I love messenger plus! I've never had a serious issue - not since I started using it about 7 years ago!

there's only one thing that i've repeatedly found myself 'looking for':

the ability to make the individual buttons for the contacts that are displayed on the desktop smaller.

it seems there is a minimum width...but i'd rather remove the nicknames & just have the smallest possible color coded squares (with the status in the middle).

have I missed an option or a hack somewhere?

I've just looked in the registry and I can't see an option to do what you want. Sorry.