Live Messenger Refresh Now Available

[+dave164 Subscriber¹]

It would be cool if you could have a picture as your contact list background

and not a plain color i think.

Vote here if you like the idea:

https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/View...eedbackID=41652

[ClintEastman]

Changing the background of your Contact List;

Create a .gif image named lvback.gif and paste it into your MSN Messenger directory C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger. You can have whatever picture you want keeping in mind that it will resize to fit the contact list. I have made a simple gradient which I think works the best as you can see below. Please feel free to use this image :)

lvback.gif

It would be cool if you could have a picture as your contact list background

and not a plain color i think.

Vote here if you like the idea:

https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/View...eedbackID=41652

Have you tried this?

[MiamiGuy]

Changing the background of your Contact List;

Create a .gif image named lvback.gif and paste it into your MSN Messenger directory C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger. You can have whatever picture you want keeping in mind that it will resize to fit the contact list. I have made a simple gradient which I think works the best as you can see below. Please feel free to use this image :)

lvback.gif

I tried converting a picture i have to gif but it loses quality terribly. Then when I set it as background it looks ugly as hell. How come your gif image doesn't look all squary and ugly unlike mine? Is it because you started from scratch and because i turned a jpeg into gif?

[illicit]

The only thing with WLM that I have found looks bad is the green icons when it's signing in and the icon of the exe. If Microsoft could make it more minimalist and modern it would tie in with the rest of the program.

Yeah, I feel the same way...

[kevpan815]

Yuck, this Build is worse (more problems).

[Humanreflect]

Um i like the design, if they can use more of the space lost in the title and othe rparts it would be great, and um they could make somehting else with the colors cauze the are horrible. but yeah i think this build is better then the other ones.

[Xtreme $niper]

After playing around with it for a while I've noticed that a lot of features that used to work perfectly have been broken. I don't know what they did but things like the scroll bar being affected by change of status are just things that shouldn't be a problem to begin with. I'll report when I have the time.

[splur]

I hated 7.0 and 7.5 when they came out and now I love it... so I can't be quick to judge 8.0 until I get used to it.

[sfnoxious]

The problems with dark colours as a theme/background in the contact list is quite annoying as I love black. One way to fix this would simply be to have white text on dark colours. Then it would be readable and look good. :)

[sfnoxious]

I tried converting a picture i have to gif but it loses quality terribly. Then when I set it as background it looks ugly as hell. How come your gif image doesn't look all squary and ugly unlike mine? Is it because you started from scratch and because i turned a jpeg into gif?

Yes it is. If you have a graphics development program such as Photoshop, use that and create an image from scratch. As it is a .jpg is compressed image format and if you compress it again to .gif you're losing quality on an image that's already bad quality.

[Computer Guru]

I like it. Default color theme: lightioh whitish blue (like in some of the sccreenies shown here)

[MiamiGuy]

Yes it is. If you have a graphics development program such as Photoshop, use that and create an image from scratch. As it is a .jpg is compressed image format and if you compress it again to .gif you're losing quality on an image that's already bad quality.

Alright thank you for the information. I'll be trying that. :)

[sfnoxious]

WLM takes about 10 times longer to sign in than v7.5. Microsoft, could you please look into this because it's annoying when all you want to do is chat to your mates and you have to wait ages.

[justin89h]

I personally think this is an aloot cleaner approach and looks really nice and simple, and doesn't seem cluttered.

Hey how do you show display pictures in the main window? Mine doesn't and there's no option to.

If this could be answered, would be good. (How to get the display picture shown for each contact) Looked all over messenger's options, nothing I can see works. Had a look at A-Patch, doesn't seem to have any options to do that...

Daeron Tin?viel has this shown in his screenshot here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?act=...=post&id=151419

[ClintEastman]

If this could be answered, would be good. (How to get the display picture shown for each contact) Looked all over messenger's options, nothing I can see works. Had a look at A-Patch, doesn't seem to have any options to do that...

Daeron Tin?viel has this shown in his screenshot here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?act=...=post&id=151419

Click the button next to the pinwheel and click "Show Details".

[kitchenutensils]

if i've been legally using WLM for some time, through an invite from a neowin member - shouldn't i be able to download this new beta? on connect it doesn't list WLM anywhere

[sfnoxious]

I'm unsure of weather this works because it doesn't with mine. The reason why it might work for you is because I?m using the A-Patch. Tools / Options / General / Show display pictures from others.

[trek]

if i've been legally using WLM for some time, through an invite from a neowin member - shouldn't i be able to download this new beta? on connect it doesn't list WLM anywhere

no, only members of the managed beta i.e. the ones that were invited by microsoft directly can download it. (we have access to connect, and thus the downloads area).

[sfnoxious]

It would be good if you could have small pictures in the contact list for each contact like v7.5

[ienhz]

wow i must say it does look A LOT better if you set it as the whitish color that's the first choice in the paint bucket drop down menu. the older betas were really realy ugly.

some of the text and buttons could use a little streamlining and touching up to look more professional though.

[aberflasm]

https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/Comm...eedbackID=41082

Entered by Microsoft on 2/15/2006

Update: The product team has taken a close look at this issue, and has determined that this is by design. Your input is greatly appreciated and may be reviewed or considered for a future release.

Looks like were stuck with the new UI.

[Slimy]

^ I think they'll be changing one or two things, but not much. I actually like it, now that it's a-patched and I'm not using the black.

[runningbird]

Got a small question,

Today I got an email from WLM that I was selected for the beta. I signed up on the http://ideas.live.com.

How can I be selected for the connect.microsoft.com sessions?

[NoneAvail]

Butt Ugly, i guess i'll stick with 0365build for a while....

[Hikaru]

In my opinion, it really looks decent if set to default colour. Some people get other colours when they first load up because that was their set colour in the older build too, I think. That was the case for me, mine started with dark blue and it looks absolutely TERRIBLE in the new build..

I'm having some problems with it though, like unable to sort by group and preferences not saving.. Anyone?