Oldies are goldies

Mar 24, 2008 18:06 GMT  ·  By

Hell hath no fury like an Instant Messenger user scorn, a famous line from William Congreve could be adapted to suit present reality. Among a slew of successful features being added to Yahoo!?s Messenger with the various versions, there are a number of infamous ones that have taken the blunt of the wrath. Usually, it?s the little things that matter, and deservedly so: what is with the message format and why has it been changed, countless messages to the Sunnyvale-based company read during the weeks after 9.0 Beta was released.

Transitioning from one version to the other, except for the visual style, that continuously got shinier and prettier, evolution is a given. When most of the Instant Messenger?s clients call for the better days, perhaps evolution might like to warm the bench a little longer and be blended in only with those willing to embrace it. The photo on the left gives you a mix of old and new, and the choice for either is yours alone to make, now that the development team has introduced a means of switching between them.

First off, the defaulted option is the one in the middle, so there?s no need to go ahead and do anything, should you opt for it except for paying a little more attention in case you already are a user of 9.0 Beta. For changing for any of the other two, once signed into your account start a conversation with a contact in your list so that there are a few lines of text in the newly opened window, and pay attention to what?s to follow: click above where you typed the text and note that nothing happened. It?s supposed to be that way, but once you use the following key combination you?ll see it switch right away. Hit CTRL + SHIFT + #, where # stands for the option number you prefer.

The change will be persistent between your chat sessions, but there is a possibility that it will not happen straight away, like it should. The cases, although rare, shouldn?t concern you, as Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta might need as much as 24 hours to reflect the switch.