I have been using the latest version of Yahoo! Messenger for over two weeks now and I would like to give a quick review of it. Overall this is not a major change from what I know as Messenger. As it has been said before, this is evolutionary not revolutionary. From what I can see there are no new features (at least none that I would use), the user interface (UI) is prettier, and it looks like there have been some bug fixes; that’s it.
Under the hood there are some things to note. The current version of the YSMG protocol with version 8 is 15 and Messenger 9 has been upped it to YMSG 16. I’m not sure what this means because it looks like it behaves the exact same way as 15, 14, and even 13. Most likely they have added some new phone features that require a new revision number (once I take a more in depth look I will get back to you). I also see that some of the auxiliary components such as the webcam view have a new version number.
Here is a quick list of my findings thus far. In general I will have to recommend the upgrade. Although there are not an overwhelming number of positive reasons to upgrade, there are virtually no negatives.
Good• Appears that the stability is better. I kept getting kicked off every 15 minutes or so which was annoying. I am now getting consistently long times without having to reconnect.
• Better (prettier) user interface. This is not a big one for me but it might be great for some.
• Some bug fixes. In Messenger 8 you can hover over a contact’s name and a quick profile window pops up. Many times the quick profile window would hang and not disappear even if Messenger was minimized. Messenger 9 has somewhat fixed this and a few other similar bugs. Nothing major, just some minor headaches.
Bad• I didn’t really see anything that I would call a negative.
In the Middle• This is not a major update. It looks like they could have done much more with their time.
• The protocol version has been revised to YMSG 16.
• The GUI is different. The default setting has an expanded contact list with more information present. This annoyed me quickly and soon changed it. Not necessarily a negative as user tastes are different.
It has been suggested to me that I should consider taking donations for Yahoo! Coders Cookbook. Up till the point that someone suggested it I didn’t think anyone would care to donate. I would like to hear some feed back on this idea before I give it any more thought. As always I will not imagine charging for any of my programs or ideas. This is just for those who think I should get a little something for all my hard work.
Another thought that had crossed my mind is donating for support or new features that you want as a user. Say you want a new feature built-in YCC Cam Cap (soon to be released). You can make a donation and that request would go to the top of the todo list. A donation would also get support for any programs that you are having trouble with.
Just throwing out the idea, let me know what you think.
I am starting a new experiment in order to get more wide-spread attention to some of my programs. Every time I search for a piece of software I usually end up at one of those large software warehouses. You know the ones; like download.com but with a clear money making intent. The first one that I submitted YCC Bot Maker to is http://www.freewarefiles.com and can be found at http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_5_58_37746.html. It may be interesting to see how this experiment works and I will let you know if there is anything interesting to report.
A new version of YCC Bot Maker has been released. The new version, 1.1, implements the latest changes Yahoo! has made to their signup servers. For about a month YCC Bot Maker was not functioning due to these changes. Other changes include a substantial redesign to the internal engine and a few GUI changes. The new executable can be found at http://www.ycoderscookbook.com/Files/YCC Bot Maker 1.1.rar.
I mentioned earlier that I would get a quick update to YCC Bot Maker pushed out within a week (at least three weeks ago). This is to let you know that I am actually working on it. What I expected to be a quick 20 minute fix has turned into at least 10 hours. It appears that Yahoo! has added some new security measures that I need to decipher. The current problem that I am stuck on is getting the name to actually register. I go through all the steps and finally get to the end page where it says congratulations on your new name. I then login with that name only to find that it was never registered in the first place. Yahoo! has played games with hidden images and the such in the past so I am still looking for the ace up their sleeve.
It looks like Yahoo! has yet to fix the bug in Messenger that causes the installer to fail when the machine is running DEP. This is an ongoing issue with Messenger 8 and is still an issue with Messenger 9 Beta. Below is the message that I sent to the Messenger Beta feedback page.
“I see that the default installer still does not run with Windows Data Execution Prevention (DEP) enabled. This should be fixed so that the more security conscience of us are able to install Messenger without having to disable DEP, restart, install, re-enable DEP, and restart again. “
Yahoo! had another quarter annual Hack Day with three new ideas for Yahoo! Messenger (http://blog.messenger.yahoo.com/blog/2007/11/01/a-hack-day-full-of-messenger-ideas/). The first is to integrate webcam into the web version of Messenger. Personally I think this is a duh moment as this was one of my first reactions when I used Web Messenger. I guess the hack is more that it happened than an innovative idea. The second is a real time translation of IMs similar to Babelfish (http://babelfish.altavista.com/). The last hack is a Yahoo! Answers bot.
I see this list as already being sorted in descending order of likely to occur. My beat is the webcam will be added but it may take about a year or a new version of Web Messenger. The translator is of marginal value so I don’t see it happening. The Answers hack is just fluff so it should never see the light of day. (Of course in Yahoo! tradition, the Answers bot will be implemented next week while the webcam never happens.)
