"Instant messaging" field nonsense and solution.
 

Hi. Sorry for my week English.

First of all i want to thank you for such great product. But there is one thing that makes me mad: "Instant messaging" field nonsense. We have year of 2010 and i think that this is a right time to change this. I don't want to make any kind of custom mod for this because i believe that this should be in default vbulletin code. So lets start:

Profile Page contain this fields:

• ICQ Number:
• AIM Screen Name:
• MSN Messenger Handle:
• Yahoo! Messenger Handle:
• Skype Name:

The problem is that vbulletin developers don't follow changes that was made to those services:
(below changes was made at protocol side, i hope that i won't have to post screenshot/links for proving this)

- With ICQ 7.x and AIM 7.x someone who have AIM account can add people who have ICQ account, without having an own ICQ number at all. Same with other side: someone who have ICQ number can add people who have AIM account by their email login, without having an own AIM Account at all.

- WLM 9 and Yahoo Messenger 10 can do same thing. Someone who have MSN account can add people who have Yahoo Messenger account, without having an own Yahoo Messenger account at all . Same with other side: someone who have Yahoo Messenger account can add people who have MSN account by their email login, without having an own MSN account at all

Conclusion: There is absolute no need to separate ICQ number/AOL Instant Messenger field and WL/MSN Messenger/Yahoo Messenger field, because people don't need "extra" account to be able to communicate.

Separation of those field cause confusion and unwanted account creation. Typical situation is "He have ICQ number and i want to talk with him, but i have only AIM and dam i don't want to have second IM application http://www.phpbb.com/community/image...icon_e_sad.gif"

I want to propose a solution what i believe is much better and shows what is true at todays IM world.

1. Connect ICQ number and AOL Instant Messenger field into one:

ICQ/AOL:
Why those field are connected? - this is a clickable/tooltip link that will open an explanation why those field are connected.

2. Connect WL/MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger field into one:

MSN/WL/Yahho Messenger: (alphabetic order)
Why those field are connected? - this is a clickable/tooltip link that will open an explanation why those field are connected.

3. There are two more independent IM service that is very popular over the world: Jabber and XFire. If you will do proposed changes then saved space can be used to include Jabber and XFire field in default phpbb code. Note that i don't propose that default phpbb code should contain every IM field that exist (eg QQ in China, GG in Poland) that is what mods are for, but Jabber and XFire are very popular services over the world.

4. Add "Do i have Jabber?" or "List of services that use Jabber" at the bottom of "Jabber address" with a list of know services that use XMPP protocol.

So what do you think about that ? Let's have some discussion.