24 Nov 08 Skype 4.0 Beta 2 released : fixes for some annoying user interface issues

So while my current health situation recovering from my extreme varicose vein surgery goes on (and on, and on)… I’m managing to at least somewhat stay in tune with a minimal amount of news from the tech world.

I’ve been pretty ambivalent about Skype 4 which has been in beta for several months. There are some major changes in Skype 4: most notably to the UI which now is much larger and groups all chats into one monolithic window. This has been really hard to digest (for me, and many others) as it goes against pretty much all IM client interface designs be it Windows Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ et al. where a new (compact!) window is opened for each chat session you are currently in. Now since the release of Skype 4 in beta, one has a single window for Skype which is much larger, and requires you to click on contacts on the left side in order to see a chat session. This is very annoying.

Skype seems to have listened to beta user feedback, and with Skype Beta 2 now released they are now offering a “classic” compact view that goes back to the Skype 3.8 user interface – somewhat. They’ve also improved the size of alerts (when a contact is online/offline) to make them bigger. Unfortunately, the option for alerts when a contact comes online is still off by default! (Why?) You can fix this behaviour from Tools | Options | Notifications in Skype.

Another annoyance is that the “Check for Updates” option from within Skype (from Help on the menu bar) doesn’t work at all in beta versions of Skype 4.0… I’ve gotten in the habit of checking the minor release version (from Help | About) and then going to the Skype Beta download site and scrolling to the very bottom of that page to see what the most recent release version number is. It’s a 24MB download (for Windows) so forget about doing it over dial-up connections.

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Tags: Skype, Skype 4.0 Beta 2, Software