Vista - UI aneurysm

so who had the idea to pad like half a centimeter [in 1280*1024] of the chat
window with.. blank space? what where you thinking? also the banner at the
bottom is annoying by it self but the fact that its surrounded by blank space
that just eats screen real estate for no erason what so ever is just bad
design..

its also really annoying that the email adress is not shown in the chat
window anymore.. people change their display name all the time and the only
way to keep track of them is the email adress..

the new chat window is a serious step beck from v8 both in visual design and
usability.. why does the contact name portion of the window need so much
space? most of it is blank any way and it contains less info than before. i
also see no need to move the contact image pane to the left side of the
window and also make it bigger [still not having an option to resize to any
size]

also, setting colors on both the main window and chat windows seems to have
much less impact now. both windows remain 75% gray when a new color is
applied.. in v8 the impact was much larger and far less gray and dull.

and finaly, why is there no option to hide the new groups node? you do have
the option to hide the much more meaning ful favorites node, but not the
groups node.. and to make matters even worse, if you dont have any gropus,
you but the groups node above the contacts! now i have to scroll further to
get the contacts i want just because youve put a useless empty treenode at
the top of the list!

i like messenger even though its pretty inferior to the wpf driven yahoo
messenger (why in gods name arent you using wpf? the fact that many basic wpf
tutoials and demos create a live messenger ui in like 10 minutes says alot on
how powerful it is) but if this beta represent the final ui, im making the
switch.. and i dont think im alone

I agree that the new UI poorly uses screen space. You'd expect that in
designing a messenger program the designer would prioritize and balance the
aesthetic form and functional usage of screen space considering its a program
based on a thin user list and small chat windows rather than a large program
designed to take up most of the screen. I have a 1280x768 laptop and I needed
to turn off the grouping of contacts becuase the new messenger has vertically
spread everything out on the list and made the fonts larger, even when on the
smallest setting.


"aL3891" wrote:

A few points:
1. The Green / Yellow / Red box shows the contacts status. Why is there
another "Available" or "Away" next to the contact's name? Now I have to hover
over the contact to see his/her personal message.
2. Previously mentioned half a centimeter margin in a conversation window.
3. Cannot hide the Groups node as mentioned before.

I like keeping my Contacts Window as small as possible. I can't do it in
this design.

About the WPF.
Why is Yahoo coming up with a WPF(next gen UI?) version before you do?

"aL3891" wrote: