You can see that the contact list has a slick new look… you can customize the size of the people on the buddy list.

You can even drag people to the Vista Sidebar so you can easily see their status, or click on them to start a conversation (in a regular conversation window)

It’s also got an abundance of bouncing, animated smiley faces for all your emoticon needs:

When you receive a message, they animate for a few seconds before going back to normal size:

If you click the icon near the bottom right, an animated “dialog” pops up that lets you choose from a number of different colors, including a pattern that looks like grass or something?

Instead of just using a picture, you can use the new Yahoo avatars, which will require you to go through a zillion pages on their website to customize it.

The preferences menu is actually somewhat hard to find… it’s right between the Feedback button and the minimize button. You’ll notice that some of the items have keyboard shortcuts…

They are supposed to be adding a lot more features over the next year, but I think I’ll stick with Pidgin or Adium since I don’t really use Yahoo messenger anyway…

Download Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista