Skype 5.0 beta update for Windows
We have just released a updated version of Skype 5.0 beta for Windows.
In this release we have a number of major improvements in comparison with previous release of Skype 5.0 beta:
* 10-way group video calling
* Skype Home experience
* Offline instant messaging
* New contact search and add experience
* Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions
* Post call experience
* General User Interface refresh
Start downloading the build right away and keep reading for a detailed overview of the new features, also please keep in mind that this is a beta version of software which means that there are some rough edges and bumps in it, please make yourself familiar with known issues list.
We suggest everyone currently using Skype 5.0 initial beta release upgrades right away.
In case something unexpected happens, please let us know about it, by talking on our forums or posting a issue report on our public issue tracker, see issue reporting guide.
Make up to 10-way group video calls
In this newly released version we support up to 10-way group video calls. In addition we have improved the quality of the video on the group video calls.
Making a 10-way group video call requires a very fast computer, the minimum system requirements for is Intel Core2duo 2 GHz CPU or equivalent, the recommended CPU is Intel i7.
Minimum required network bandwidth is 1 mbit/s and recommended network speed is 5 mbit/s.
These system requirements apply for all participants and the quality will be determined by the slowest computer on the link.
Please note that group video calls between initial Skype 5.0 beta release and this release are not supported.
Skype Home
Skype Home is a new area in Skype which provides relevant updates for you, including information about your purchases, your friends’ mood message updates, and videos to help new users get started with Skype.
Offline IM
Now you can send and receive messages from your friends who are offline at the moment. The messages will be delivered at the moment when the other party or you will sign in to Skype, even if your friend is not online anymore.
This feature works only for the people who are on the Skype version which supports it.
Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions
In this new beta version we have considerably improved your call experience if something goes wrong with your connection.
We have built in client messaging which informs you about potential issues with the call and what to do to improve your call quality.
In the background we are also re-establishing network connections to avoid call drops and if the call should still drop then we inform you about it and automatically redial the call for you.
General User Interface refresh
We have done numerous updates to Skype’s left side screen there is a new profile and mood message entrance area as part of Skype Home; Contact list, which is now showing your contacts profile pictures; Recents list, which is a merge of old conversations list and history; and some more smaller changes.
Full release notes for 5.0.0.123 are:
New features:
* 10-way group video calling
* Skype Home experience
* New contact search and add experience
* Offline instant messaging support
* Enhanced call experience under problematic conditions
* Automatic call recovery
* Post call experience
* General User Interface refresh
Improvements:
* Support for three new languages: Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Indonesian
* Skype now remembers dial-pad view user preference on the call toolbar
Known issues:
| Category | Description | Workaround |
| Accessibility | Cannot accept or reject contact request via keyboard. | None available at this time |
| Accessibility | Skype fails to detect some screen readers when they are started after running Skype. Sometimes screen reader is detected but options not following the rules. | Restart Skype |
| Account panel | Incorrect credit information may be displayed in certain conditions. | Making a call to a phone number will solve the problem |
| Authorization requests | Users with screen readers may have problems noticing the new authorization requests in the Notification tab. | None available at this time |
| Browser plugin | Free number is not copied on Chrome browser, a blank line is copied instead. | None available at this time |
| Browser plugin | When checking spelling in html mode, Skype html tags are displayed ONLY for short time and then disappear. | None available at this time |
| Browser plugin | During Skype update it’s impossible to change language for Skype browser plugin. | Not available at this time |
| Browser plugin | Firefox add-on is not uninsatalled after disabling and uninstalling it from Firefox add-on for Firefox. | Uninstall is working only for enabled add-ons |
| Browser plugin | On Windows Vista the Firefox browser crashes if it is running while Skype is installed with the Firefox browser plugin. | None available at this time |
| Browser plugin | When a user opens their web browser with no network connectivity, Skype displays an error message that SkypeNames.exe wants to use Skype. This happens when opening Firefox for the first time after installing Skype with the IE and Firefox add-ons. | None available at this time |
| Browser plugin | On Windows 7 Skype installer offers to install Skype internet explorer browser plugin even if Internet Explorer is not installed in that machine. | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Numberpad on call phones in not displayed properly on low screen resolutions | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Call to invalid number message is not cleared | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Accessibility in Call Phones tab is not properly supported | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Header area in call phones tab may show some messages in text format instead of graphical | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Call Quality Indicator is states that youre connection speed is unknown | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Call Phones tab shows wrong information about subscriptions when user does not have reccurring payments enabled | None available at this time |
| Call Phones | Calling rates under subscriptions are sometimes not correctly shown | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | Call restablishment message won’t disappear on call which appears to be fine, though bandwidth available is very low | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | Call Quality Indicator does not warn user if he mutes microphone in Windows settings | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | Call quality indicator suggestions may sometimes be incorrect | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | If a user receives a video call while their webcam is already in use by another application, then the call quality indicator will not display the correct video indicator | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | The call quality indicator incorrectly reports medium quality when in fact the video call is in high definition. | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | The call quality indicator may display a slow CPU message during audio-only calls on computers which can handle audio calls without problems. | None available at this time |
| Call Quality Indicator | The call quality indicator will not update if a webcam is still in use by another application | Close and re-open Call Quality Indicator after releasing the webcam. |
| Call Quality Indicator | The Call Quality Indicator shows a false error message that your webcam is in use by other application, even if it is not in use anymore. | Ignore the message. |
| Call Transfer | Call transfer to a phone number not in contact list does not work | None available at this time |
| Call Transfer | Call goes to Voicemail while transferring to offline user | None available at this time |
| Call Transfer | Transferring a call to another phone without having Skype Credit will disconnect the call without a proper warning message. | None available at this time |
| Call Transfer | If a user has their call returned after an unsuccessful call transfer, that user must decline the call twice | None available at this time |
| Call Transfer | Transferring a call to a phone contact and Skype user at the same time will cause the call to disconnect for the Skype user when the phone contact answers the call. | None available at this time |
| Call View | Accessibility is not fully supported in Call View | None available at this time |
| Call View | There is no messaging to indicate that participant has put group call onto hold | None available at this time |
| Call View | Call toolbar partly hidden when showing chat during call | None available at this time |
| Calling | The microphones of the TouchCam N1 and Twincam encoding cameras generates CPU spikes in every 20 seconds that may result in lower video quality | Avoid using the encoding camera microphone |
| Calling | It’s not possible to see whether a group call participant has put a call on hold | None available at this time |
| Calling | When a call is forwarded to a phone number then the user will see myself video preview if he started a video call originally | None available at this time |
| Calling | While on a call to the saved phone number of a contact, it’s not possible to access the IM history of this contact. | None available at this time |
| Contact List | There could be text formatting errors in recents list | None available at this time |
| Contact List | Web page error message may appear when using quickfilter | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Searching contacts in Korean, Japanese, simplified and traditional Chinese languages may not give relevant results. | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Contact search doesn’t trigger when email address is specified | User needs to click “add” button to trigger the search |
| Contact Search | Add contacts buttons text is only partially visible sometimes | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | User search, based on e-mail and phone number, does not display partial results if full matches are present | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Searching for location, gender, age is not possible at this moment | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Contact search results ordering might not be always perfect, it could show your existing contacts on top of the list. | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Custom email invite is ignored and instead of it the default one is sent to invited persons | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | It is not possible to add multiple contacts at once | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Your avatar picture is not displayed in Public profile view | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | There is no support for right to left languages in profile view | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Profile view may miss some public information for your contact | None available at this time |
| Contact Search | Opening Find Finder opening can take more than expected | None available at this time |
| Conversations | Switching between conversations can be slow for some users. | None available at this time |
| Directory | Adding a new business to Directory will fail | None available at this time |
| Dropped call experience | It is not possible to resume group-call after host lost network connection | None available at this time |
| Extras Manager | An error message appears when the Extras Manager is started while Adobe Flash Player is not installed | Install Adove Flash Player before opening Extras Manager |
| File Transfer | Skype may stop responding when accepting File Transfer in group conversation | None available at this time |
| Group Video Call | On group video calls with high participant count video stream may freeze. | Restarting the video with start/stop video button may resolve the issue, otherwise restart the call. |
| Group Video Call | Group video calls with high participant count may cause Skype to crash. | None available at this time |
| Group Video Call | Group video calls on slower computers may increasing the computer load to 100% or reduce the quality of the calling experience | Use a faster computer |
| Group Video Call | Group video calls with slow internet connection may increasing the computer load to 100% or reduce the quality of the calling experience | Use faster internet connection. |
| Group Video Call | In rare cases, the webcamera may not be released after the group video call has been stopped. | Restart the application. |
| Group Video Call | Merging two audio calls into a conference also starts video, which is not requested | None available at this time |
| Group Video Call | If the call drops while being in a group video call and it’s then automatically reconnected into the conference, that participant’s video may appear frozen for the rest of the users. | None available at this time |
| Group Video Call | If some participant in a group video call is in low bandwidth conditions in his downlink, his video may freeze for the rest of the participants. | We recommend to have at least 512 kbit/s downlink for 3 party call and 1 Mbit/s for 4 party call. |
| Group Video Call | If one group video call participant is putting the call on hold, it may stop some of the videos for remaining participants in the call. | None available at this time |
| Group Video Call | If Skype reconnects a group video call after network has been lost, then other participants may not see users video anymore. Also Skype may crash. | Try restarting video or restart call. |
| Group Video Call | “My Video” button could be missing in a group video call | None available at this time |
| Installation | Skype installer may be slow for some people. | Download full installer from [http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-beta-full] |
| Instant Messages | No warning message is being displayed when closing a conversation with the close button in compact mode. | None available at this time |
| Localization | Skype will sometimes not correctly display Arabic and Hebrew languages in the user interface. | None available at this time |
| Localization | Skype alerts may be displayed in wrong language in the Notification area. | None available at this time |
| Login/Logout | On login screen after logout cursor is not visible | None available at this time |
| Miscellaneous | On rare occasions Skype may freeze when changing conversations | None available at this time |
| Miscellaneous | Skype may crash when switching Windows user under Windows 7 | None available at this time |
| Miscellaneous | Netbooks can experience problems displaying some of the Skype windows. | None available at this time |
| Miscellaneous | Certain graphical components may be misaligned when running Skype with a high graphics DPI setting. | None available at this time |
| Notifications | Skype notifications about account changes can be delayed by a few hours | None available at this time |
| Options | From options screen Learn more… links directs to EN site instead of localized site | None available at this time |
| Post call experience | Post call screen loading may not be instant for some users | None available at this time |
| Post call experience | Post call screen does not have close button if IM areas was visible during the call | None available at this time |
| Premium Account | Placing an Group Videocall with no Skype Premium shows up to other participants as missed conversation | None available at this time |
| Premium Account | Seldomly when adding third participant to video call the host is not notified about the need to get Skype Premium. | None available at this time |
| Screen Sharing | Screen sharing of large resolutions may have artifacts in the color conversions. | Reduce shared screen resolution. |
| Screen Sharing | My video button will not appear after a screen sharing session. | None available at this time |
| Screen Sharing | Netbooks with Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Graphics Chipset and Windows 7 can have problems when receiving large screen sharing resolutions beyond 1322 x 823. | Set smaller screen sharing size |
| Skype Access | The Skype Access connection offering does not pop-up correctly when trying to connect to supported hotspot after starting Skype up. | Connect to supported Wifi hotspot before running Skype. |
| Skype Home | Skype Home may show old mood message update as new one again | None available at this time |
| Skype Home | Skype Home is not scaling very well to small and big window | None available at this time |
| Video | Clicking on the webcamera settings may cause Skype to crash. | Use external camera application to change settings. |
| Video | Webcamera may not use the full resolution it is capable of. | Restarting the call may resolve the problem. |
| Video | When a webcamera is used by another application then Skype may not display this device properly in the Settings. Also Skype will not show a local preview at the start of a video call in these conditions. | Close conflicting application and Call Quality Indicator video tab or video options. |
| Video | No High Definition resolution possible with TouchCam N1 and Freetalk encoding cameras | None available at this time |
| Video | Skype may crash if user quits Skype during an active call. | End the active call first and then quit Skype. |
| Video | Quality may be lower than expected on fast internet connections | Try restarting the client |
| Video | Video might freeze in calls with H.264 devices | None available at this time |
| Video | Some AMD processors (e.g. Phenon II X4) are identified as single core and are restricted to lower quality video calls | None available at this time |
| Video | Video calls may not work with virtual machines. | None available at this time |
| Video | This version of Skype (5.0) has increased CPU usage which may effect video quality on some computers. | None available at this time |
| Video | Skype memory consumption increases with every video call by about 6MB. | Restart Skype after video call. |
| Video | Video calls on a secondary display causes higher CPU load compared to usage on the primary display. | None available at this time |
| Video | Skype may not work properly with virtual cameras | None available at this time |
| Video | My video button will not appear after you have switched devices. | Change the device before starting the call. |
| Video | My video preview may freeze after unlocking a locked PC. | None available at this time |
| Video | Video may freeze on the other side in the following cases: two incoming calls at the same time > accept first call with video > accept second call with video while putting the first call on hold > hang up first call | None available at this time |
| Video | The Skype video snapshots feature is not working on Windows XP SP3. | None available at this time |
| Video | Late switch to hardware video encoding when using TouchCam N1 or Twincam encoding cameras | None available at this time |
| Video In Mood | DailyMotion videos which have been added to a mood message are not being displayed to other contacts. | None available at this time |
| Voicemail | Re-recorded Voicemail will not get delivered | None available at this time |
| Voicemail | Messsage “Item has been deleted from conversation history.” may appear after sending Voicemail. Voicemail itself will be sent without problems. | None available at this time |
| Voicemail | Calls go to Voicemail for offline users even if they have disabled it from Options. | None available at this time |
Fixed issues:
| Category | Description |
| Accessibility | Skype 5.0 Beta 1 for Windows did not fully support accessibility. Improved in Beta2, check individual known issues for remaining problems in this area |
| Browser plugin | Error message appeared regarding a failed Skype browser plugin downgrade during Skype downgrade |
| Browser plugin | It was not possible to navigate in the Skype browser plugin for Internet Explorer window using Tab and Shift-Tab keys |
| Call Quality Indicator | All web links from the call quality guide directed to the English language site rather than localised pages |
| Call Quality Indicator | During a group video call the call quality indicator sometimes did not display video quality descriptions. |
| Call Quality Indicator | Call Quality Indicator said “Medium” for a high quality video call between two Logitech pro 9000 webcameras |
| Calling | Changing audio or video devices during a call was not supported in Beta1 |
| Calling | It was not possible to enter DTMF tones on the dialpad using copy-paste. |
| Calling | The Skype user interface sometimes froze when starting a call. |
| Calling | The call volume slider in the call quality indicator and in the call view were not always synchronized. |
| Calling | There were sometimes user interface issues when using Skype over a remote desktop connection |
| Calling | The “Call dropped” error message persisted for some time even if the next call was successful |
| Calling | On calls with high echo level, it was sometimes hard to hear the other side |
| Calling | It was sometimes difficult to find the Dialpad for entering touchtones in Skype to Skype calls |
| Calling | The Skype ringtone sometimes persisted after a call had already been picked up. This 3rd party issue got fixed. |
| Calling | The country drop down list in the call phones area became inactive when inserting an incorrect number |
| Calling | Calls were sometimes not successful when two users called each other at exactly the same time |
| Calling | The dialpad activation button was missing from the call window if the conversation window was minimised to the maximum extent |
| Contact list | Skype was crashing when selecting multiple contacts from the contact list. |
| Group video call | Incoming group video call did not ring |
| Group video call | One or more participants were sometimes unable to start their video in a group video call |
| Group video call | Webcam was sometimes switching off during a group video call |
| Group video call | The call quality indicator said “Video not available” during a group video call. |
| Group video call | Messaging around the maximum number of particpants allowed on a group video call was sometimes wrong. |
| Localization | Hebrew and Arabic text was incorrectly displayed in the user interface. This is mostly fixed now, some small problems remain. |
| Localization | For people who use Skype in Traditional Chinese the “Give feedback” form was displayed in Simplified Chinese. |
| Localization | The country drop down list in the call phones tab was not localized into Russian. |
| Miscellaneous | ‘Full Screen’ menu option under View menu was always grayed out |
| Presence | The automatic ‘Away’ status setting didn’t work if it had been set a long time ago. |
| Screen sharing | “Fit screen” button gave actual size on receiver side when screen sharing from a multi-screen setup |
| Screen sharing | Screen sharing sometimes sent distorted screen |
| Screen sharing | Screen sharing buttons sometimes didn’t work |
| Screen sharing | Sharing a larger area of your screen than 1696 x 1056 sent a distorted and cropped image to other participants |
| Screen sharing | Screen sharing from a multiple desktop setup lead to a compromised display on the receiver side |
| Screen sharing | Taking snapshots of a shared screen produced two identical images |
| Skype Access | When exiting from Skype Access, a false message was displayed about disconnection. |
| Video | Wrong video capture error message was shown when camera was not accessible |
| Video | Webcam sometimes remained on after video call |
| Video | User was sometimes unable to switch between webcams or unplug/replug webcam |
| Video | Skype 5.0 crashed when using MS Live Show |
| Video | Callee did not receive video if caller unplugged/replugged webcam during call |
| Video | Incoming video and local video preview sometimes appeared upside down. |
| Video | Video could not be resumed after placing a call on hold. |
| Video | Some old graphics cards models such as ATI RAGE Pro, NVIDIA Riva TNT2 or NVIDIA Vanta were not rendering Skype video streams. |
| Video | Skype sometimes crashed when viewing video preview in Options. |
| Video | After holding and resuming a Skype call the video quality was sometimes degraded |
| Video preview | When receiving screen sharing or sending video, then the video preview feature was not aligned correctly |
| Video snapshots | Video snapshots from cameras with a 16:9 aspect ratio were displayed as 4:3 aspect ratio |
Localizations:
* Arabic
* Bulgarian Nikolina Filipova & Nikolay Filipov
* Chinese (Simplified) Shirley Kang (TOM.com)
* Chinese (Traditional)Penny, Carlos Lee (PChome)
* Czech Petr Silon
* Danish
* Dutch Kees Koenders
* English
* Estonian Viljar Sepp & Eve Loopere
* Finnish
* French Fabrice Imperial & Bruno Lépaulard
* German Claudius Henrichs & Dick Schiferli
* Greek
* Hebrew
* Hungarian Mark Bender, Laszlo Koncz, Gabor Stefanik, Tamás
Henning, Andrea Vinkler
* Indonesian
* Italian Daniele Conte
* Japanese
* Korean
* Latvian
* Lithuanian Viktoras Kriukovas
* Norwegian Stig Auestad
* Polish Karol Szastok
* Portuguese (Brazil)
* Portuguese (Portugal) Francisco Ferreira
* Romanian Péter & Mónika Henning
* Russian
* Spanish
* Swedish
* Turkish Ömer Emin Dede
* Ukrainian Vitaliy Kupchynskyy
* Vietnamese
Could you explain in more details, please, what does “Offline instant messaging” stand for?
Will it send messages via SMS or something like that?
Or it will just store messages on Skype’s server (for example, like ICQ), if user is offline at the time you are messaging to him?
With Offline IM you can send/receive messages from your friends who are not online right now. The message will be delivered straight when the other party comes online, no matter if you are online at that moment.
This works only between people who are on Skype versions which support this feature.
Is there any way to disable the new Skype Home window that pops up whenever Skype is turned on? It’s a cool feature for those that will use it, but I find that it just gets in my way, so I’d rather disable it. If not, that’s my feature request for the next beta.
Thanks.
On beta 2 I don’t see the call history under the tab Recent – how can I view the list of calls i received and calls i have dialed
im sorry, but the new user interface is just fail…
why would you do that? because of the profile pictures next to the contacts the list just becomes too big in size. at least you could have implemented an option to switch between new and old interface…
please change that or introduce a solution in the next update… thanks
im sorry, but the new user interface is just fail…
why would you do that? because of the profile pictures next to the contacts the list just becomes too big in size. at least you could have implemented an option to switch between new and old interface…
please change that or introduce a solution in the next update… thanks
Where can I go to download version 4.2 again? Version 5 uses almost twice the memory version 4.2 did.
last version was better!this new version from skype dont work at me!!webcamera dont work any more!not compatibel with skype 5!!
i cant make video call any more!when i try to make video call.my PC make a short quit!Bllock!
Seriously! V5.0 is killing me. its slow and bloated. take a page out of apple’s book and make never versions faster, not slower. I receive a call and press “answer” and the call continues to ring and then event eventually picks up “sometimes” but the ringing can continue for 10 or so seconds after I have started conversation with someone. Making calls is just as bad. I’ve gone back to a previous version…
after downloading the new version me and the person on the call keep getting a very high static sound about every few minutes throughout the whole call everytime we talk. we have to turn the volume down and wait for the static to go away so we can continue the call….is there anyway to fix this? does anyone else have this problem?
After downloading 5.0 version I am either not able to login at all (getting “Program Not Responding”) or if it logs in (maybe 1 out of 10 times) the conversation window would not open. So no calls or video for me. iPhone is helping with the chat option though. No idea what to do!
After downloading 5.0 version I am either not able to login at all (getting “Program Not Responding”) or if it logs in (maybe 1 out of 10 times) the conversation window would not open. So no calls or video for me. iPhone is helping with the chat option though. No idea what to do!