Remember that awesome version of Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista that was talked about at CES earlier this year? If not check it out here. Its built with WPF, very slick. Well Yahoo! just sent out notice of a "Preview" build, or a pre-beta, for people to test out. Here are some of the highlights:
This is a preview version only (pre-beta) so not everything is in here that you might be used to seeing in other versions of Yahoo! Messenger. Here’s a list of the features included today:
- Entirely new interface that harnesses the power of WPF, the graphics subsystem in Windows Vista
- 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 ;)
- Right-click anywhere at the top of the contact list to see the preferences menu
If you are already running Yahoo! Messenger 8.1 or 9.0 on your Vista PC, you can continue to use it; there’s no need to uninstall. Messenger for Vista will be installed to a different directory so you can launch one version or the other depending on what you need. Note that Yahoo! Messenger for Vista can only be installed on a Windows Vista operating system.
Many familiar features are not in this preview: voice, webcam, chat rooms, text messaging to mobile phones (SMS), IMVironments, Audibles, plug-ins, photo sharing (though you can send photos via file transfer) and conferencing. We’ll be working on many of these features and 64-bit Vista support for our next releases.
While I have to say I am a little frustrated that it took almost a year to get out something, that looked pretty usable at CES it is great to see some products taking advantage of the Windows Vista platform in unique and creative ways.
Posted
Dec 06 2007, 05:30 AM
by
Josh Phillips
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