Shoutbox

Hi everyone! In the previous versions of Messenger Plus!, there used to be a 'Rename Contacts' system, where we get to add our own nicknames to our contacts for easier reference.

But now, in Messenger Plus! LIVE, I noticed that this feature has changed. Although still usable, all of my previous nicknames are now gone. This is a very serious problem for me as I rely HEAVILY on the renaming system and have hundreds of renamed contacts, which will make renaming everyone ALL OVER AGAIN extremely difficult.

I also read another member's topic refering to this same issue. Therefore, I would like to request that the creator, Patchou, to please look into this matter and come up with a solution.

Thanks

the reason that has not been included is because wlm now has a nickname feature like that, in the contact list, right click on a contact then go to "add nickname"

I hope that helps

Note that Patchou may bring this feature back if Microsoft doesn't improve theirs

source?

Thanks for your words, everyone. But my point here isn't to ask how to add the nicknames again, I'm suggesting that Patchou come up with a solution as my previous contacts have too many nicknames already, which means it would be quite impractical for me to give more than 200 people nicknames all over again.

Possible solutions would be either to create a way to allow us to import our previous rename list from the old MSN Messenger, or to create this feature in the next update of Messenger Plus! LIVE so that the list can automatically be imported

I think that it's necessary to include the "Contact rename feature" because the feature that includes wlm is a shit. If you rename someone, you can't see the original nickname that he had.

You can, just delete the custom name u had for them and it will then go to their default name

Well, yeah. That's another problem. I hope Patchou looks into this.

My suggestion > Replace the current 'Add nickname' feature with the previous 'Rename Contact' feature. It's more useful

The reason why the Custom Name feature has been depricted is indeed because Windows Live Messenger now has a Nickname feature.

During development, many beta testers also requested that the Custom Name feature would be brought back. Patchou is aware of this.

However, for this first release choices need to be made and it was not included. It is still possible that it will be added back in a future version though. Only time will tell.

The reason why the Custom Name feature of Plus! is far more usefull than the Nickname feature of WLM is because of one simple reason: With the Nickname feature of WLM you can not see the contact's orginal screenname, nor email, when you have set a nickname.

The usefullness of the Custom Name feature in Plus! comes from the fact that you could use the special tags (!N) and (!M) as part of the Custom Name to show the contact's original screenname or email. Making it possible to set custom names like: "John: (!N)" which would be seen as: "John: this is my original screen name"

If enough people vote on the poll to bring back the Custom Name feature (and if it is technically possible!!) I'm sure Patchou might speed up the development of it.


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On a personal note and without taking technical issues into account:

In short: There would be no need to replace anything...

Not so short: One way to integrate the Custom Name feature into the new Nickname feature is to simply add support for the (!N) and (!M) tags into WLM's nickname feature. This also means there is no need for extra control panels and such as WLM already provides this.

Though, there is one problem with this: Messenger Plus! needs a unique way to indentify names in the contactlist. Previously this was done by actually showing the emailaddresses instead of the screennames in the contactlist. Then Plus! could easly and uniquely identify each contact and replace the visible emailaddress with either a custom name or the screenname again. Hence what you was was a contactlist with (custom) names.

When WLM shows nicknames, there is no unique way to identify each individual contact in the contactlist as names are not something unique; two people can have the same name. Thus there is no way for Plus! to know who is who and thus can't replace the line you see in the contactlist with a Custom Name.

There is possible workaround though: Set the contactlist to show emailaddresses (like previously) and grab the nickname from WLM's own database. Put here is probably the catch: to be able to retrieve the set nickname (and thus also the "custom name") from WLM's encrypted files.

I tried to vote on the poll linked in the previous post, but because the thread has beenlocked i think, it wont accept anymore votes

it tells me i already voted, i try to undo it, it tells me i havent voted

I would also like to see the feature back in MPL