A preview of version 2.6 of the popular Skype software was made available for download.

The new Skype 2.6 adds features like a new sound audio library, integrated Internet Explorer and Firefox plugins for phone number recognition on web pages, clickable links in chat messages, clickable avatars in chat windows, avatar drag and drop ability and others.

Other changes are mainly composed of bug fixes to localisation, video and conference call features.

Skype made it clear that no customer support is offered for this early version of Skype for Windows 2.6 and does not recommend it to novice users and those on production system. However, Skype encourages experienced users to use the new version and provide valuable feedback to help improving the final version.

The new version’s webpage says: “The changes to the audio library are significant and may make the audio part of Skype unstable during the preview period, or make it incompatible with some hardware where Skype previously worked. […]There will be other features in this release as well, some of which you may see in this early preview version. […]We encourage you to give it a try and report all problems you experience with Skype for Windows 2.6 Preview release to ensure we can deliver highest product quality to all of our Skype users in the end.”

The new version is downloadable from the Skype website.