In the feature department quite a few things have been added and changed as well. The biggest of which is the new Groups feature (while the old groups are renamed to Categories). A Group is a special chat room to which you can invite your buddies, and which stays on your contact list until you delete it (making it an instant multi-party conversation). The group will appear to be online when a another buddy in the group is also online. With a group, you can share files, photos, chat history, etc. (More coverage on Liveside). Aside from groups, there's another new entry in the contact list: the Favorites category. This category is always shown at the top, and when contacts are added to them their full details are shown in your contact list (similar to the "Show all contact details" feature in v8.5). The favorites category is also shown on older clients, where it will display as a regular category.

Along with the new UI of the conversation window (most noticeably the display pictures appearing at the left side of the conversation), a new feature has also been added: photo sharing. You can add or remove photos from the current session, and browse through them while you and your buddy discuss the currently displayed photo. Although we couldn't try it out in detail yet, this promises to make it much easier to show all those holiday and party photos to your buddies.

The build in question is the first milestone after the questionable BETA period which was closed at the end of June, with a new second milestone already coming up. We can't wait to see what turns up in the next few months... Seeing as the most-requested features haven't been added yet (Messenger Team, we're looking at you!). We will keep you posted.