MSN Messenger

[mashby]

I've scoured the vBulletin.com and vBulletin.org forums for a simple answer to this and I haven't been successful, so I thought I'd post it here in the hopes that someone with the skills to do this can point me in the right direction, or simply create the modifications.

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The Current Environment
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Microsoft has not enabled any web based features to it's MSN Messenger IM Client. For this reason vBulletin has not included MSN features like it has (although commented out) with ICQ, AIM and Yahoo. The only solution seems to be to install a hack that integrates MSN into your forum.


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What I've Done Thus Far
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I didn't like the graphics that vB uses for the IM portions of the code. Of course, it's not THEIR graphics, but the graphics that the various IM server make available. So, I changed the graphics to pull from my local server and not from the IM server.

By doing this, I know that I have disabled the Online/Offline aspect of the code. I hope to somehow be able to fix that in the future, but for now, I'm happy with the look (see attachment).


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A Simpler Approach - The Icon
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I'd like to add a template for MSN that functions much like the Yahoo and other IM templates do. Basically, that if the MSN field contains data, then show the MSN image I have stored locally. If it doesn't then no image appears.

What this modification doesn't do is actually see if the person is online, or any of that stuff. Only that if the user has an MSN number then it should display the graphic.


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A Simpler Approach - The Link
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The second part of this is the link. If a user clicks on another users MSN icon in a post, then it needs to link somewhere.

Since there are no web based features that MSN provides, there's nothing to link to on their site. My only solution has been to create an additional html page, or template that displays the MSN handle of the user. Personally, I'd like to do it in the form of a pop-up, much like Pixel Junction has done with their "How Does This Work" link in the postbit on their forums [link].


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Wishful Thinking?
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I'm sorry this has been such a long post, but I wanted to convey as best I could what I am trying to accomplish and I couldn't think of any other way. Hopefully I'm not alone in wanting to add this functionality and this will be a popular tutorial.

Anyway, thanks in advance to anyone who can help me out!