MSN Messenger 7.0 is a significant upgrade over previous 6.x versions, which should be obvious when you open the main MSN Messenger window for the first time after upgrading Though MSN Messenger 7.0 carries on with the same optional "borderless" window style first offered in MSN Messenger 6.x, the new version also features a wide range of visual changes that hint at the many new features.
In previous versions, Messenger supported a customizable name and display picture, and would append your online status (online, busy, etc.) to the latter. Now, even these basic features are significantly updated. In addition to standard display pictures, MSN Messenger 7.0 supports Dynamic Display Pictures (DDPs), which can be animated to react to emoticons you type in chat windows (like
for smiley or
for frown). You can also manually set a DDP to a specific emotion, including happy, sad, angry, or love. We'll look at this functionality more in the personalization discussion, below.