Jeff Hester

May 21, 2004


Messenger Plus! has long been the best third-party add-on for MSN Messenger, and Patchou has made version 3 even better. Here’s a list of what you can expect when it’s released on May 23rd.




  • Most of the windows in Messenger Plus! have been redesigned and
    their look has been improved.



  • The most important part of the software, the preferences panel,
    has been entirely recreated.



    • The new preferences panel is way more attractive visually, and
      its graphics are using alpha-bending effects so that the graphics look good
      in any Windows theme.



    • Only main sections are now displayed in the list on the left, sub-sections
      are available using a new menu at the top of each section. Every section has
      been reworked, options have been removed, options have been added, options
      have been moved from one section to another, etc... it’s just way better
      that way, clearer, more professional.



    • All the preferences of Messenger Plus! can now be locked with
      an administrator password (Privacy Protection section). You can use this
      feature to do some parental control.



    • A link has been added in the Miscellaneous section to go on the
      Registry Setting page of msgplus.net.



    • A whole page could be written about the new preferences alone. For
      some more details, see below, and more importantly, explore by yourself!




  • Come-back Messages now have an expire option. You can set the
    date and time you want the message to expire. If your contact signs-in after
    the specified date, the message is not sent and silently deleted. In
    addition, a new /backmsg command can be used in a chat after a contact
    signed out.



  • New feature added: word filtering.



    • This feature can be used two ways. You can filter text you send,
      and you can filter text you receive.



    • Filtering text you send can be used for creating all sorts of
      aliases and replace abbreviations by their full meaning.



    • Filtering text you receive can be used to filter swearing or
      other kind of words you don’t like to see.



    • You can add a star at the beginning or at the end of a
      filter. For example, "uni*" will filter "uni", "university", ...



    • Word filters can be created in the Instant Message section of
      the preferences panel.



    • A separate option has been added in the Import/Export wizard
      for word filters. This allows you to share your filters with other people.



    • An option is available if you desire to apply the filters
      in the names of your contacts (will not filter the names in the contact
      list, only in chats. Also, filters are not applied to custom names).



    • You can use the new "WordFilterCaseSensitive" registry
      setting if you want your filters to be case sensitive.




  • The Quick Icons panel has been improved a lot.



    • If you keep the Ctrl key pressed when you select an emoticon,
      the panel stays opened and the border is displayed with dots. This allows
      you to quickly select several emoticons at the same time.



    • Messenger Plus! now automatically finds the correct tag
      associated for each custom emoticon. You can still specify several tags
      to display more than one icon at the same time.



    • Up to 5 panels can now be displayed. Each panel is configured
      separately with its own options and custom emoticons.



    • The second panel is configured by default to automatically
      display all your custom emoticons without you having to enter them
      manually in the config panel.



    • If more than one panel is configured, numbered buttons are
      displayed in the lower left corner of the Quick Icons panel. Click on each
      button to go from one panel to the other.



    • F1 to F5 keys can be used to quickly switch panels.



    • Fixed bug where the "Customized" link would be displayed on top
      of some emoticons.



    • The emoticon panel now only works with MSN Messenger 6 and
      above.




  • The Custom Emoticons configuration window had been done too
    hastily in the previous version. It has been redesigned.



    • The interface has been recreated to be more visually appealing.



    • More emoticons are displayed at the same time in the selection
      screen to make things easier when you are searching for an emoticon.



    • A new control has been added to allow the configuration of each
      of the 5 panels. All the other options of the configuration window are
      linked to the panel number currently selected (this includes the option to
      display the original emoticons of Messenger in each panel).




  • The personalised status window has been completely redesigned
    to offer clearer options. The window is now also displayed even when the
    auto-message edit box cannot be created.



  • Once again, you’ve been requesting this feature for years (literally),
    it was time for me to add it: you can now select what contacts will receive
    your Personalised Status message.



    • In the Personalised Status window, a new line has been added
      under the time box. It specifies if the message will be seen by all your
      contacts or only a few of them.



    • Clicking on the Change button in the Personalised Status window
      brings a new configuration panel allowing you to easily specify what
      contacts you want on your "allow list".



    • The "allowed list" is cleared every time you go out of
      Personalised Status mode. The reason is quite simple: this feature is
      designed to help you target specific contacts, for specific reasons, at a
      given moment. If you want some people to never receive any of your messages,
      you probably should block them or remove them from your list :).




  • Auto-messages (example: the answering machine of Personalised
    Statuses) now accept commands.



  • If you experience regular problems with your internet
    connection, you will certainly like this new improvement: if Messenger
    signs-out by itself and signs back in within a minute, your Personalised
    Status is entirely restored and your status tag is not removed from your
    name.



  • New user interface feature: enhanced Plus! menus (MSN Messenger
    6 and above only).



    • Two of these menus are available. One in the contact list, one
      in chat windows. Both of them can be disabled in the preferences.



    • In the contact list, the menu icon is displayed when the mouse
      cursor is left over a contact name.



    • In chat windows, the menu icon is displayed in the toolbar,
      when no other icon are present at its location.



    • These menus are designed to bring some of the Plus! features,
      nicely, to any user. Text in those menu is very descriptive, many of you
      will probably notice older features they never saw (or use) before :).



    • You can change the show delay of the icon in the contact list
      with the "IconShowDelay" registry setting (note: there will always be a
      bigger delay for the first time the icon is displayed).





  • The Contact Manager has been renamed Contact List Clean-up and
    its design has been improved.



    • Times are way more accurate, no more "unknown" time for half of
      your list :).



    • Double-clicking on a contact displays the contact information
      window.





  • New feature: Quote Sender



    • The Quote Sender is available in instant message windows. It
      allows you to quote something one of your contacts said in the past 6 hours.



    • The Quote sender lets you find a quote quickly by selecting the
      contact name and a time filter. A search function is also available.



    • Pressing "Send Quote" automatically sends the message in your
      current chat, with default formatting including color and timestamp.



    • This feature can be customized with the "QuoteFormat"
      registry value.



    • The /quote command can be used to display the Quote Sender
      window.




  • A new feature has been added to help people use commands during
    a chat: Command Helper windows:



    • When you start a message with "/", a small panel appears
      allowing you to select almost any command available in Messenger Plus!. This
      works in chat windows as well as in other Messenger Plus! windows requiring
      text to be entered (like the Quick Text preferences panel).



    • The command list includes Messenger Plus! native commands,
      quick text aliases and even commands supported by installed plugins. Each of
      the three groups is identified by a special icon.



    • When browsing the command list, a tooltip is automatically
      displayed giving more information about the command.



    • Pressing Ctrl+X, where X is any letter, allows quick search
      of the desired command.



    • After a command has been entered (from the command list or
      manually using the keyboard), additional help is provided, if the command
      requires a parameter, when the space key is pressed. If the parameter is a
      contact email, a list of your contacts is displayed in a new window to let
      you chose one of your contacts easily. If the parameter is anything else, a tooltip is displayed giving information about the expected parameter.



    • As for the Quick Icon panel, this new feature is designed to be
      non-intrusive. If you don’t care about it, you can continue to type and it
      will disappear automatically. If you find it annoying, it can be disabled in
      the Commands preferences panel.




  • The uninstaller has been redesigned.



    • The interface looks better and is more user friendly.



    • There is now an option to uninstall every installed plugin. This is to help people
      fix problems related to defective plugins. VB plugins are not deleted but
      the entries in the registry are removed, which produces the same result.





  • Added an improvement to help Messenger Plus! do its job when
    other applications which are using similar hooking techniques are installed
    on the computer.



  • Quick Texts have been improved.



    • The Quick Icons preferences panel has been redesigned to be
      more clear and gives more information.



    • Creating an alias for a Quick Text automatically creates a
      special tag to use in a chat or any other area of Messenger Plus! (like
      personalised status messages). Quick Text tags replace native Messenger
      Plus! tags if the same name is used.



    • New global option to disable Alt+X shortcuts. People who
      use ASCII character codes will appreciate :).



    • Fixed the crash that could occur when very long quick texts
      were used.



    • Due to the increasing use of the Quick Text feature, the
      maximum has been increased to 50, that’s 20 more than in the previous
      version.



    • Quick Icon panel works correctly in the Quick Icon
      preferences panel in Windows 95/98/Me (this fix also applies for other
      preferences window using edit boxes).




  • Small improvements in the Messenger Plus! notification windows.



    • The toast looks better when displayed in Windows 2000 or
      Windows XP.



    • Added "PlusToastFlash" registry setting. It allows you to
      deactivate the systray icon flashing.



    • Added "PlusToastAnimate" registry setting. Use it to disable
      the animation when the toast is displayed or hidden.



    • A text is displayed in grey at the bottom of schedule
      notifications to notify the user that he has to click if he doesn’t want to
      be notified again.




  • Added an "auto-fix" watch dog in Messenger Plus!. In some rare
    occasions, the chat can get messed-up. Many improvements have been done to
    avoid this problem as much as possible and the current version is almost
    perfect in that matter, however, some specific things can still trigger the
    bug and Messenger Plus! can’t do anything about it (like using multi-format
    color tags and using numeric codes for custom emoticons at the same time,
    next to the Ctrl+K control character). When this problem occurs, it
    messes-up the whole chat and the only way to get rid was to close the window
    and reopen it, well, that was until now. Messenger Plus! now analyzes what’s
    going on and, if it detects that the chat is being messed-up, it attempts to
    fix it. The fix is generally efficient after 2 new messages have been
    exchanged between you and your contact. Those of you who already experienced
    this kind of problems in the past will surely appreciate this "feature" :).



  • New sound commands have been added!



    • The /snoexcuse sound has been replaced by something more known



    • The new sound commands are /sapplause, /swoow and /syawn (the
      last one is from my favourite anime character)




  • The POP3 e-mail feature has been improved



    • The count of emails displayed when using POP3 mail accounts
      includes the count of Hotmail emails (can be disabled with the "POPAddHotmail"
      registry setting).



    • The POP3 Mail section of the preferences now offers a "port" option and a fifth
      e-mail account to configure.



    • If you’re using Windows XP or above, Messenger Plus! updates
      the welcome screen of Windows with the count of unread emails in your
      accounts. For this feature to work, you have to specify the email address
      associated with the account in the preferences. The "UpdateWindowsEmailCount"
      registry setting can be used to disable that feature.



    • Added "AlwaysNotifyPopEmail" registry value. If you set it to 1,
      notifications for POP3 email will always be displayed, even if the count of
      unread emails didn’t change since last notification. If you use this setting,
      it is suggested that you increase the checking delay to at least 10 minutes
      to avoid being flooded with notifications.




  • You can now quickly format your messages by selecting some text
    and pressing one of the multi-format shortcuts (like Ctrl+B). Doing so will
    enclose the text between two tags.



  • The "change security warning" feature is totally
    obsolete and
    has been removed from the preferences. The feature is now off by default but
    you can still enable it in the registry (can be useful if you’re still using
    an older version of Messenger).



  • The Boss Protect feature has been improved



    • The default icon has been changed. It is now a network icon
      from Shell32. Thanks to this change, the icon is assured to completely blend
      in your Windows.



    • DLL resource files are now accepted in the preferences. This
      mean that you can quickly change the icon used in Boss Protect just be
      randomly changing the number that you’ll see next to "Shell32.dll". Of
      course, you can select any other DLL to get your resource from.



    • The First Time window has been redesigned.



    • If Messenger has not been signed-in at least once, instead
      of doing nothing, pressing the shortcut combination minimizes all the
      Messenger windows (that way, no bad surprise).




  • Messenger Plus! now requires Windows 98 or higher (it won’t
    work on Windows 95 or Windows NT 4).



  • The Color panel (the window that is displayed when you press
    Ctrl+K) has been improved



    • The panel has been redesigned (not by GFD but by Fraisie
      herself :). It replaces the ugly panel from the old version and tooltips are
      used to display color numbers.



    • The original 16 colors came from mIRC. 52 new colors have been
      added to the panel to make a total of 68 pre-defined color. This is very
      useful to quickly pick a nice color during a chat. Of course, the custom
      color picker is still available (your contacts need Messenger Plus! 3 to see
      the new colors).




  • Added "DockingKeepsWidth" registry setting. You can use it if
    you won’t want the width of the contact list window to be modified when you
    dock it.



  • A special sound can now be associated per contact in the
    Notification Configuration panel.



  • A multi-format helper panel has been added



    • The panel can be displayed from the Plus! toolbar menu in
      instant message windows and by pressing Ctrl+R.



    • The panel lets you choose between bold, italic, underlined and
      struck-out format. The corresponding control character is automatically
      added in your message.



    • The panel informs you of the current formatting of the text
      based on every other control codes placed in your message. This is very
      useful when you use formatting characters a lot and want to be sure of the
      final result.




  • An option has been added to automatically accept any kind of
    requests asking your authorisation.



    • This feature will accept for you file transfers, webcam chats,
      games, and any other requests asking to click on "Accept".



    • The preferences panel allows you to select specific contacts by
      default, for security reasons.



    • The option can be individually turned on/off in each chat.




  • A Find Text feature has been added to the chat windows (only in
    MSN Messenger 6 and above). It’s
    not a big feature but it’s useful and it will stay there as long as
    Microsoft doesn’t include one in Messenger :).



    • The search window can be displayed from the Plus! menu or by
      pressing Ctrl+F.



    • You can restrict the search to match the case and to search for
      whole word only. By default, the search is down from bottom to top, of
      course, an option is there to search from top to bottom if you want.



    • If the text found is displayed behind the search window, the
      window is moved a little :).




  • New (!PVER) special tag. Use it to display the list of plugins
    that are installed and enabled.



  • Custom names and other Plus! text-formatting features now work
    better when your contacts send you files or hand written messages.



  • The Event Log window has been improved.



    • Right click on a contact event allows you to start a chat with
      the contact.



    • You wanted it, you have it: you can now sort events by clicking
      on the column headers. Clicking several times on the Name column even allows
      you to sort by contact email.



    • Different small visual improvements.




  • Brand new setup!



    • The interface has been redesigned to be more informative (still
      as simple as before though). As the Automatic/Custom installation modes
      confused some people, they have been removed.



    • When Messenger Plus! is installed for the first time, the
      installer detects the language currently in use by Windows and select the
      appropriate language for Messenger Plus!, if possible.



    • In Windows XP, the setup is now capable of shutting down
      Messengers that run in other user sessions. This helps solving file-lock
      problems.



    • The setup is now entirely multi-lingual and is capable of
      displaying languages such as Chinese or Hebrew.



    • A "Loading Setup" banner is displayed while the setup is
      extracting the languages. A progress bar is also displayed while
      Messenger Plus! is being installed.



    • The DbgHelp.dll library is not distributed with Messenger Plus!
      anymore. This change removed 325KB from the setup package.



    • The setup is more "polygamy-patch friendly". If you’re using
      several Messenger clients at the same time and you’re upgrading your version
      of Messenger Plus!, each Messenger client is closed properly before the
      setup proceeds with the installation of the files (this means that, for
      example, all your logs will be saved before the update begins).



    • Bug fixed: in some rare occasions, some
      complex languages (like Chinese) were not displayed in the language list
      under Windows 95/98/Me even though they were supported by the operating
      system.



    • When using the silent switches (/SilentInstall and /SilentInstallNoSponsor), the
      confirmation web page is not displayed anymore.




  • A new switch has been added to msgplus.exe. If you want to
    remove Messenger Plus! from your system startup and want to run Messenger
    Plus! automatically before you start Messenger, just launch "msgplus.exe /AutoStart".
    Important: this procedure is not supported and it brought to you only for
    your convenience.



  • New feature for people who use shared-computers (school or work
    primarily) and don’t have administrator access on the computer. Messenger
    Plus! can now be installed in almost any Windows account!



    • The setup automatically detects if you have administrator
      privileges. If you don’t, a warning message is displayed and parameters are
      automatically adjusted, you don’t need to do anything but press Next :).



    • In non-admin mode, a Messenger Plus! shortcut is installed in
      your Start menu to let you launch Messenger with the Messenger Plus!
      features. Another icon is there to uninstall the program. Messenger Plus!
      won’t start automatically when the computer starts.



    • You can force this installation mode with the /NotAdmin setup
      switch.



    • Non-admin mode is not guaranteed to work but will help most of
      you use your favourite Messenger add-on in most public/restricted computers
      you use :).




  • New /assist command to trigger Request Remote Assistance.



  • A bunch of default Quick Texts are now created (only when
    Messenger Plus! is installed for the first time). This gives examples to
    first-time users and nice default commands such as the famous IRC /slap :).



  • The plugins API has been improved.



    • A Configure function is now
      available. It is accessible from the Plugins menu and from the Preferences
      window.



    • The DisplayToast function now works well in Windows 98/Me with
      VB plugins.



    • The documentation of the plugins API has been completely
      rewritten.



    • Your plugin must define Initialize() to be accepted by
      Messenger Plus! now.



    • Several security protections have been added. You may need to
      update some of your old plugins for them to work properly in Messenger Plus!
      3.





  • A new panel has been added in the preferences for plugins.



    • All your plugins are listed in this panel. Each one can be
      enabled/disabled individually and the settings can be different for each of
      your Messenger accounts.



    • Plugins installed but not enabled are identified differently.



    • Each plugin can display its own config panel with the new
      Configure button (not all plugins support this function).



    • If a plugin crashes at some point, Messenger Plus!
      automatically disables it.




  • Hand Writing mode is detected and Messenger Plus! reacts
    accordingly (by disabling some menus for example).



  • Some information has been added to the auto-update url for the
    current language, the version of Windows and the version of Messenger Plus!.
    This will allow smaller updates to be downloaded in the future. For those of
    you who monitor their network communications, if you wonder about the "ra="
    parameter, it is simply a random number put there to force servers to go
    check on msgplus.net and not get the file from their cache.



  • The correct font is used for non-MBCS languages in MBCS
    versions of Windows 95/98/Me. This means that English will be displayed
    properly in a Chinese Windows 98 for example.



  • Minimum Compatibility mode has been enhanced. You will
    appreciate that next time MSN Messenger is upgraded to a new version.



  • No more problems when chatting with someone who has an empty
    name.



  • No more mess when using a Messenger version with a language
    like Polish where the name of users in a chat are displayed between two
    other words.



  • All issues regarding emoticons in MSN Messenger 6.2 used with
    Messenger Plus! features are solved.



  • Better support of RTL versions of Messenger. For example, every
    floating panel now display at the left side of the cursor while you chat.



  • Many many many other improvements and bug
    fixes are not
    listed in this document, I don’t want to write a book. Beta tests have
    generated 5 more pages of updates but I won’t include them here. Let’s just say that
    Messenger Plus! 3 is way better and way cooler :).




Related Links:

Source: Msgplus.net

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