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Embeddable IM Control


The folks from Windows Live Messenger just released an embeddable messenger control that you can embed into any web site, without any programming. Basically you can head over to the Messenger settings page to create the HTML snippet (an iframe) that you can embed into your page. You do need to allow publishing your presence information and grant permission to let anonymous site visitors to initiate an IM session.

The control allows the visitor initiate a chat session with the invitee specified in the iframe URL. In most cases, for example if you're adding this chat control to your own site, the invitee would be you. However, I can see some application scenarios where the application dynamically picks the invitee ID at runtime.

The screenshot of the control is on the left. It is a pretty basic chat control at this point. I have a few ideas for what I'd like to see from the control. More on that below.

One super exciting aspect of this control for me personally is that it was coded pretty much entirely in Script#. A simple view source on the iframe page will show you it is using the Script# framework. The folks in Messenger have been an early adopter and contributor to script#, as well as provided a lot of feedback (thanks Steve!). They have built a nice messenger framework for use on web pages, and got a bunch of productivity from using C# as their authoring language, as well as everything else you get from choosing C# in terms of tooling infrastructure. As far as I know, this is the first product publicly released from Microsoft that was built using Script#. There are other things in the works of course... such as Office Live Workspaces, and more, that I'll point to as they come out live. :-)

I'd love to see this control mature and offer greater capabilities in terms of customizability and programmability as well as monetizability as it evolves.

In terms of customizability, some level of theming (fonts, colors) would be a start. A scriptable OM on top of the control would be great for developers. I'd love to be able to handle events to indicate a conversation was started, or to allow the hosting page to specify who is initiating the conversation, their display picture, the topic of conversation etc. This would allow deeper integration of IM capabilities into some other larger application scenario. In terms of monetization, it would be nice if there was a reward system in place for sites that trigger installation of the Windows Messenger client. Or for the app to insert an ad at the beginning of the conversation or bottom of the conversation window, or for the ability to convert some text in the conversation on the fly to a referral link. Some of these may be in the works. These are just some initial (and personal) thoughts...

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