Live ID goodies for Office Live developers
Our friends over in the Windows Live ID team have been hard at work lately and have snuck a couple innovations out there without me even noticing it. I know there are some Office Live folks who watch my blog for important developments and this definitely ranks up there. So without further ado... (and because I'm trying to post this quick before I get out of the office for today)...
The Windows Live ID Client SDK v1.0 "final" has been posted up on to the Microsoft download center. Last spring I blogged about the Alpha version of the SDK, and since then the Live ID team has posted a refresh of the Alpha and now the final. Hmm. Maybe I missed the beta. Or maybe the Alpha refresh was good enough to be a beta. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that there are expected to be some significant changes in this final version of the tookit, so if you have already written an app using the Alpha SDK, please check this out and consider refactoring your app. If you were scared off by the Alpha tag, well, the wait is over. The other interesting bit that Sarah mentioned on the Live ID forum is that they are also planning a merge module so you can distribute the necessary pieces of the SDK with your application more easily. Good stuff!
The other Live ID development that escaped my attention until today (and is probably old news to you, my estute readers) is that they also released a Web Authentication SDK in August! I've just started to digest the information around this, so I'm not sure I can give you a good read on what the implications are for Office Live solution developers. It looks like it will allow you to use Live ID as your authentication system for your non-Microsoft web site or web service. They have created a variety of different toolkits & samples that will work on many different languages (ASP.NET, Perl, Java, Ruby, etc) and is supposed to be platform agnostic. Does this mean your web service will have single-sign in capabilities when your customers also go to Office Live? Well, their blog post doesn't go that far and doesn't make those promises, so I'm not entirely sure just yet. At a minimum, this looks like a step in that direction. Let's just say for now, it's very exciting.
