The Next Yahoo! Messenger: For Windows Vista

One of the things us internet developers (read: staffers at AgencyNet) do is look at what's new and around the corner, not just on the web, but in applications and ultimately the operating systems.

OS-X aside (sorry Apple, you're still stuck with a rather small market share), MS is about to launch their latest evolution to their flagship software: Windows Vista. (It's already available to the corporate heads, and consumers will be able to purchase it on January 30th (thanks HP for dragging your feet)).

Much criticism for Microsoft's apparent crippling and stripping of Vista's features due to delays and lack of time is either based on exaggerations, hype or the ignorance of what Vista really is: a platform for developers to take their applications to the next step... by leaps and bounds!

It's not a system that is supposed to do your laundry and finish your midterm exam while you play with your Nintendo Wii (because, you indeed have no life and can skip work or school and wait at Best Buy each day just to get one while the hard working folk (like me) have to wait for months before even hoping of getting one. No, I'm not bitter.

Vista is indeed a monster of an improvement in the Windows world, and one of the biggest improvements is called WPF, which stands for Windows Presentation Foundation.

This overhaul of the graphics engine takes most of the work off of the CPU and offloads it to where it belongs: on the video card. This allows for seamless transparency, hardware-accelerated rendering and effects beyond anything Windows XP could dream of in its native state.

One of the best examples I've seen is the integrated Virtual Earth in 3D (with billboards!) and the next version of Yahoo! Messenger.

Web 2.0/Design wizards Frog Design worked with the Yahoo! Messenger team in this groundbreaking upgrade rebuild of their Messenger platform.

Not only can you scale contacts and windows in realtime, without having to wait for your overloaded CPU to redraw the white box it had created, but it's done so seamlessly and effortlessly, you'll wonder just what your CPU is actually doing with all the free time it's been given, thanks to WPF. Run-on sentences are great, don't you think?

Yahoo is hosting a video screencast of their latest Messenger before it's launched.

In addition to the UI improvements, they're also integrating their application/service with Windows Gadgets. Now you can dock your favorite contacts onto your sidebar and know if they're online and what their status is, without opening Messenger itself!

The Yahoo avatars are also heavily featured, as you can see from the image on the right. Flickr photo integration, instant slideshows where you can easily show a friend photos without having to deal with a cumbersome file transfer or sending them links to some obscure set on the web made this one exciting offering!

Now... to see if I can get on that beta team...

(Images tastefully borrowed from the Frog Design blog.)