Alerts...
If Hello is minimized (which if you're multi-tasking, chances are it will be because it's so HUGE), you get message and status alerts which appear, sliding in, from the right if your screen, these alerts contain txt (up to 38 characters), a thumbnail of the picture sent or notification of who has just logged on or off. The on / off status alerts will disappear within a few seconds but the new message alerts hang round until you either close it (via the top right of the alert notification) or until you click on the actual message itself, which then switches you back to Hello and the conversation you were having. The cool thing about the message alerts is that they update with each message sent so that means you can finish what you're doing first yet still stay up to speed with the general conversation so that when duck back to Hello you pick up exactly where you left off and can quickly read back through the full messages if required. If your alerts are showing up in an annoying or inconvenient place simple click and hold the gray side bar (anywhere just below the ) and drag it into a better position on the right hand side of your screen.

Now whether the message / status alert takes up the whole 38 characters or not the alert box is the same size, and it's not exactly subtle if your chatting at work and this massive box comes sliding in from the side of your screen, but don't despair you can disable the alerts via Tools > Options. You can select to have both message and status alerts enabled or just message alerts (with status alerts off), there is no option for just status alerts though. If you're also struggling with the size of the Hello Smileys you can disable them in the same place, simply uncheck the box beside "Show Flying Smileys". I wish there was an option to disable the way it converts my text, specifically "brb".. I like "brb" and it (still) really rattles my chain how Hello converts this across to "be right back" or "be back in a minute" and ditto for "k" which gets changed to "ok" or "okay" but like I've said before I am a control freak *blush* so it could just be my own personal quirk.

One thing to take note of though, more so if you're using Hello when you shouldn't, is that despite having alerts (Pop up Notifiers) disabled, if you are downloading or saving (File > Save / Save As / Save Film Strip) you will still get an alert about the status of each individual photo, some it seems to miss but most it will pick up.

Another cool thing about Hello is that it too has a typing indicator, a feature all IM users have grown very accustomed to and it's almost a "must have" when it comes to chat etiquette so it was really nice to see it included in Hello as some IM's still don't offer this feature.

Tabs...
If you're one who runs multiple conversations at the same time you'll appreciate the tabs feature offered in Hello, it's a real space and time saver. The different coloured tabs do have there own meaning but it doesn't take long to get into the swing of the colour association.

Your "Friends" tab, which gives you access to BloggerBot and shows your friends current status and history is constantly available and always sits to the far left. Light blue tabs (shown 1st and 2nd from the left) are other conversations/windows that are available although these aren't necessarily ongoing conversations because a user can log off (shown 2nd from the left) and the tab will remain available until you close it or log off yourself. You'll only ever have one light gray tab (shown 3rd from the left in the screenshot above), this is the one sitting to the forefront and is your active conversation at the time. New sessions or messages initiated by your friends will cause their tab to flash between orange/yellow and blue, once you have replied to them the tab itself will revert to gray or blue (depending on the focus of the window eg active to the forefront is gray, or tucked behind not currently being used will be blue), the tab will only flash if it doesn't have the main focus. One thing I do feel is missing from having tabs is the ability to be able to move them to where we would like eg drag the tabs to specific places, like putting all active user to the left and all idle to the right or the most active to the far right for quick access but it seems the order is based on when the tab was created, older tabs sit to the left and the last created at the far right.

The coloured icons to the left of each tab also have a purpose and colour association. When a user has just initiated a conversation and you're yet to reply or select their tab they appear to display a blue icon , online and active users display a green , idle users yellow , and offline are gray . The observant will notice a slight difference between the icons available based on who had the last word or rather sent the last message, this seems to be available for all icons apart from blue, which switches to green as soon as their tab is selected. The differences being, if you're both currently active and you've sent the last message the tab displays , if they sent the last message it displays , the slight difference being the additon of )) after the coloured icon. The same applies to the others colours as well eg indicates an offline user who sent the last message and is for an idle user who sent the last message (chances are they might be waiting for you to reply :p ).

summary of tabs and icons...
friends tab always to the far left	idle user you sent the last message	user is now offline they sent the last message	currently active tab active user they sent the last message	new tab yet to be selected or reply sent