This isnt all that vital but I think it would be cool if its dooable. You guys know how you can via MsgPlus change somebody's nick name ? and you know how you have events for people coming online ? Is it possible to get a script or something that highlights a persons nick when he comes online for say about 5 seconds ? maybe in a customizable color ?
You have this huge list of nicks and all the sudden it grows but you look at the thing wondering who the f- just signed on : ) I mean not that it really matters but its just a nice beautification.

Also, I suspect this ones harder to manufacture, when the person logs out you could gray his nick out but make him stay in the list for a couple of seconds before vanishing ? In this case if he's logging in and out he won't have to pop in and out of your contact list, hell just change colors from gray.. to orange.. and then to normal.. I'm pretty sure my first request wouldnt be too hard to make but the latter im not too sure.. in any case I hope somebody with the know-how agrees with me - Cheers!

I think what you are asking is to have a toast message display when someone comes online, but have the toast display the custom nickname with colours that you have already set up? If that is what you want, this can be done with Plus all by itself.

The first thing to do is to disable the default MSN toast messages. This can be done by going into the messenger toolbar.
Tools > Options > Alerts & Sounds. Uncheck the box labeled "Display alerts when contacts come online"

The next step is to enable the Plus toast messages. Navigate to the Plus Preferences > Customize > Events Notifications. We are going to add an event.

You will probably want to add this to be for all contacts, but there is an option available on this new window that comes up to specify only certain contacts for the toast message. Click Next.

On the next page, you will be able to select which event you want this notification you are creating will be for. You want the first option, "User has signed in" Next. You will want to enable the popup message option and select "Generate automatic notification". This will display the custom nickname you have set up within MSN, and state what the user is doing (signing in). Optionally, you can also enable a sound notification. If you do, the best bet would be to use the default MSN ding sound, located at C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger\online.wma

Now, for custom names. This setup will automatically use the custom named within MSN that you have set. Good news! the custom names that you create do support the colour code tags that Plus uses.

Hopefully this will be what you want, and if you need clarification on anything, please do respond.

I love the idea and will atempt to do such thing through scripting.

naa Meetc. I hope deco can pull it off. Just to try and clarify the idea: The Contacts list you have is pretty big. and you're looking at it and notice that all the sudden it expands and you go thinking.. who the hell logged on. The only thing i want to see is his nick change color momentarily, and then 5-10 secs later, change back. No toasts.

However for the toasts it kindof pisses me off when the same contact pops up twice. i.e. he signs on, signs off and signs on again.. I would like a slight delay timer to prevent the same person from popping up more than once withing say 10 seconds ? maybe 20 ?

But cheers Deco. hope you manage it!

I do like the idea but I don't believe there is a clean* way of doing it through the scripting engine.

* By 'clean', I mean a way which does it properly and unnoticeably as opposed to a sloppy workaround.

hmm. I realize the second feature I proposed (and the more useful one) would be harder to make, but I figured a script could be triggered on event.
eg $nick logs in. change $nick to %orange%$nick. start timer 5 seks: change %orange%$nick to $nick
How the second feature should be implemented... I do not know, so I dont expect you guys to be able to do it.. thats why I put this post originally into plugins or as a built in feature to msgplus itself. Anyways cheers for the responses

quote:

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Originally posted by snorrip3
hmm. I realize the second feature I proposed (and the more useful one) would be harder to make, but I figured a script could be triggered on event.
eg $nick logs in. change $nick to %orange%$nick. start timer 5 seks: change %orange%$nick to $nick
How the second feature should be implemented... I do not know, so I dont expect you guys to be able to do it.. thats why I put this post originally into plugins or as a built in feature to msgplus itself. Anyways cheers for the responses

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aahh Ok I see. I thought the renaming was a feature of Messenger Plus. And again I did post this under msn plugins not as a script. Thanks for clarifying that to me NiteMare. I guess I might as well have asked microsoft themselfs for this feature hahh. I still think its a nice feature. Hope anybody out there is smart enough to crack this one without using all my memory while hes at it : )

If you just want it so that you can see how signed in/out, you could have a script to change the name of WLM in the status bar to the nickname of the contact. Or better yet, a small window that appears in the corner (turn toasts off possibly) that lists all recent signin/out activity, but only appears when the event is triggered and not all the time

For now, while the script hasn't been created U still have a tool to know woh sign in lately. On your main msn window under "Plus" menu u have the "Event Viewer" which lists all the contact's activity since you signed in, and you can order it by "Event Type", I know this is not exactly what u want, but it will help u keep track of the sing ins/outs.

Snorrip3,

What you ask for isn't possible in Messenger Plus! Live because of the very same reasons which were given in your previous request about this: snorrip3's reply to [REQ] Group/contact popup notification on/off.

Scripts do not have access to change contact names (just as plugins didn't had proper access to it, as explained in that prervious thread).

quote:

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Originally posted by pedro_cesar
You still have a tool to know who signed in lately. On your main msn window under "Plus" menu you have the "Event Viewer" which lists all the contact's activity since you signed in. And you can order it by "Event Type". I know this is not exactly what u want, but it will help you keep track of the sing ins/outs.

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Messenger Plus! has some amazing features to it. some things get banged around so easily while appearingly simple things such as the (what i could easily do manually) is then impossible. And no like i said in the beginning this was just an idea to beautify msn alittlebit. and I wont do that with the event viewer. I dont like all of my contacts making a toast, but if my window is open its very easy to notice that something on the list just changed.. so then you pay alittlebit closed detail to it.. see a highlighted nick and go "huhh" and keep doing what you were doing.. then again for the real important people you'd have a voiceclip from them play instead and you'll know precicely who logged on. : ) But no worries, im not too obsessed about this feature.

I can't seem to access the contact list by subclassing. I find the handle when it's created and try to send messages to it but won't work.

I know I have to find the child that the acctual listview.. but how?

Thanks

I thought of another way to attack this problem.

How about resource hacking? Something along the lines of inserting another object into the contact list that we can access and mimic the real contact list?

Is this possible? Cookie?

Thanks

No. I don't see how this would be of any help.

The contact list and other controls in Messenger are all windowless, meaning you wont be able to access them using a windows handle or using the useuall Windows APIs. Inserting an object wouldn't help in that.

Ok so that approach is out.

Two other ideas:

1 - Creating plus window over the contact list and manage that.

2 - The nickname is stored somewhere in system memory? How can I find that? Suppose it's somewhere and I can find it, can I change it or is this another dead end?

Thanks for all the help

1) That is an extremely crappy, slow, process hogging and not a decently working method.

2) If you go to that trouble, it would be easier to just use the Accessebility APIs (or whatever) to get to the contactlist listview control, or other advanced method like Plus! does.

Bottem line: not possible unless you have the knowledge which Patchou also uses to color the names in the contactlist.

Maybe Patchou could shed some light