For the past few weeks I have been playing around with 9 seeing what has changed and how far we can push things. I have to say that although there are a lot of changes and nearly double the amount of layout files to modify, overall 9 is going to bring some really interesting things to the table. One of the things I am looking forward to playing with is with some of the new effects that Messenger 9 brings such as fades, text glows and other types of animation.

I should also point out that I am only able to modify 9 because of a small workaround that was discovered that allows us to force Messenger to use its old layout files over the new ones. This allows skins, Messenger addons and patches to do their thing on 9 once again. Most people are counting this as a victory saying that stuff is possible again on 9, but really all this was was something to buy us some time. The old layout files have a really high chance of not existing in the final version of 9 so we will be back to square one.

The main problem about 9 still exists and in order for things to survive in the final version of 9 the new layout file format of Messenger 9 has to be figured out properly or we will be stuck with not being able to modify Messenger again. This new layout file isn't standard XML and style information that we can easily edit with any text editor, instead it is some weird file type that can't be read or edited properly without cracking it.