The Contacts Monitor is certainly more intuitive and easier to navigate than Skype’s integrated Contacts interface for Skype and Facebook friends. It provides filters for All, Skype, Facebook, and Address Book contacts, and it allows you to start new chats either via double-click or right-click. The Contacts Monitor is a resizable floating window listing groups in a toolbar, and contacts with status indicators below them. Quite ironically, a simplified contact list wasn’t amongst the most shared ideas Skype asked its user base to submit in a contest to propose design ideas however, the company clearly listened to feedback, and decided to bring back the Contacts Monitor (available from the Window menu through a CMD+3 shortcut) to offer more streamlined access to contacts and groups. Perhaps more importantly for Mac users, the latest Skype brings back the old Skype’s simplified floating contact list that disappeared after the much criticized transition to version 5.0. The app works on the latest Mountain Lion developer preview, but it seems like Skype will still need to finely tune the software to avoid unexpected quit.
Unfortunately, after an initial test, Skype 5.8 crashed while I was browsing the integrated Facebook feed. Whereas Skype 5.6, released in March, added support for Lion’s full-screen mode, version 5.8 gets the app ready for Apple’s next major iteration of OS X so you won’t have to “worry about compatibility”.
Out today, Skype 5.8 for Mac brings a series of changes meant to make the app ready for Apple’s upcoming Mountain Lion, simplify the interface, and improve support for video calls coming from mobile devices.
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