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The application comes with a series of changes to the Contacts List design, and it introduces the possibility to easily pin Favorite contacts at the top of the list.
Since most users have a handful of contacts they engage with most often, the new flavor of Skype is meant to enable them do so easier than before.
“To make it easier to talk with those people you care about most, we have introduced a new Favorite contacts feature, which lets you easily pin these people to the top of your Contacts list. Now, they are always available to you, without needing to search for them,” a post on the Skype blog reads.
Additionally, the Contacts list not shows merged Skype and Facebook contacts, so that they would be all in a single place. The manner in which one can access the Contacts list from the user interface has been changed as well.
Another important feature in the new Skype 5.10 for Windows includes a configuration file that provides users with the option to switch on a backwards-compatible video encoding mode.
By including this feature into Skype, Microsoft is ensuring that those users who own older PCs or graphics cards that may not properly support DirectX 9 would no longer bump into encoding issues.
“We suggest only using this when you have heavy issues with video calling, such as only seeing a still picture or horizontal lines being displayed on screen instead of the video stream, or if our Customer Support team is unable to offer you another working solution,” said blog post continues.
Those who would like to use the option would need to exit Skype first, then open the file named config.xml in a text editor (it can be found in C:/Users/*WindowsUsername*/AppData/Roaming/Skype/*SkypeName*/), and add the following line of code under section [General]: <VideoDisableDirectX>1</VideoDisableDirectX>.
The latest flavor of Skype also makes it easier to understand the Premium subscriptions communications, and it removes the 'Video in Mood' functionality.
The application also packs a series of fixes for issues such as Skype crashes after a screen sharing session, Call Monitor not always being closed at the end of a call, transferred files with names in Korean characters not being displayed correctly, and more.
Download Skype 5.10 for Windows
