Shoutbox

Instead of contacts moving to a special group when they've send you a message and then gone offline, I think it would be easier to have the MSN Messenger icon in the system tray change to a different icon (one with a message image of some kind). So that way you always know when someone has left you a message, either if he's online or offline.

And just double clicking on the MSN icon in systray would open the message. If you have multiple people who send you a message, the icon in systray would stay special, until you've read all of your messages, then it would return to the normal MSN icon.

And to be clear, this feature should be able to be turned on and off. Preferably off by default to not confuse ' newbie's '.

Just my 2 cents..

mm yeah or you could right-click on the msn icon on the taskbar and have an option there (or else where) where you can see people that have left you a message, maybe in a simple list, then u just click there name and it appears.... ?
Chestah
this could solve the not finding that you have a message problem

i dont think all that is really necessary and i think it's all too much actually, if you have an icon infront of the contact's name and also have their name in bold it's not hard to see at all and i dont think it's easily overlooked at all:

This kind of thing is going to be overlooked in the main window, because the idea of floating contacts is not to have to open the main window as often. This would be good for floating contacts only, providing the background of the contact on the desktop flashed blue to orange and the sound was still made, and it was also brought to your attention by the name jumping to the front of your screen.  When the  convo window is minimised it could go back to the contact on desktop instead of task bar. The message recieved icon on the contacts on desktop could be good for some kind of PM system within MSN...

This is a great idea Jaguar, i would love that to be in msgplus, but patchou hasnt post anything here yet. I was going to post that in a week or so.  Did you get the idea from ICQ right? because it is the same idea that you are posting here. It is really annoying that the messages go into the taskbar. Again great idea i hope patchou makes that possible.

i didnt come up with the idea well ive thought about it lots of times, and ive seen it in trillian. but Energizer started this thread and thought of the idea here, ive just worked it all out, cause i think this feature really should be added to Messenger Plus! i dont know why patchou hasnt said anything here maybe he just hasnt noticed the thread, hehe

tom - you have the wrong idea of floating contacts, cause what you're saying is just like intergrating the whole contact list to your desktop, and that's not what the feature was made for, it's just to be able to see a few "special" contacts that are more important to you than others, without having to open the contact list to check all the time. so this message feature shouldnt only be in the flaoting contacts but also in the normal contact list, if you think that you'll miss a flashing icon plus the contact name in bold, then you must not be able to see well

i think Patchou should have a look at ICQ and check out the "messages left in contact list" feature, and then hopefully intergrate the same or something similar into msn plus! (and read this whole thread to see what options there could be for it)

Yeah Jaguar, having Patchou look at ICQ to see exactly what we mean would be good

Too bad he hasn't noticed this thread yet.. I really would like to know what his opinion is on all of this..

i dont have my contact list open half the tiime why not do what tom said and have the floating contacts blink just like the taskbar ones do
and if the contact has a floating window thing then rremove them from the taskbar but not anyone else unless they have a floating window too.