Clickable Hyperlinks

As some users requested, the hyperlinks are now clickable For now monkey messenger assumes that you use Firefox. I will add code to detect the browser later.

The latest revision also adds code for the Preferences window. I will be doing this soon because a lot of users complained that clicking the preferences menu does nothing. It does now, but shows an empty window for now, until the code is not complete.

That's all folks, keep the feedback coming.

Thanks.

Winks

On the last past week i've been trying to implement Winks (those flash animations) on monkey messenger. I changed msnp-sharp to get it working. The good news is that i can get it transfered. The bad news is that there is no decent flash API on linux. Here is the options:

- Just use gecko and the flash plugin: This option may sound easy, but i didn't find a way to detect the animation end to close the window.
- Use gnash. Gnash is quite good, it plays all the winks animation i have tried. But a C glue library would be necessary to make C# bindings and use it.
- Use swfdec. This one also plays all the winks i have tried but it would be necessary to re-use the existing gtk widget on the source tree and make bindings to C#. Would be easier than using gnash afaik.
- Use flashplayer from macromedia. It would certainly work, but there is no library and i can't make the standalone flashplayer gtk window transparent. I would also have to call an external executable that would sux.

There is also one more problem. The winks comes in a .cab file. There is no managed .cab extractor for .net. There is libmspack and the cabextract program. They both work but the first would need C# bindings and the second would sux. It would be easy to extend sharpziplib and implement .cab extraction i think. This would be a better solution.

So folks, i gave up on winks for now because i was wasting too much time doing it and there are more important things to do on monkey messenger. On the source tree there is a Wink plugin which works by half and is unfinished. I will not touch it until:

- There is a managed way to extract .cab files;
- There is a decent and easy way to play flash animations on linux.

If you want to see this happening you would:

- Read swfdec source at the player folder and implement a gtk# widget that uses libswfdec to play movies, so we can add it to a transparent gtk window using composition.

- Implement a .cab extesion to sharpziplib

- Contact me!

Thanks :)

Block/Unblock

As requested by some users, it's now possible to distinct blocked contacts as well as block and unblock them.



Thanks to Vinícius Depizzol for making the blocked icon.

Help us

If you like monkey messenger and feels like contributing to it, we have tasks for:

• Testing, bug reporting;
• Bug squashing;
  
• Coding user interface;
• Coding the msn protocol;
• Coding integration with other apps (plug-ins);
• Art (tango style), we need a new logo, some icons;
• Web development, we need a nicer web site;

Please, join our mailing list and tell us how you would like to contribute and your level of experience.

We plan to release a 1.0 in a few months. Will be publishing a TODO list and a schedule soon.

MSN Plus Format

Hi people, I had fixed a lot of bugs this week in the MSN Plus Parser, so I want to know if you still have any problem with these nicks, please send me the nick and the log that is show in the console, to fix the problem. I hope you enjoy this nice feature.

Bug Fixing

The contact list bug that contacts always showed as offline is nailed!

A big change was committed today (15/03) on the svn. Major internal changes were done, including:
- Simplier access to objects using Singleton and a Global class
- Replaced XihSolutions.DotMSN with MSNPSharp
- Bug Fixing

I've been receiving some feedback about monkey messenger. That's great, keep them coming. But keep in mind that it's not a finished product yet. It lacks a lot of features, some things are implemented only by half and it has some bugs. So if you want to test it, go ahead, but i don't advise to use it on production until the 1.0 is released. Any feedback, bug report and suggestion is welcome.

Come and join our Mailing List.

User Feedback

With some users feedback, here is a new optional view mode of monkey messenger:



The default option at 32x32 is still available as well as 24x24, 48x48 and 96x96 with different layouts, image sizes and text sizes.

Thanks everyone for all the feedback. Any ideas or comments, please, post it! :)

Almost forgot! Please, if you are interested subscribe on the monkey messenger mailing list at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/monkeymessenger-list.

Monkey Messenger Engine

For anyone interested on coding protocols. The library used on monkey messenger to connect to the msn network and provide functions and events is DotMSN. Originally DotMSN only supports the MSNP9 (msn protocol version 9). I have changed it to support MSNP11 which adds a few more features. The target is to change it to support MSNP15 (the current protocol). If anyone is interested i've spoken to Bas Geertsema (the DotMSN author) and with his permission i have created a sub-project to target this. The project is hosted at google code: http://code.google.com/p/msnp-sharp/. I will be changing monkey messenger soon to use MSNPSharp instead of DotMSN. Any questions about this can be sent to me thiago.sayao@gmail.com.

Monkey Messenger for your taste

As Vinícius suggested, it's now possible to customize the contact list size:

UI Changes

Vinícius Depizzol has sent me some mockups with really nice ideas, so i have implemented some of them:

• The top bar (which we call owner info) now follows the gtk+ theme
• Removed the status combo from the top and integrated it on the top bar

Here are the results:

He also suggested some nice changes to the conversation window. I will implement those as soon as possible :)