As of today, Yahoo! Messenger for Vista will no longer be available for download from the Yahoo! Messenger website. We have discontinued stand-alone releases of the Yahoo! Messenger for Vista application in order to focus on delivering one Windows experience that is optimized for all Windows users.
This decision will help us increase efficiencies on our team and deliver one consistent, full-featured product for all of our Windows users. Our application was based on the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) platform which we will continue to experiment with and invest in. The knowledge we gathered from developing Yahoo! Messenger for Vista will also help us improve future versions of our Windows software.
The comments of the post don't make easy reading, with the users clearly expressing they enjoyed the program while it was available. Moreover, what was the motive behind cancelling the project? The official word is so the development teams can join together, but any tech enthusiast would know that Yahoo! have just laid off a good proportion of their staff. Maybe Yahoo! Messenger for Vista was a consequence of Yahoo's suffering profits and the economic downturn (which has had a benefit for msgstuff profits actually).
Yahoo! Messenger blog: Yahoo! Messenger for Vista version is no longer available
There are lots of bug fixes and general enhancements as well as the main improvements:
Persistent text formatting
Now when you change your font, text size or color for your IM messages, we’ll save your settings between sessions. So if you like to IM in font size 14 using red letters in Arial Bold, we’ll remember!
Voice improvements
We updated the user interface for the voice feature to make the buttons more clear and added a new voice visualization called “Color Burst”. Plus there’s an updated incoming call notification that appears front and center when a call comes in.
No webcam yet, but we’re making that clear
A lot of our feedback has been from users asking for webcam support or users that look for the webcam feature but can’t find it in the product. Currently, we don’t have webcam support in Yahoo! Messenger for Vista but to shorten our users’ search for it, we added a webcam menu item. Those not in-the-know will get a message telling them that webcam support is coming soon.
Source: Yahoo! Messenger blog Download the latest Yahoo! Messenger for Vista beta Official Yahoo! Messenger for Vista site Send feedback about the latest beta versionThe main improvement is the addition of much-requested audio chat features. This includes the usual PC to PC calls and PC to phone calls, as well as cool visualisation effects that match you and your contact's voices when you speak.
Along with this there have been general speed and stability improvements, the ability to send "free" SMS messages to mobile phones has been added, and there is a new email alerts feature.
Source: Yahoo! Messenger blog Download Yahoo! Messenger for Vista Beta (direct download link) Official Yahoo! Messenger for Vista siteon Thu 06 Dec 2007 (22:40 GMT) (8142 views)
- Organize your conversations into tabs, or drag and drop a tab out to create a new window
- Keep up with your favorite contacts by dragging them into the Windows Sidebar gadget
- Send enhanced emoticons that have some extra oomph
- Change the color of your IM windows with a built-in skin chooser. Go crazy with a different skin for every IM window!
- Adjust the display size of your contacts with a handy slider
- Arrange your contact list into multiple columns just by resizing your window
- Send instant messages to your Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger contacts
- Send files to friends as large as 2 GB
- Find contacts quickly with the contact search bar. Type in a few letters of the contact's name or ID and they'll come up in filtered results.
- As-you-type spell checker that's smart enough to know that 'LOL' is not something to correct
- A preferences menu you can access by right-clicking anywhere at the top of the main Messenger window
Yahoo! Messenger for Vista has its flaws. There are a lot of bugs and everything seems very basic at the moment. However, I can see a lot of potential and the idea totally re-designing the software should be on the table for Windows Live Messenger. I can see the completed product being very popular. You can view a video of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista in action below:
Source: Yahoo! Messenger development blog View some screenshots of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista Visit the official website
Take Windows Live for example, it's a new line of products, which integrate together from Microsoft, mainly replacing good old MSN. Has it worked? Yes, these products have been heavily followed, and comparing MSN to Windows Live, you can see where MSN has become outdated.
The main point of my story is that a simple change can make a huge difference. Yahoo! Messenger is getting outdated, like MSN Messenger was. New ideas and features don't always gain new users, in fact they can bloat a program and scare them away. Yahoo! Messenger is getting a new design, just for Windows Vista, and well, it's making me want to use it.
The design is a cross between the Yahoo! Widget engine and Windows Vista, taking full advantage of the new visuals the operating system has to offer. I think we can say it's going to get Yahoo! a few extra users when this comes out, probably including myself, for I often hop on the new age program bandwagon.
Check out Yahoo! Messenger's new upcoming design View the preview website (including a video)
Messenger Stuff
