Just a quick post to let you know that we’re currently working on the forum servers, they will be back as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

We’ve just completed the final move to what is now the new home of Emotion Sounds. We’re sorry if you experienced problems during the past week with this feature, things have been bumpy since last autumn because of the amount of people using this feature continuously. More than 4 billion sounds have been sent since activation and the original server array was suffering from it, begging to be put to rest, despite the repeated improvements.

You can now enjoy sending emotion sounds again, rapidly and without worrying about errors. I can’t promise there won’t be any surprise this week while we adjust the new servers but things look very good so far. Don’t be shy and try out some new sounds from mpsounds.net to have some fun while chatting today. It’s free, as always, so think about sending sounds on Messenger instead of buying things with your Facebook points ;-). Thank you for your patience.

After a longer than usual beta period, the new Messenger Plus! is finally ready and can be found in the download section of this site. Of course, the main attraction of version 4.80 is full compatibility with the latest version of Messenger, Windows Live Messenger 2009, and when we say “full compatibility”, we mean just that. You won’t find any ”light” trimmed-down version of your add-on here.

Despite the lack of visual changes in the software, the change log shows that many things were done under the hood. As often, scripts and skins in particular got their good share of improvements. There are now more than 500 of them in the official databases of this site. This means that you could spend the next month customizing Messenger with Plus!, its scripts and its skins and you would still haven’t seen everything. Big thanks to all the developers who keep on working on these improvements to make our daily IM life better.

In addition to the bug fixes and cosmetic improvements, this new Messenger Plus! also allows external developers to modify Messenger’s encoded windows’ files (UIB files) like they did with previous versions of Messenger. More information about that can be found in the skinning documentation. Note to all the developers reading this: Messenger Plus! is not required to be installed on your users’ computers for this feature to be used. The UIB files generated by Messenger Plus! can be read by Messenger just like the original ones which means that you can do the modifications you want on your system, encode the files and distribute the final result with your application.

Thank you for your renewed trust and support :-). Let’s have another great year together!

Happy New Year everybody!

It’s now official, Microsoft has released the final version of Windows Live Messenger 2009 on the Live web site. That’s about time. It took more than a year of beta versions to get to this new release but it was worth the wait. Of course, it means Messenger Plus! needs a final update too and I’ve got good news: I just saved a bunch of mon… I mean, the beta version available in the Download page has been updated to support the new Messenger. The new build number is 353. Even better, Messenger Plus! Live 4.80 will officially be released before the end of the month :-).

Two reasons pushed me to refresh the public beta before doing a final release: first, the sooner the better. I know many of you were wondering what would happen with Messenger add-ons with the new Messenger and this beta it meant to be somehow reassuring. After all, everything is fully functionnal again, including emotion sounds, scripts, skins, logs, colors, event notifications, as well as the hundred of other features&options offered in the software. Secondly, I thought some developers may like to benefit from the research I had to do during the past few weeks in the windows files of Messenger; more precisely, in UIB data files.

To make a long story short, UIB files (resource type “4010″ for those who know what I’m talking about) can be entirely decoded and re-encoded by Messenger Plus! and this functionnality is offered to every other add-ons and patches that needs it. So, if you’re the developer of a program that requires to modify the windows’ files of Messenger (previously “4004″ and “4005″), download the latest version of the Skinning Documentation and read the new “Encoding and Decoding UIB” section in “Specialized Subjects”. Three pages of documentation have been written to explain how to decode and re-encode UIB files in your application in a matter of minutes.

I hope this new version of Plus! will be useful, for end-users and developers alike. If you have anything to say about the new features, have comments, suggestions, or things to talk about in general, don’t hesitate to visit the forum. Have fun with the new Messenger!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas 2008. Stay tuned for the next version of your Messenger add-on and enjoy the holidays with your family and friends :-).