There has been confusion circulating the internet recently over WPF coming to Windows Live Messenger 9. Although this is true, it seems to be heavily misinterpreted. To put it simply, Windows Live Messenger 9 will not have FULL Windows Presentation Foundation by its first official release.

The news that it would do spread quickly, and with good reasons; it was positively received in Yahoo! Messenger for Vista and it would only make sense that Microsoft would mimic their own technology in a piece of software where it appeared natural to do so.

So why won't it be added? Well a source has said that full WPF will only come if it was probably implemented. Adding full WPF would require an entire re-code on the main structure of Messenger, something a piece of software that is so very visually based would take a significant development period to implement. Although full WPF hasn't been ruled out as coming to Windows Live Messenger, in order to make it to a high standard it would require more time and therefore will not come to version 9.

To sum up, full WPF won't be coming to Windows Live Messenger version 9, although some WPF effects will be present. This does not rule out it coming in the future: if anything it seems likely and, although nothing is confirmed, it has been strongly hinted at. If it ever did, it would be implemented well.

Some WPF effects will be present but they will not be fully utilised in Messenger, at least not for the next major release.