A Look at Yahoo’s Vista Messenger
Nick Gonzalez
30 comments »
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.
For better quality photos and a video preview, check out Yahoo!’s product page.
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.
The zooming features sound really nice and make a lot of sense considering that’s built into every Explorer window in Vista. I’d like to see a multi-network client built on WPF. I’m using Meebo as my primary client now, but it’s a bit of a hassle having it live within a browser, and it’s not very visually appealing.
Call me narky, but when did Yahoo! Messenger become a Web 2.0 thing?
Duncan, XAML and WPF is very relevant to Web 2.0. Right now people are still figuring out what to do with it, but it brings some web development methodologies to the windows desktop and provides a great experience around it.
Nick, a very well done write up. Lee Brimlow over at Frog Design was one of the guys working on the projects and he has some good insights into their process - http://theflashblog.com/?p=241
While I think the technology is cool I dread the day when every application looks like that, screaming for attention and bloating the overall visual experience of the OS. Thank god for OSX and proper UI guidelines.
@Erik: I agree with you, except for the conclusion: OSX is not better than Windows (look at finder vs iTunes vs aperture for instance: not really consistent
). I fear that the various widget engines, XAML/WPF, Apollo…. will soon break all the consistency we appreciated in modern OS (Windows / Apple).
At the same time, the video of the new Y! Messenger is pretty awesome.
You can sugar-coat a turd all you want, but it’s still a turd at the end of the day.
Sorry if I seem negative, but I’ve never been much of a fan of any yahoo software. It has always just seemed overly bloated just for the sake of it. Maybe this app will prove me wrong.
It’s eyecatchy
Im glad that finally windows can have a decent base of applications that look good. The New Trillian UI, New Yahoo UI, New Vista UI, New MSN UI.
And it will work perfectly on a pc that is the same price as a mac. At least now computer companies producing any form of laptop or desktop computer, will have to kern their computers for the requirements of vista.
The next year will turn out to be an interesting one.
I’m still using YM 6.0. I refuse to upgrade. I did once but trading files became a nightmare, it crashed more than I care to remember, and when it wasn’t crashing it was freezing everything around. Once I found 6.0 on another site (they would no longer make it available on theirs) and I loaded it, the world went back to normal. I don’t care if they stick a Fararri in the thing - 6.0 simplicity is the way to go.
Nicolas: Yup, guess you’re right about that!
Looking at what XAML/WPF can do makes me think it’ll run into the same problems that Macromedia Flash had in its early days. Sure it is pretty, but every single time you see a WPF application you’ll have to learn once again how to interact with it.
So… with all this development with Vista, have they completely forgot about the Yahoo! for Mac? They finally released beta one… almost 7 months ago with no updates.
This is absolutely useless for users. Making the application graphically intense wastes resources and does not contribute to the productivity of users sending messages. ALL I WANT TO DO IS TYPE ABCs.
Hopefully application developers will start focusing on simiplicity and minimalistic design. Just go straight to the point. I dont want effects, I dont need effects. I want to type. I dont want anything distracting me from typing and wasting my time say oh that is friggin cool .
Doesn’t the new Windows Live Messenger allow you to add Y! contacts to your MSN contact list anyway? Save multiple installs of IM software and and add them via MSN.
Y! has never appealed to me to be honest so I shall not be using it anyway.
Of course you could always use Trillian or the fantastic looking Gaim
Y! never will appeal to me. I’ll always prefer MSN anytime.
Meh - visual style doesn’t appeal to mature users (MS - visual style/UI guidelines please!) but prolly would appeal to the early teens that are one of the biggest user segments. Perhaps Yahoo should make the appearance age-sensitive…
Nick, it would have been interesting to contrast this with their existing client for XP. If this is not a prototype but closer to a finished product, then this is signals a rather marked departure from their IM strategy. Yahoo! Messenger for Vista does not include ads, space for Yahoo! Plug-Ins (assuming these will go to Vista sidebar), or buttons for their lucrative IMvironments. Clearly they are pushing their avatars business though. Could this be a premium, ad-free, subscription-based sku?
Nick, after reading some of the other comments here, I started wondering… what happens if your operating system is not Microsoft Windows Vista?
Would Yahoo be funding parallel development of two interfaces, one for Vista users, one for everyone else?
Do you have any info about how the development ends up paying for itself…?
tx, jd/adobe
I personally prefer lighter aim. http://x.aim.com/laim/ Its install file is only about 1Mb. I can only guess what this Y! messenger will be.
It won’t appeal to x-gens but kids today love to customize. friendster didn’t allow customization at first and look what happened. and it doesn’t matter if myspace is ugly. think, think!
Haaaa, I’m sick of people complaining all the time, especially when it’s about free software. This application looks very good and clean and it has interesting features. I’m 28, I’m a serious PhD student and I care about good looks. This app sure looks good!
i love yahoo but i have just one problem since i got windows vista i cant hear one single sound when i go into a yahoo chatroom, this is the reason i go to yahoo to hear my friends, i wish someone keep help me figure out why i cant hear.
please sent me yahoo spot room
i am currently using YM that is capable of signing in multi users. This is great for people who’s got many Y! IDs like me. However, this is made by someone not from Y! Is there such a software from Y! for Vista?