Messenger Plus! 4.85.386
Messenger Plus! is a plugin for Windows Live Messenger that adds more features to the instant messenger like skins, tabbed conversations, custom sounds and more. Messenger Plus! is the most popular MSN plug-in, collecting together all the extras users could ask for into one program. Even now Messenger Plus! is still an excellent pack of tools which heavy Messenger users consider as essential and which certainly improves your IM experience. During all these years it has been able to adapt to every new Messenger version, including the name change and the new interface design. In fact, Messenger Plus! is now seamlessly integrated into Live Messenger: it launches with the program and the only way you can tell it's there it by two tiny buttons on the main interface. At launch, the main feature of Messenger Plus! was the ability to record "chat logs" - text files with all your conversations. However, this is now included in the IM app itself, and Messenger Plus! has had to widen its range of extra functions. The Messenger Plus! tools can be divided into two groups: those for improving chat and those devoted to contact management.
As for the first group, you'll enjoy tabbed chat windows, support for custom text format (bold, italics, font, color) and the so-called quick messages, personal keyboard shortcuts you can assign to sentences or expressions used on a regular basis. The second group of tools in Messenger Plus! allows you to create custom status messages, have your favorite contacts on the Windows desktop (as an icon) and gather all kinds of stats about contacts, like the last time they logged on or whether they have recently changed their nickname. Messenger Plus! still offers its popular chat log tool, which is said to be more powerful and flexible than the default function in Windows Messenger Live. Actually, it looks much better thanks to the use of HTML, the ability to record emoticons and winks and the ability of customizing its appearance with CSS formatting. The list of improvements Messenger Plus! brings to Windows Live Messenger doesn't end here. You can also hide the application in the system tray under an almost invisible icon (in case you're chatting at work) or password protect access to the program, amongst other things. The good thing though is that you can create your own extra functions, that is, if you know how to code scripts. Messenger Plus! already features a few of them, allowing you to display the name of the song you're listening to, send screenshots, use sticky notes and other nice extras. English, Spanish, German, French, Catalan, Chinese Simp, Chinese Trad, Italian, Portuguese BR, Turkish Recent changes in Messenger Plus!:
* Fixes and compatibility improvements for the latest version of Windows Live Messenger
OS requirements for Messenger Plus!:
* OS: WinXP/2003/Vista/7 Compatible with Windows 7
Minimum requirements:
* Windows Live Messenger
Pros
* Very well integrated into Messenger
* Many extra tools, to which you can add your own
Cons
* Takes a while to configure
* You need scripting knowledge to create new tools
