I don't know of any versions that did that.
The most recent version (v0.3.24) will pop up a dialog box that says the transaction fee is required and will display the amount.
Im using bitcoin-qt. To be honest, I dont remember if I the last time I used the official client version it was .23 or .24 so it may have been solved already and blaming you guys for something that its bitcon-qt fault.
Great.
Please know that the client cannot say something like: the fee for getting this transaction processed in the next block is N bitcoins.
That is because there is no set fee. When the client comes up with a number, it is only making an estimate. It is up to the miner to determine whether or not to include a transaction. The higher the fee, the more likely the transaction will get included. Even a high fee though is not a guarantee.
Currently, the 50 BTC reward is adequate for many miners so that is why you will see transactions with no fee in many of the blocks yet.
I know. It depends on what the miners decide to incude on the blocks and obviously a higher fee is a bigger incentive. Nobody is specting that you predict the behaviour of the miners. The explanation in the wiki is great.