messenger has already, when a conversation window is open and a conversation is started, by say you sending a message, a notification is shown generally in the bottom right hand corner once it received on the contact's computer.

Not sure how well this answer is for you but that's going off what I can understand and gather as I write this.

hello MattyRid and thank you for your answer.

Well, you know, I looked into the Hopper add-on, one of its functions being to trigger 4-5 pop-ups instead of one into the right bottom corner you mentionned.

Even this didn't work.

Reason why I am looking for someting like I described.

Thank you again.

Francois

Messenger Discovery Live has a feature that uses a speech to tell you when a contact is typing. Also, it has a feature to read out the message and bring the instant message window to the front upon receiving the message (Note that the latter only works if underneath other conversations).

It uses Window's Voice thingy (I believe), and it would go, "<insert name here> says <insert message>." 

May I very strongly point out that using the 'open window notifier' thing is extremely unreliable, as MattyRid already explained. Also see:
http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=69...d=769629#pid769629


Using this will not aid older people at all!!! In fact it will confuse them even more as it is not consistant and not reliable at all.


Instead, what you should be looking for is setting a decent sound for when a message is recieved, turning up the volume, enlarging the taskbar or even enlarging the size of the GUI windows and controls in Windows itself.


I suggest to use real solutions and not some half-baked dodgy methods which don't work anyways (not to mention you need to know how to install, use and understand them, etc... which even computer-literate people aren't always able to do!!)...

quote:

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Originally posted by francoisch
But, when an old person is in this very same situation, sitting in front of his / her PC :
- he / she does not see the blinking most of the time
- he / she does not hear the sound or wonder where it comes from

---

I fullly understand where you're coming from. I have my grandpa on Messenger and mostly he doesn't respond when I engange in a chat with him. I guess he doesn't notice the flashing orange conversation in the taskbar, or maybe he notices it but fails to understand what it means.

hello

Thank you first for your answers and comments.

As a summary, I would round up this subject by saying that there is just no good working solution to help old persons to use WLM.

That's bad, especially since there are more and more old persons on earth and also more and more old persons stepping into playing with a computer.

Thank you again.

Francois

quote:

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Originally posted by francoisch

That's bad, especially since there are more and more old persons on earth and also more and more old persons stepping into playing with a computer.

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However, these 'new' old people would know how to use WLM as most of the working society already knows how to use WLM (and people dont forget things like this that easily), and it's just the really old people from the end of WWII that dont (which are usually retired).

hello

I am back after a while, still pretty interested into this old person access subject.

I am not confident with the idea that we just have to wait until the current old persons will disappear and hope that the next generation will be "skilled".

Facts and matters are that the current old persons are disappearing much slower than the needs they have of computer usages show up.

The main word these days with old persons is: keep them at home, meaning not in an hospital; this is better for them and cheaper for community.

Perfect but then shows up a drawback: they are / feel isolated.

One splendid way to use micro computers is to get them to help old persons breaking their isolation and start new dialogs with friends, family, and so on.

To achieve this, micros have to allow access to old persons, now.

You may want to visit my site at www.maintiendomicile.fr, if you read French a little.

At least, this is my position.

Thank you all for your kind answers.

Francois