If you’re a script developer, you’ll find many new functions of interest in this release, like UploadFileFTP,  GetElementPos, ExtractFromZIP and support for synchronous callbacks with GetCallbackPtr. Skin developers will enjoy even more improvements, like DateRange restrictions to make your skin change depending on the current date, advanced new features for Color resources to create customized colorization values and gradient colors, the addition of Font elements to distribute and use special fonts in your skin, the possibility to create a separate About Box window, Environment tags for PlusSkin elements to create conditions based on things like the current version of Messenger, and more! Just check the Change Log and download the latest version of the documentations to see it all.

Of course, even if you’re just a simple user, all the updates that are related to scripts and skins still concern you. You’ll need the latest version of Messenger Plus! to be able to enjoy upcoming scripts and skins that make use of these improvements (and trust me, some good stuff awaits you in the near future for both, many very talented people now work on Messenger Plus! extensions). Also, in addition to all these updates, the new version contains an extra dose of bug fixes to make the software even more stable and enjoyable which brings me to something special I wanted to talk about.

Almost anybody who’s been using Windows for an extended period of time knows about the “Send Error Report” window. This window popups when a program crashes and asks if you want to send additional information to Microsoft about the problem. What some of you may not realize is how precious this information can be and how useful this system is. The reports are gathered together, classified, organised and made available to the associated software developer by the Windows Quality Online Services (Winqual) team at Microsoft. For years this team has helped me improve Messenger Plus! with the reports you’ve sent. Tens and tens of important errors have been found and fixed thanks to the service they provide. I’m proud to be able to deliver a highly reliable product to my users and I wanted to point out that my job would be much more difficult sometimes if the Winqual team was not here to help. The people who work in Winqual are among the most professional people I’ve worked with at Microsoft and I just wanted to thank them for the service they provide, especially considering that most people have no idea of who they are and what they do ;-).

Thank you for using Messenger Plus! and keep on sending those error reports when prompted :-). Have fun with the new release!

More than 40 skins have already been submitted and accepted in the official skin database and many more are coming. Because contests are always a subject of joy, I’m happy to announce that sometime this year, a big skinning contest will be organised, benefiting both developers (prizes) and users (new, better skins). Details will be announced when appropriate but as of now, something new and cool has already been put in motion in the world of skins: Will Ingles, the creator of popular skins such as Ev0, as agreed to dedicate some of his time to the creation of new skins inspired by movies and music groups.

What do they looks like? here are two example of these skins. The first one is inspired by Dr Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who, in theatres next week, and is already available as a download for all versions of Windows Live Messenger. The second one is based on the Iron Man movie that will be released in May and will demonstrate how much Messenger Plus! skins can change the look & feel of Messenger as a whole.

Not bad hum? New themed skins will be added on this site every month and will allow you to completely transform your Messenger windows to match your favourite movies, singers, and more. Your Messenger experience will never be the same, that’s guaranteed, and you’ll probably never want to go back to the original interface once you’ve tried a couple of skins either. Also, if you enjoy switching from one look to the other regularly, or, if you just don’t want to miss the release of a skin related to a movie that you’ve been waiting for, sign up to Messenger Plus! Skins Alerts to get instant notifications. Needless to say, all of this is free so enjoy the current skins as much as you can and be prepared to be amazed!

A new kind of scam has grown popular since last year. Some people have been registering domain names that look similar to mine in order to get money from my users. Some of these sites try to look like legitimate download sites, offering lots of other programs, while others bluntly rip off parts of the official site to look official. In every situation, the setup file downloaded from these sites asks to input a code which is generally obtained by paying a couple of dollars or euros by the mean of text messages (SMS) sent from your mobile phone. Some of these sites even replace their download link with a legitimate one from time to time to stay unnoticed for a longer period of time.

While we are still trying to shut down many of these sites, the problem is now important enough to give a clear official warning: Messenger Plus! is a very popular product and for that reason, is an easy target for scammers. Legitimate download sites will never, ever, ask you for any kind of monetary compensation to download or install Messenger Plus!, its scripts or its skins. If you have any doubt, go directly to msgpluslive.net to get your files and when recommending the program to your friends, give them a proper url. Don’t let them search for the software in a search engine as I’ve seen some of the bad sites advertising on Google, making the scam a very easy one to push onto some people.

Messenger Plus! is a software that’s free to download, free to install, and free to enjoy. If you fear a setup file you downloaded may have been tampered with, check its digital signature (right-click and select Properties). All the binary files I distribute are signed by “Patchou” with a VeriSign Class 3 certificate. If Windows displays anything else than “Patchou” and “Messenger Plus! Live” when you try to launch the setup, the file was not approved by me for public distribution and for that reason, it should not be trusted.

In order to conclude this news post, I can’t help myself but to point out something obvious and pathetic. In my opinion, problems like this one should be easily avoidable in our time. Sites registered by scammers should be recorded in some kind of big online database and people who try to access them should receive an appropriate warning. This is the job you would expect big security companies such as McAfee to perform well and as it turns out, McAfee offers this kind of service already! it’s called SiteAdvisor and you can even install an add-on to automatically protect you while you surf. The problem? According to their database, msgpluslive.net is rated red with a big “don’t go there” cross and is said to link to ”unwanted programs”, including 11 “trojans”. If you check messengerplus.ms, one of the scammers’ web sites, you’ll see a green checkmark and a note: “We tested this site and didn’t find any significant problems”. Life goes on…

Messenger Plus! is doing fantastically well these days. The number of users is increasing at such a rapid rate that I’m not even updating the count on the main page anymore. I think I’ll probably announce the latest stats with the release of version 4.51. For now, the big news is the translation of this web site. You may have noticed that since the new design was put online in December, English was the only language available. This is all going to change in the next week or two, with more pages translated, in more languages than before. Spanish is already online and the official Spanish forum even got a makeover for this special day.

Stay tuned for some sweet skins related news soon! (and make sure you don’t spend all your time in front of your computer screen tonight ;-).

If you’re interested to know more about what pushed this decision, the reasons are detailed in a post I made on Neowin’s Forum. Do yourself a favour and buy something else than an Xbox if you intended to buy a video game system for the holidays.

Happy New Year :)

Thanks to all of you, 2008 promises to be another great year :-D. Be sure to make the best out of what’s left of 2007 and remember that Messenger is always here when you need to contact a friend or a family member.

Have a blast and come back next year to visit us!
Cyril

Most of you will get notified about this new Messenger Plus! release via auto-update during next week. Meanwhile, the web site is still being polished and its many translations will start coming back before the end of the year. I’m sure you’ll all have more exicting things to do in the next couple of weeks than checking for updates on msgpluslive.net anyway. Messenger Plus! Live 4.50.312 will be the last version published in 2007 so get it, enjoy chatting with your friends and eat all the chocolates you can! Christmas is here! :-)

Here we are now, in December, 2 weeks away from Christmas, and the update has finally been uploaded to the servers! Not only that but the web site got a serious make-over as well. Everything looks nicer, everything works better; it is now up to you to decide whether or not all these changes were worth the efforts. Once again, I have to thank all the testers, all the translators, the graphic designers and the people in charge of the servers. They are all valuable members of the community, their help is precious and without them, Plus! wouldn’t be the software you know today.

As discussed in previous news posts, the main highlight of this update is skinning. You can now change the appearance of your Messenger, rapidly and securely. All the pictures can be modified, the windows re-shaped and the elements re-colorized… sky is the limit! Some of the testers did a lot of work in the past few weeks to showcase their talents and demonstrate how to work with the system. The resulting skins can be downloaded from the official Skins Database, a new section of msgpluslive.net. Note that some of these skins are not considered “final” (polished enough) by their creators yet but they’re worth downloading nonetheless.

If you’re interested in creating your own Messenger skin, check out the documentation included with Messenger Plus!, visit the help forum, take a look at the current skins to see how they were created and submit your creation when it’s ready to shine! More than 10 million scripts have been downloaded from the Scripts Database since last year already and skins promise to be as popular if not more. Remember that the success of this feature will mostly depend on your submissions so if you feel inspired, possess some basic technical knowledge and got some time ahead of you, don’t be shy and give the system a try! One last thing: in case you’d be wondering, yes, a skinning contest will indeed be organised early next year and every existing skin will be eligible :-).

Of course, skinning is only one of the many new things offered by this version. The Preferences panel has been re-designed with many new options added all over the place, Script developers can now enjoy new API functions as well as a much better built-in editor with support for IntelliSense and outlining, the Log Viewer has been completely reworked with features like “search in files” and “maximize view”, the Contact List Clean-Up now offers a “show contacts who have me in their list” mode, Contact Information windows give more information about your contacts, new event notifications are conveniently shown in the notification area of your chat windows, the uninstaller includes a Repair mode and is UAC friendly, etc… The sheer size of the Change Log alone should be enough to convince you that this is not a simple refresh of version 4.23.

Note: the software is still available in more than 20 languages, however, translation of the new web site’s pages will take another week or two to be completed. The web site itself is to be considered work-in-progress for some days. Translating from one language to another is a hard and time consuming job. All the translation teams did a tremendous job on the software already, I didn’t feel I could ask more from them before the software was released and people could enjoy the result of the efforts. The good news is that even more pages than before will be translated once the work is done.

That’s it for today. I hope you’ll all be pleased with the update. 22 million of you are now using Messenger Plus!. To me, that’s 22 million reasons to keep on working on it :-).

Enjoy!