Well, I'm going to copy-paste things I have already posted on WLMessenger's
Blog. I think I share the same opinions of most of you, and I also want to
contribute with a few ideas. Keep reading.
1)
I hope you developers start paying more attention to speed. Live Messenger
and other Live stuff are becoming too heavy and running slower than ever,
consuming more and more memory. I don't want to change my hardware every time
I install a new version of a simple instant messenger. It's been years since
ICQ's honey moon, but it still looks hard for Microsoft to beat it. Don't you
think?
2)
Windows Live Messenger - Things I think
==============================
The whole software
- It is much heavier than it should be, it consumes much more memory than
it should.
- Stop forcing us to use that "Live" skin. I would prefer WLMessenger
following the visual of my Windows XP. Plus, it would be faster. Also, if we
consider Windows Vista, isn't it stupid to put another skin over WLMessenger
instead of using the nicer and standard Vista looks? Sometimes I really don't
understand these developers. Whatever skin should be OPTIONAL, not STANDARD.
- Voice conversation simply cannot compete with Skype yet. WLMessenger is
far slower.
- WLMessenger lacks intelligence. Consider Trillian, for instance. See how
it is organized, how easier it is to access and understand its
configurations. WLMessenger doesn't need the main menu (File, Contacts, ...,
Help), nor a button that lists the same thing. You are still following the
moulds of Windows Messenger and that's one of the main reasons that prevents
WLMessenger of really getting better and stepping forward. In my opinion, the
whole structure of Tools and Options and Actions (and all configurations)
should be redesigned.
The contact window
- It is time for WLMessenger to ignore those codes that Plus! adds, unless
of course we have Plus! installed. Don't you know what I'm talking about?
Those codes like [c=#000000]text[/c]. When we don't have Plus! the
screen name of people who use it appears messy.
- Why everytime some alert appers, like someone is online or a new mail has
come, my cooler starts to work massively? A simple alert looks looks so
painfully heavy for the computer!
- When someone sends us a message, we don't need to have a new chat window
created automatically, unless we want it. Just like ICQ, when a new message
comes, there should be a message icon over that person in the contact list.
When we want to see the message, we click there and the chat window opens.
Also, over that message icon, you could put the number of messages that that
person has sent.
- These Flash advertisements also make WLMessenger slower, but I think I
can't do much about that, can I? You could at least remove some stupid things
like the "Advertisement" title and the "Search the Web" box. Make that area
less intrusive. Ok, advertisements are there to get our attention, but most
of the time, they're just annoying. You have to work its design, in the way
it is placed.
- What about putting the people's personal message under their display
names? Yes, two lines for each person, so you can increase the icon's size a
little bit to support more features. This way, also we wouldn't find it
necessary to expand the window to read someone else's message. We would have:
___
|___| John Smith (Away)
|___| [ ] Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)
___
|___| John Doe (Online)
|___| ( ) "This is my personal message, if you don't like it, so be it."
(Myself)
- You mustn't waste space though, and don't make things too big or with too
much information. Just be efficient. Keep the font size of the display name,
but make the private message smaller (smaller font size).
The chat window
- Why our display picture should be that small while our cameras have a
much bigger display area? A size of 128x128px would be a good starting point.
- Why the chat structure has to be old fashioned like that? Why don't you
try something new and instead of displaying "John Smith is typing..." you
display already what he's typing, I mean, something like "on-the-fly". ICQ
already did that when we used the chat window splitted in boxes for each
person. But you don't need to split screens here. Do something like this:
John Smith said:
Hello.
John Doe said:
Hello there, how are you?
> John Smith is saying:
I'm fine, a bit tired of teaching how to develop_
- Is it clear enough? If we had more people in the conversation we would
have something like this:
John Smith said:
Hello.
John Doe said:
Hello there, how are you?
> John Smith is saying:
I'm fine, a bit tired of teaching how to develop_
> Cute Thing is saying:
Hello guys, it's nice be back to work, I have plans that_
- And then when someone sends the message, it changes from "John Smith is
saying" to "John Smith said". Simple, isn't it? Of course some people don't
like that, and so this "on-the-fly" mode can be disabled.
- Why can't we have a full palette for text colour?
- Why do we have a limit for pinned and custom emoticons?
- Why can't we add (Create) a bunch of emoticons at once? Browsing for each
file, one by one is so stupid!
- Also, why can't we use PNG emoticons? It has transparency and much more
quality than GIF or JPG.
- PLEASE, improve the speed when sending or receiving some file. PLEASE
enable a RESUME option. PLEASE don't block our files because WLMessenger
can't detect an anti-virus. Let us care about this.
- Do you know what I'm missing? I'm missing a common/shared area in the
chat window where I can show photos and pictures to the other person without
that process of accepting and downloading. That should be a place where I can
put an image and the person in the other side see it immediately, like a
photo or a screenshot. What about a button for displaying a screenshot? This
is so useful!
- Also talking about this common/shared area, we should be able to navigate
through a web site together, at the same time!
- In the chat window we have two tabs, one for text and one for drawings
(which was a good idea). Now, we're just missing some more tabs, like one for
the shared folder (another good idea), one for shared images/photos (not
shared files, just the image), one for shared navigation and maybe one for
shared music (not files, but shared listening). Also, if we talk about image
and sound, we can talk about videos too. There are a lot of things to be
done, and you keep wasting time doing God knows what, putting nothing
substantially good and innovative and still fattening the software.
THINK SMART
3)
Alright, just to make things a little bit clearer.
When I talked about PNG emoticons, I meant that WLMessenger doesn't respect
the original picture size, they appear smaller. I had to convert my PNG
emoticons to GIF so they could appear with the right size. Another downside
that I mentioned is the fact that we must add emoticons one by one, because
WLMessenger asks us to put a name and a keyboard shortcut. But if we select
more than one file, WLMessenger should do it automatically.
WLMessenger is slower than Skype, but not really *far* slower as I said. But
that's ok.
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