The Windows Live Messenger Library is (WLML) a client-side library for building presence-enabled instant messaging web applications hosted in any domain that site visitors can use to interact with each other and Windows Live Messenger users. WLML is written in C# and compiled into JavaScript using Script#; applications can be written either in C# (with Script#) or JavaScript. WLML 2.0 has been released: it is backward compatible with WLML 1.0 and the version 1.0 API is still available. The new version (documentation) contains the following changes:
- Sorted contact collections: New OnlineContacts and OfflineContacts collections list contacts in sorted order to make it easier for applications to show sorted contact lists.
- Contact display picture links: Contact display picture links are now returned but with respect user privacy, there is some special handling required to use them in applications.
- Customization for the Sign-In Control: color schemes can now be defined for the Sign-In Control.
- A new URL for loading the library: Library files are now content distributed globally; applications should see improved library load time.
- Hosted static images for status icons and Messenger logos: GIF and PNG static images for applications to use for displaying user status are now being hosted.
- URL strings for Messenger resources: The library returns a set of market-specific URLs for applications to display links to required Microsoft pages such as the privacy statement. This is to enable applications to move the Sign-In Control out of view when it is not needed.
- Sign-In Control returns extended authentication results: The Sign-in Control has been updated to return more detailed information about user authentication results.
Source: Ars Technica
Following up on my last post about the updated sendMsg script, I have another update available.
This update will now catch error 800 from the server. The server imposes a limit of creating 8 IM sessions in any 60 second period and will throw this error if you try calling createSession a 9th time. As such, the script is not suited for sending messages to more than 8 contacts in the same login session. All other changes are programming improvements.
This will be the final update for a while, if there are any major bugs reported I will fix them, otherwise consider this stable.
Download and check out Troubleshooting phpListGrab if you are having connecting problems (phpListGrab uses the same code base). I will also be posting more troubleshooting information for other problems I have recently discovered with server configuration compatibility.
The script I created over two years ago to send a message using PHP has gained quite a lot of exposure over the last few months, and a common request I have been getting is the ability to send messages to more than one user.
Over the weekend I modified the class with the following changes:
- Function to manually create an IM session with a user.
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- Function to send a message on the newest IM session.
- Font face and colour support for the sendMessage() function.
- Better error handling when connecting to the messenger server.
- simpleSend() function to send a single message like the original version.
- error property to get socket error.
Microsoft’s Invasion of the Robots contest came to a close on the 15th of September, and this week the winners were announced on the MSDN Forums.
Out of 53 submissions, the grand prize went to LiveBot by Juzzi, who originally posted about the competition on the forums back in May, and he was also the winner of the World Best App competition. That’s dedication!
First prize went to Mother Nature, a bot which lets you “find and research national parks closest to you for a day outside in the fressh air and wilderness”. It seems to be having problems at the moment, and messages aren’t getting through to it.
Old favourite Spleak came in as one of the second place winners.
Take a look at Todd Biggs’ post with a full list of the winners, and what they won.
Read/WriteWeb has an interesting post announcing the official release of Yahoo! Messenger with Voice and info on plug-ins.
Third-party developers can create plug-ins (aka widgets) for the platform. This has already proven to be very popular - since opening up the plug-in platform on June 20, third party and Yahoo! developers have developed 180 plug-ins worldwide.
The most popular plug-ins for Y! Messenger are currently utilities like Pando (a way to share large files and folders), YEmote (emoticons), an eCards widget, an iTunes “remote” and a drawing/photo tool.
I don’t know how many plug-ins are out for Windows Live Messenger, but Yahoo! currently sounds like it’s been more successful in this area.
Microsoft this week launched Windows Live Gallery, a one-stop shop to personalize your Windows Live experience. Live Gallery helps you find all the cool & useful Gadgets, Toolbar custom buttons, Messenger Bots and much more.
Since Windows Live Messenger plug-ins functionality is still in beta and is not turned on by default, there aren’t any available on there. For the same reason, I’m not surprised there aren’t as many plug-ins for Windows Live Messenger as there are for Yahoo! Messenger.
