The debate and/or discussion on new smilies has always been a bit strange to me concidering that no matter what smilies you may discover, the only way another person can see them as well, is to have them installed on thier messenger also. the fact is, you can create as many and whatever smilies you want on your own. All you have to do is use your paint program to create a smily of your own design. Then save that image by replacing it with one of the files in your messenger/media/smilies file that you will find in your [program files] folder. You have two files associated with every smily. one file is the still or animated image that is placed on the messenger screen and the other image is the one you see in the smily box where you click to choose the smily you want to send. Remember to save the image you created on both of those file location.

After this is completed, you still will be the only one to see the smilies you created and when someone send a happy smily you will see on your messenger screen, the smily you created for that location and code.

The only way to get both parties to see the same smily that you created is to send them the file you created and ask them to replace that one with the one currently in thier smily file and in the proper location.

Even when new smilies are created by yahoo messenger themself, the files on your computer will always remain the same and those are the only ones you will ever see until or unless you reinstall to the new messenger [or] install the new smilies into your own folder.

I, myself have fun with this knowledge. I keep the smilies in the choice box the same so that i know what the people are seeing when i send them… but the smilies that “I” see when i send them are changed to be whatever I want them to be. I actualy hve photographs of myself making the smily faces. For example; when someone send me a happy smily, I see on my screen, a picture of myself smiling.