Windows Live Messenger Developer Blog

The Messenger Library gives developers several value-added features above and beyond the Windows Live Messenger client. One of them is Custom Presence. With custom presence, your site can place its own presence properties on signed-in users.  This allows your application to “light up” rich features between multiple users who are signed in to your site.

Here’s how it works: Your site adds its custom presence property to users when they sign into your Messenger Library application. The property can have a name and an associated content object. Then, your app checks the user’s contacts for this custom presence property. If the property is present, the user is signed into your site and can use the special features of the site.

What can you do with custom presence? One possibility is to extend the default status messages (Online, Away, etc.) by adding additional status messages like “Working from home” or “In class”. Or, your users could see status icons with extra “bling” for contacts who are also signed into your site.

To learn more about Custom Presence, check out some of these resources:

• The Custom Presence Demo Application shows how to implement basic custom presence features in your site. It’s based on the Messenger Library Hello World. Just View Source to see the code.
• This PowerPoint deck on SlideShare describes Custom Presence and shows some code and examples.
• The Windows Live Messenger Library SDK on MSDN has the reference documentation for Custom Presence and the rest of the Messenger Library.

We are pleased to announce Windows Live Messenger for Facebook. This new Facebook application allows you to easily contact your Facebook friends using Messenger! Try it out here.

Using the Windows Live Messenger for Facebook application you can:

• Expose your Messenger status to your Facebook friends
• Receive instant messages from friends that visit your Facebook profile page
• View your friends’ Messenger status on Facebook
• Send instant messages to your friends on Facebook that are using Messenger
• Easily add your Facebook friends to your Messenger contacts

The Windows Live Messenger for Facebook application is implemented using the currently available Windows Live Messenger Presence API and  the Windows Live Messenger IM Control.

Steve Gordon and Chris Parker talk about the implementation details of the Facebook application on Channel 9. Check it out here!

We are also looking for some great developers and testers, so if you find the work we’re doing exciting, definitely contact us for more information.

Thanks,
Terry Lentz
Lead Software Test Engineer, Messenger & Contacts Web Platform

We've posted the JavaScript and C# (Script#) code samples from Mix08 on Codeplex.

Take a look and let us know what other types of samples you'd like to see!

http://www.codeplex.com/messenger

Keiji, Nikhil, and Steve

Welcome to the new Messenger Developer blog. In this blog, we intend to feature blog topics written by members of the product team behind the various Messenger APIs. Our focus will be on keeping you informed about our latest developments, coding tips, links to new content on MSDN and community sites, and other information to enable you to build the richest possible Messenger experiences for your users.

In short, our team is focused on delivering APIs that enable all developers to build rich presence, IM and contacts experiences anywhere on the web that will delight users. We'll do our best to ensure that our APIs are simple to consume and provide you with the right functionality to build whatever you might dream up. To date, we've released an IM Control and Presence API that enables your users to embed their presence and a conversation window into your site. Today, we're proud to announce the Windows Live Messenger Library, a browser-based JavaScript library, which lets you integrate Messenger IM and presence into your web site. Dave Treadwell talked a bit about the library in his Windows Live Platform Services announcement earlier this morning. With this API, we're enabling you to build exciting IM experiences powered by Windows Live Messenger directly within your web site.

To learn more about the Messenger Library, check out:

·         Messenger Library Documentation

·         Web APIs Development Forum

·         Dave Treadwell's Windows Live Platform Services Update

In the coming days and weeks, we'll provide you more information about our APIs, answer questions that you may have on what we've built, and keep you informed about what others are building with our work. We look forward to hearing from you!

Thanks,

Steve Gordon

Lead Software Developer, Messenger & Contacts Web Platform