Can you just reenable the old shortcuts for the MN ones, at least :) and :( - you know
used to work with :o, :D would also be fine.
Weirdly (and this happened last time I made this request too) I can't seem to do a second colon on this post, and then later on it reenabled, I have no idea what is causing this. You have some odd code running while typing, I think.