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January 8, 2007 at 7:10 am #26043TechCrunchMember
Late last week I got on the phone with Matthew Skyrm and Joshua Jacobson of Yahoo for a demo of the new Vista optimized Yahoo messenger that will be unveiled at CES. Overall we are impressed with the product from a design and user interface point of view, although there are no feature additions of note.
The new messenger has taken advantage of Vista’s new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) application development framework, which further disassociates engineering and design teams by allowing designers to markup UIs using XAML. As an added advantages, it’s vector based, so pretty pictures will stay pretty as monitors get better.
Yahoo! shows off this new flexibility through a few new user customizations. Some of the small tweaks have been incorporating the chat functionality into tabs, staking out a spot for YM on the Vista widget tray, and automatically adding groups of friends you make on the Yahoo! network to you Messenger.
One of the bigger UI changes has been the ability for users to zoom in and out on their buddy lists, bringing user details, and eventually their Yahoo! account activity (360!, Flickr), into focus. You can also zoom out to a bare-bones view and display either in a grid format.
A pop-up pallet now makes it easy to switch between colors and textures of the application. Yahoo!’s use of WPF has also made it easy for them to develop custom skins for groups based around Yahoo! services. The first example has been for their popular Fantasy Football service, where you can track and chat about your upcoming games. The football helmets change with each matchup.
Finally, the YM has photo sharing built right into the chat window, allowing you to flip through photo slides and chat at the same time.
This early look at what developers can do with WPF’s disassociation between design and behavior, following the trends we’ve seen on the web, gives me high expectations for future apps and should make a lot of developer’s lives easier.Tags: vista, techcrunch, web2.0, web_2.0
January 8, 2007 at 10:16 am #156617Eagle_KiwiMemberPosted by TechCrunch on Today, 08:10 PM
“Late last week I got on the phone . . . .Did YOU write this article, TechCrunch ?
It would appear that you did, but when I dig deeper I find “Nick Gonzalez” shown in the same article on your site.
If indeed it WAS written by him (whoever he might be) then you should show that clearly here – instead of passing this off as your own.January 8, 2007 at 10:38 pm #156616Jeff HesterKeymasterI had a chance to meet with Yahoo! Messenger product manager Joshua Jacobson today at CES, and I’m really impressed by the new Vista version of Yahoo! Messenger. Of the big three IMs, only Yahoo had anything new or exciting to show.
As a big fan of Flickr, I’m really excited by the integration with Yahoo! Messenger.
Yahoo! Messenger for Vista is still an alpha product, but should be released as a public beta in the second quarter of 2007. Oh, and they have posted a screencast in cast you want a sneak peek (which I highly recommend. Check it out.
January 9, 2007 at 5:08 am #156618Eagle_KiwiMemberThe sneak peek looks very interesting, but on dialup it’s virtually useless 🙁
Anyone know from where I could download it first, then view the whole thing smoothly ?Comment: From what I see, looks very much like a SKYPE conference format .
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