HWiNFO 5.22

- Viewing your contacts by their Yahoo! ID vs. their full name or nickname. We've added this preference back in to the product. Download this latest version, then go to Messenger > Preferences > Appearance.

- New expanded contact list. If you're finding that this new look is too spacious for you, go to the Contacts menu and select Compact List. This will reduce the size of the Avatars and condense the height of your list overall.

- Message formatting in the IM window (the line break after the name rather that starting text on that first line). We've developed a set of handy keyboard shortcuts to give you some other options for your IM window. The shortcuts are a temporary fix; we'll build something more permanent into a future release of 9.0.

- Installation problems for Windows Vista users. In this latest refresh, we've made changes to the Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta installer that should fix most of the Vista errors. If youre on Vista, please give it another try and use our feedback page to let us know if you still encounter issues.

- Games are missing from the IM window. There were some changes to the Yahoo! Games platform that required us to remove them from this version for awhile. We are trying to get them back into a future release of 9.0; we'll keep you posted. In the meantime, if you love your Pool or Checkers, we recommend returning to Yahoo! Messenger 8.1.

- The LAUNCHcast plug-in, along with all the other plug-ins like Yahoo! 360, still work in 9.0! Just click the Plug-ins button near the bottom of your Messenger window to find them.

There are also a few things about Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta that you may not know about. One is that 9.0 is the first version of Messenger that is unicode compliant. This means that it supports IMs and status messages in many more languages than before.

A few other interesting tips& 9.0 will remember your status between sessions. So if your status on a Saturday night says Partying like its 1999!, be sure to change it when you get to work on Monday. Also, if you have both a Yahoo! and a Windows Live ID for a friend, your friend will appear in your contact list only once. To IM your friend on the Windows Live network, click the drop down arrow next to the IM button below their name when you hover on them.

And lastly, if you usually show both online and offline contacts in your list, you can set a preference to bold your online contacts to help distinguish them. Youll find that preference under Messenger > Preferences > Appearance (Show online contacts in bold text).

Introducing Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta, the next version of our popular IM software for Windows. This new version has a whole new look and feel, along with some great new features that make it well worth the upgrade. Heres a quick look at whats new in Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 Beta:

- A whole new look for your contact list. Keep it in detail view to see larger Avatar images for your friends, or switch to compact list view (in the Contacts menu). Plus, you can just hover and click to IM, SMS or call a friend.

- Brand new skins and emoticons! Click the dot near the top of your Messenger window to choose a skin, and check the emoticon menu for the new ones that were inspired by user entries in our Emoticontest earlier this year (more on our winners in a future post).

- New Flickr integration in the photo sharing feature. Easily share photos from your Flickr.com account, or save photos shared with you directly to Flickr.

- A new in-line media player that makes it easy to view maps, photos and videos from sites like Yahoo! Video and YouTube right in the IM window. No plug-ins needed, no extra downloads  its built right in. Just send a video, map or photo link to another friend whos also on 9.0 to try it out.

- New features for voice calls. You can have your incoming Phone In or free PC calls forwarded to another number like your mobile, home or office phone, even if youre signed out of Messenger (Phone Out account required). Plus theres a new way to get voicemail. When someone leaves you a voicemail in Messenger, an email is sent to you with an MP3 of the voice message attached.