Messenger Plus! 3.50.124

3.50.124 - 16/03/2004

• Complete support has been added to MSN Messenger 7! Just like it was the case a year ago for Messenger 6, a lot of work was required to insure that the same features you enjoyed with Plus! and Messenger 6 could be available with Plus! and Messenger 7 almost without any noticeable change.
• The "Hide Advertisement Banner" that was in the program since Messenger Plus! 1.00 has been removed from MSN Messenger 7. From now on, it will only be available for MSN Messenger versions 6.2 and below. Several reasons are pushing me to remove this option, including the fact that I do not want to go against the new business model Microsoft has implemented in Messenger 7. I hope some of you won't take it too badly, I will not changed my mind so please, do not write me about it. Thank you for understanding.
• The Plus! icon that was appearing on the left of contact names in the contact list is not available in MSN Messenger 7 anymore (I'm working on an alternative).
• A Configuration Wizard has been added to Messenger Plus!.
  • The configuration wizard is always displayed the first time someone signs-in on a computer. It is designed to help new users configure some basic features of Messenger Plus!.
  • If you are online when the wizard is displayed, Messenger Plus! changes your status to "Busy" (and reverts it back when you exit the wizard).
  • The wizard allows direct configuration of the following options: chat logging, logging encryption, Event Viewer window, Allow Sounds (includes "Automatic custom sound play" and "Allow built-in sounds"), Auto-Accept, Boss Protection, and floating windows.
  • Every option displayed in the wizard is applied instantly and actions cannot be canceled. This means for example that enabling the Event Viewer window will instantly display the window on screen.
  • Users are introduced to the Preferences Panel with three links: configure external (POP3) emails, add sign-in/sign-out sounds, and create word filters.
  • The last screen summarizes some of the most used features of Messenger Plus!.
• Messenger Plus! is now compatible with Windows Messenger 5.1 (when used with the .NET Messaging Service).
• A Messenger Plus! icon has been added to the top toolbar of MSN Messenger 7
  • The icon's menu contains all the useful items of the main Plus! menu. It's main use is when the window frame of the contact list is hidden and the normal Plus! menu is inaccessible.
  • In MSN Messenger 7, the normal E-Mail message cannot be changed easily. For that reason, why using the POP3 Mail feature of Plus!, the email count is now displayed in this popup menu. If several accounts are used, one line is displayed for each of them that contains emails. Clicking on the menu opens the client specified in the preferences (program or http link).
• Brand new Messenger Plus! feature: Custom Emotion Sounds.
  • The statistics that were added to Messenger Plus! 3 months ago revealed that the number one used feature so far was the Sounds Commands. That fact pushed me to develop the Custom Emotion Sounds feature, which brings sounds integration in Messenger to the next level. This feature is not l33t, it's just fun :).
  • Custom sounds can be sent to all your contacts as long as they have the latest version of Messenger Plus! installed. If your contact does not have the sound you sent him in his sound library, it is downloaded automatically from the server.
  • Sounds are automatically sent to the Messenger Plus! server when used for the first time. They are then downloaded from the server when your contacts need them. This has two main advantages: preventing firewall problems and making sound sharing possible (when you create a new sound, you can mark it private to avoid public sharing).
  • There are four distinctive ways to add new sounds in the sound library:
    • by creating sounds based on existing sound or music files (like mp3),
    • by recording your own sounds by using a microphone or another line-in device,
    • by importing sounds previously saved in a Sound Pack,
    • by getting a sound at random from the server, in the specified category.
  • The Sound Library is shared between all users of the same Windows account, by default. This allowed downloaded sounds to be available to every user without the need of exporting/importing sound packs. To make the library private, use the new "CustomSoundsPrivate" registry setting.
• The sound section of the Preferences has been reworked:
  • The old MCI-related options are gone as Messenger Plus! now uses its own sound libraries to decode sound files (see below).
  • The custom sound panel height can be increased if necessary (if you want to display more sounds per page).
  • By default, new sounds are automatically downloaded and every sound is played as soon as it's ready to be played. Both of these behaviors can be disabled, you can then chose to download and/or play each sound, directly in the chat window, in a similar way you play winks for example. Note that regardless of these options, if a sound is already playing, new sounds sent are not played automatically and will wait for your input.
  • When you receive new sounds, their are automatically added in your sound library and show in the sound panel. If you don't want new sounds to be shown in the sound panel, you can use the appropriate option in the preferences.
• Many changes have been made to the way sounds are played in various features:
  • If you're not interested in technical details, you should just know that Messenger Plus! now supports more sound formats and plays all of them more reliably: more features, less problems!
  • The various open file windows displayed in Messenger Plus! to select a sound now support previewing the sounds selected.
  • Messenger Plus! now uses dedicated sound libraries to read sound files: Libsndfile and Lame_enc. Thanks to these great pieces of work, Messenger Plus! does not have to rely on the various codecs installed on a computer anymore. The list of supported file types is now fixed and constant for everyone: AIFF, AU, IFF, MAT4, MAT5, MP1, MP2, MP3, PAF, PVF, SF, SND, SVX, VOC, W64, WAV (PCM, A/u-law, ADPCM, GSM). It is important to note that some of these formats come in various sub-formats and that not all of them are supported by Libsndfile and Lame_enc.
  • MCI is not used to play sounds anymore. Instead, Messenger Plus! sends PCM data directly to the default sound device installed in the system.
  • The "SoundMCIType" registry setting has been deprecated and is no longer loaded by Plus!.
• A big Custom Sounds wizard has been added to the software to add new sounds and exporting existing ones.
  • The maximum length for a custom sound is 10 seconds. This may not seem like much but it should be more than enough to send something funny to your contact and not bore him/her with a minute of something he doesn't care. Also, this will prevent copyright problems related to music sharing.
  • Sounds can be saved in high or average quality. High quality is best suited for music and other similar sounds, however, it reduces the maximum length of the sound to 8 seconds.
  • Each sound has a name and a category assigned to it. Categories are fixed in the software and may be expanded in the future. As each sound is assigned a unique identifier internally, several sounds can have the same name without causing conflicts.
  • Sounds are by default available for random downloading by other users. This can be prevented by setting the private flag during the creation of the sound. In that case, the sound will still be sent to the server, however, people will be able to download it only if someone else sends it directly to them.
  • You can create sounds based on existing files. Many formats are supported (see below) and can be imported in the wizard. Cutting the sound to the appropriate length is done directly in the wizard, you're the one who chooses when the sound starts and when it stops.
  • When cutting a sound, the user interface precision limit is 1 second. If you want more precision (up to the millisecond), you can double click on the selection bar or selection marks.
  • Sounds can also be recorded live. The wizard offers basic but effective commands for live recording, including direct volume and input control. You can record for several minutes and cut the sound later in the wizard, allowing you to do some "free style" recording.
  • On every sound longer than 500 milliseconds, a fade-in and fade-out effect of 70 milliseconds is automatically applied to avoid annoying "clicking" noises.
  • Sound Packs can be created by exporting existing sounds. They can then be shared with your contacts but are more suitable for web sites and other similar types of sharing. The import wizard allows you to enter http and ftp links directly to import new sounds directly from the internet!
• The integration of the Messenger Plus! enhanced icon in the chat window has been improved:
  • The toolbar of MSN Messenger 7 being much more "occupied", a new toolbar is now created for Messenger Plus! features. This toolbar occupies a small 25 pixels of width on the left side of the "type a message" edit box.
  • For now, the toolbar has two buttons: a Plus! button that displays the same menu as in previous versions, and a sound button that displays the new custom sound panel.
  • The menu displayed by the Plus! button is skinned to match the general MSN Messenger theme more closely.
  • Of course, if you don't like this toolbar, you can disable it in the preferences :).
• A new custom sound panel is available in chat windows.
  • There are three ways to display this panel: by clicking on the sound icon in the new Messenger Plus! toolbar, by pressing Ctrl+Q and, if the Messenger Plus! sidebar is disabled, by using the "custom sound" entry of the Plus! main menu of the chat window.
  • Custom-sounds are classified by categories. Built-in sounds (the old sound commands) are still available, in a separate category.
  • Statistics of use are is played in the panel in two columns: "More Used" and "Last Used". The statistics can be reset at any time with the "Reset" link in the panel.
  • By default, clicking on a sound sends it. You can enable "preview mode" (top right icon) to hear the sound when clicked and send it when double-clicked.
  • For each category, random sounds can be downloaded from the server. That way, lots of sounds can be added instantly, without breaking a sweat!
  • You can get as many random sounds as you want. When you get a sound that you find inappropriate, you can report it to the moderators and help keep a clean database for everyone's enjoyment.
  • For keyboard lovers, these keys can be used in the sound panel to do various operations: left arrow, top arrow, right arrow, bottom arrow, Page Up, Page Down, Enter, A, P and Ctr+Enter (used in preview mode).
• A /sound command has been added to send custom sounds. The parameter can be the identifier of the sound (prefixed with #) or the name (or part of the name) of a sound.
• Every sound played by Messenger Plus! is now volume normalized. This means that every sound is supposed to be played at approximately the same volume. Messenger Plus! detects the peak volume of the sounds it needs to play and adjusts the volume of the whole sound to match its maximum peak volume. The default is 70% and can be changed with the "SoundPeakLevel" registry setting.
• A new registry setting called "SoundDevice" allows changing the sound device used for playing and recording sounds.
• Once again, improvements related to the the sponsor program: you can now click on a "+" button to display the agreement in a separate bigger window, in case you would want to take a closer look to it (neither C2Media or myself have anything to hide, I hope this addition will make that fact clear for everyone).
• The uninstaller has been improved
  • When the sponsor program is installed, you now have the choice to only uninstall it and keep Messenger Plus!. Many people requested that change, I hope it will please everyone.
  • When the sponsor program is not installed, a message is displayed to inform the user about it. Nowadays, many people who report adware being present on their computer are being told to uninstall Messenger Plus!, sometimes for no reason at all. This message should help prevent that.
  • A link to a help page on msgplus.net is displayed to get more information about Messenger Plus! or its sponsor if desired.
• You can now use the Personalized Status window to set an automatic message and keep your "online" status. Note that you can't record predefined status with "online".
• When new "contacts on desktop" are created from the popup menu, their position is set on the current cursor position and you can move them directly when you want them to be.
• Environment variables can now be used in shared file paths and the /dropfile command.
• Several system-related improvements have been made in this release. Users of older computers should definitively appreciate the change (and give Messenger Plus! another try if they previously uninstalled it because of its impact on their system).
  • A new DLL has been added to the software, called MsgPlusLoader.dll. This DLL is now the one that will be loaded by Windows for the global hooking operations. This modification should lower considerably the impact of Messenger Plus! on older systems as this light-weight DLL doesn't allocate more than a few bytes of memory in any situation. It may also reassure some of the people who wonder why Messenger Plus! gets loaded by Windows in several other processes (this DLL contains almost no code so there can't be any risk involved).
  • A memory leak has been fixed preventing Messenger Plus! to leak system handles in some occasions.
  • A memory leak has been fixed preventing Messenger Plus! to leak GDI objects in some occasions (MSN Messenger 6 and above).
• I'm very happy about the following improvement, I've been trying to do something like this for almost 3 years now and I finally succeeded! The sad thing is that nobody will probably ever care about this UI improvement: richedit controls displayed by Messenger Plus! in Windows XP now use the current theme to display their border. I've released the code on some newsgroups with the hope that it will help some of the other people who have been having this problem since Windows XP was released.
• The various richedit controls present in the Messenger Plus! windows do not accept formatted text anymore when copy/pasting (translation: bug fixed).
• Logging-off in a Windows 98/Me network doesn't prevent Messenger Plus! to work properly at next log-on (this bug was introduced recently and is now fixed).
• Support has been added in the Quick Icons panel for custom animated emoticons (thanks in part to the formidable CxImage library). The middle frame of the animation is the picture shown in the panel.
• The Custom Names feature has been largely improved
  • The preferences panel "custom names" section and the Rename Contact dialog box have been completely redesigned to accommodate the new options.
  • The new "Attach the original name" option lets you easily attach the real name of your contact at the end of the custom name. In MSN Messenger 7, the real name is added with a special grey color for enhanced display quality. Also, when you use this option, the real name is not displayed during conversations for more clarity.
  • The new "CustNameAttachTagFmt" registry setting lets you modify how the "Attach the original name" feature formats the name (using the (!N) and (!M) tags).
  • Users of MSN Messenger 7 now have access to a new set of special formatting options. These options let you change how each name appears in the contact list and the instant messages windows. The text can be bold, italic, and have its own custom color.
  • A new option can be enabled in the preferences to display the special custom names formatting during a chat.
  • Additional formatting options can now be set anywhere in a custom name thanks to the usual multi-format shortcuts keys (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+B, ...).
  • The new "custom names" preferences panel allows quick editing of every custom name. Just press enter while in the "custom name" editbox and the next contact in the list will automatically be selected, allowing you to set its name immediately without touching to the mouse.
  • There is no need to set a special name to a contact to get the special formatting options applied! if you just want to set a special color or a bold/italic attribute to one of your contacts, just do so and the original name will automatically be used with the formatting you applied.
• Floating windows have been improved to match the color and other formatting attributes set to a custom name. By default, if a color is set to a name from the Custom Names feature, the same color will be applied to the text of the floating window. In that case, the menu "Text ColorSystem Default" becomes "Text ColorCustom Name Default", allowing you to change it back to one of the floating windows presets if desired.
• Floating windows now use the Tahoma font to match the contact list of Messenger (and it looks better too).
• The position of floating windows is not reset automatically with resolution changes when the Lock In Place option is used.
• The Bold and Italic buttons displayed in several windows of Messenger Plus! are now displayed with their own associated formatting ( = they look better).
• Internet links and file paths are not touched by the World Filter feature anymore (except when using the * wildcard).
• The POP3 E-Mail feature has been improved:
  • A new option now allows to activate SSL encryption to communicate with the mail server. This option is recommended if your mail server supports encrypted connections and is mandatory if your server requires it (like GMail does). This option is available for Windows 2000 and above only.
  • Messenger Plus! now tries to automatically associate a web page to known e-mails addresses (for example, if your e-mail is [email protected], clicking on a "new e-mail" notification will bring you to www.gmail.com).
  • A "Test Settings" button has been added in the preferences to verify if the information entered are correct. When the connection is successful, the success message also indicates the current number of e-mails.
  • The option to enable/disable the POP3 feature has been removed from the preferences panel to make room for the new stuff. It is now on by default. To disable it, you can use the new "EnableExternalMail" registry setting.
• A /nudge command has been added for MSN Messenger 7.
• Fixed a bug that prevented some features (like come-back messages and log encryption) to function properly when the "Open Messenger main window" option of Messenger was disabled and "Allow automatic sign in" was enabled.
• A /logging command has been added to enable or disable logging of a specific chat. Use it with parameters "on" and "off". Note: this command is a "Tom's special" :).
• Fixed a bug preventing sounds associated to custom notifications to be played.
• Fixed a bug that cause the Enhanced Plus! icon in the chat window to be displayed at the wrong position.
• A bug has been fixed in the download of auto-update files. If auto-updates didn't work for you before, they should now.
• "Change Name" notifications always display the old user's name properly now.
• Floating windows are always hidden properly when you sign-off (this fix also covers personalized-status being removed when you sign-off).
• Come-back messages are not tried to be sent when your status is Appear Offline.
• The emails of contacts saved in the registry for the Logging Archive and Floating Window features are now encrypted.
• Changes to the Messenger Plus! API:
  • All the API is now compatible with MSN Messenger 7.
  • An internal tag has been added to allow plug-ins like Stuff-Plug to properly add text like timestamps.
• Background colors in action messages and auto-messages are not displayed anymore.
• Messenger Plus! now automatically scans and fixes XML logs generated by MSN Messenger 6 and 7. This improvement suppresses error messages when chat windows are closed saying that logs couldn't be opened.
• The minimum and default parameter for the /clear command is now 2.
• A "LogViewerProgram" registry key has been added to ask Messenger Plus! to use another program that the default text editor to open the chat logs.
• Fixed a bug that prevented Plus! notification windows to be displayed sometimes.
• In Messenger 7, you can't use Ctrl+S to add a strike-out tag anymore. Please use Ctrl+R instead, then press S.
• Messenger Plus! sounds are not played anymore when the current user is not logged-in. You can change this behavior with the new "PlaySoundsNotLoggedIn" registry setting.
• No web page is now opened at the end of the setup (the new Configuration Wizard made it obsolete).
• Bug fixed when trying to import a preferences file generated in Windows 98/Me, in a Windows 2000/XP station (true for the inverse too).
• A lot of other bug fixes have been done since the last beta, everyone should be able to enjoy this new version in Messenger 7 without any major problem :).