See this photo:

Instead of multiple user tiles and two check boxes per account (one for “Remember me” and one for “Remember my password”), now there is a streamlined page focused on one account and one check box to “Keep me signed in”.

Why has the sign-in screen been simplified? Eric Doerr, Group Program Manager for Windows Live ID, explains:

• Changing trends in device ownership: As more people bought laptops and smartphones (which tend to be used by just one person), we heard more feedback that the tiles just got in the way, and what people really wanted to do was to just get to the service without interruption. We knew from our telemetry that fewer than 2% of users were using the tiles, but 100% of our users were interrupted by them in the old design.
• Consolidation on a primary account: Increasingly, customers are consolidating their Windows Live usage into one primary account. It used to be common for one person to have multiple accounts. As we’ve integrated Windows Live ID across other products like Xbox, Windows Phone, SkyDrive, and Office –the core account has become more valuable, and it’s become less necessary to switch between accounts.

In a future post, I will highlight easy solutions to common problems now arising, such as:

• My Windows Live password used to be stored in a tile. Now I don’t remember it.
• How can I manage multiple Windows Live IDs?

The Windows Live team has published an instant update for the web file storage Windows Live SkyDrive.

Omar Shanine, Group Program Manager, SkyDrive.com, announced:

Starting today, we are launching a new version of the SkyDrive website. We took advantage of modern browsers and HTML5 to make SkyDrive faster, easier to navigate, and more beautiful for viewing photos.

Some of the new features include:

Site

• New layout, look and feel, and site architecture
• SSL enabled on all authenticated pages
• Clean urls (removed most of the junk from the URLs)
• SkyDrive can now be pinned to your Windows 7 taskbar with jump lists (IE9)
• Header now says SkyDrive
• What’s new feed for docs and photos removed
• Upload file size limit now 100MB
• Moved to edge-to-edge layout to take advantage of larger screens
• Reduced size of header to give more room to your content

Photos

• Brand new photos experience
• HTML5 video playback
• Thumbnails generated for H.264 Video
• CSS3 Transitions for albums and 1-up view
• Photo album thumbnails now “pulse”
• Thumbnails generated for all photo sizes (previously limited to 5000px)
• Support for aspect ratio thumbnails (including panorama)

Docs

• Icons for PDF filetypes
• Recent documents includes more items
• Open in Office Client from SkyDrive now gives you the option to install Office 2010 trial using Click-to-Run technology
• Performance improvements to the Office Web Apps in IE9
• Details view now supports touch

Groups

SkyDrive groups now appear in the left nav giving you one click access to Group content.

In a future post, I will highlight some of the new features in the all-new Windows Live Skydrive, Wave 5 (16.0).

Windows Live Events was an online service by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live range of services that enabled users in Windows Live Spaces to share and plan different types of Events happening around them while collaborating with other services such as Windows Live Calendar and Windows Live Spaces.

The service allowed users to plan and manage their own Events, add them to their Space, receive Alerts and integrate with other Windows Live services such as Calendar.

How-to: Backup your Events photos and videos

You still have some events photos, videos or similar documents you would like to retain? Please back them up before 31 May 2010. Here is how:

1. Open Windows Live Events.
2. Sign in with your Windows Live ID.
3. Open your events list.
4. Click one of your existing events in the list.
5. On the left, click a section, such as Photos.
6. Now browse the albums and download their contents using the More menu.

But can Windows Live Alerts still compete with RSS feeds, social network status updates, tweets and all other real-time news?

Alerts—relict from an old time

Originally introduced as MSN Alerts, Windows Live Alerts send news bits in real time.  When Messenger receives an alert, it will show a pop-up notification, just like when one of your contacts signs in.  These notifications are clickable and send you to the destination web URL that the alert provider specified.

Additionally, alerts can also be delivered via e-mail and mobile messaging (US, Canada, China only).  The service was originally planned to be a versatile instant news delivery system.  However, in recent years blogging, RSS feeds and other real-time notifications (like Tweets) have taken over the task to provide users with instant communication.

Simple to use, hard to manage

Subscribing to a Windows Live Alert is easy: just click the “Windows Live Alerts” icon on a website or blog and confirm your subscription on the Windows Live website that opens.  However, that website is not well-linked to the other Live Services, not even listed in the omnipresent top header menu.  Hence you might find it difficult to access the alerts manager for the alerts you subscribed to.

As publisher, making use of Alerts is not that simple either.  It is hard to learn about what types of alerts there are: You can choose from a manual implementation via SOAP calls (these calls must be sent from a server as the interface is IP-firewalled), or you can make use of RSS-based alerts, by signing up at http://signup.alerts.live.com/.  Managing existing Alerts, such as changing their name or icon, is only possible when using the manual SOAP API.  The corresponding „Live Alerts Manager“ is barely documented.

Either way, setting up an alert is suitable for tech-savvy people only.

What Alerts can do better

From the current implementation and usage, Alerts are boring and not that useful.  However, they offer one essential thing not available with feeds and tweets: they are directly linked to Messenger and sent to their subscribers via server-push.

To be able to succeed, Windows Live Alerts should get a complete makeover.  Here is a scenario what such a revamp might look like:

Changes such as these could bring Windows Live Alerts back to the front.  People would really use it.  At least Microsoft would live up to the new claim:

“Alerts delivers the latest information that’s important to you, how you want it to.”

I asked a Lead Software Design Engineer at Microsoft, responsible for the Messenger Library, about this, and after more than one hour of discussion, he told me: “Thanks for clarifying.  This currently isn’t possible.”  He couldn’t do anything but noting my feedback wish to have this added.

He explained that they have “optimized for a set of scenarios and for those no code is required.  It’s arguable whether we’ve missed certain scenarios.”  In the meantime—if somebody wants to help me with solving this, please talk to me, as I still could not get the display picture URL on the server.

What are your experiences with the Windows Live Messenger Library and the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit?

Frozen project, it seems. Dead project? Let’s look at an old post in the My.live.com Windows Live Space, written August 07, 2008 (!):

We’ll start planning for our next update to My.Live.com, aiming for a minor update in the Fall. Right now, most of our time is being devoted to another project that we’ll have more information about in the coming months.

Microsoft MVP and IT geek Jamie Thomson wonders as well:

If anyone knows what this “other project” that we were promised some news on “in the coming months” actually is please get in touch because I would love to know!

So, will my.live.com ever be resurrected?

We are very excited to announce that in total over 40 new languages are available for the UI Controls, as well as greatly improving support for right-to-left languages! Because localization is such a hip new feature, we have also decided to update the version of the library to 3.1.

Sounds interesting—And how can I use these new features?

1. Locate the following HTML code in your website source:
   
2. Replace the 3.0 with 3.1.
3. Now check your HTML document type.
4. Are you using HTML 4? Then add the parameter “lang”, like this:
   
   Using XHTML?
   
5. Remember you should also set the reading direction property “dir”, if you are planning to use a right-to-left language, like Hebrew.

I am sure that localization will help many users to make use of the Messenger Web Toolkit, as English is not the primarily used language of Messenger users.

On a side note, the update to version 3.1 also fixes some minor bugs, like CSS incompatibilities. If you find that some of the translated strings are wrong or difficult to understand, please leave a comment and we will forward it to the Messenger Web Platform team instantly.

With this update,

• The Messenger Web Toolkit UI Controls should work better in IE6
• We have changed the sign in text from “IM Here” to “Sign In” to make it more clear what it does
• Performance should be better when going from page to page

We are also working on more exciting updates for the future.

Last days, I talked with somebody from the Web Toolkit team; you can look forward to read the interview here soon. Stay tuned!

• Facebook is now a Web Activity provider (Add to Windows Live Profile).
  This will reflect updates to your Facebook Wall directly in your Windows Live What’s New feed, and vice-versa.
  
• Last.fm has also been added as Web Activity (Add to Windows Live Profile).
  This shows your favorited songs in your What’s new feed.
• You can now change your personal message directly in the profile.
• Searching for people is much easier:
  Start typing a contact’s name in the top-right search box.
  

Visit your Windows Live Profile now to see the changes.

Recently, Robert Hess from MSDN Channel 9′s Knowledge Chamber discussed advantages and details of the new toolkit with Keiji Kanazawa, Program Manager for Windows Live Messenger, and I thought you might be interested in the video. Have fun watching!

Source: Keiji Kanazawa – Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit

You can access the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit at http://messenger.mslivelabs.com/.

Let us have a look at the similarities in detail.

Facebook Chat bar and Messenger Web Bar – some similarities

1. We see the main icon, giving access to all your personal details, in the right bottom corner.
2. Inside the window opening when you click that icon, you can change your status message.
3. You can also decide whether to come online or to appear offline, or even set a more detailed status like Busy or Away.
4. On the left of the main icon, you have the contact counter. Clicking it will show your contact list.
5. Again, on the left, there is space for conversation buttons. When a new message arrives, a new tab opens or an existing starts to flash.
6. Each conversation tab has the contact’s display picture as well as their name and status next to it.

More similarities include:

• The Chat bar is positioned at the bottom of the browser window and stays at its position, regardless where you scroll.
• The Chat status stays the same and you stay signed in, even when you click a link to a different page within the same website.

Is it just pure coincidence?

Are the similarities just a pure coincidence, or was it wise planning and inspiration?
Did the Windows Live team just steal the whole chat bar idea from Facebook?

If you’re already signed in to Messenger on your PC client, don’t worry: The Web Bar supports MPOP (Multiple Points of Presence). That means that your conversations and your status details will roam to all clients that are signed in. Thus, you can start a conversation in Messenger, and continue it in the Web Bar and vice-versa!

Expect a series on the new Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit within the next few weeks – on how to use it, as well as on how to add it to your own website or blog… stay tuned.

Tell me what you think of this new feature.

The legacy way: Relying Partner Suite

Up to now, the only way of getting a custom Windows Live Sign-in was to sign a contract with Microsoft and become a Relying Partner, which made you able to use Relying Partner Suite (RPS), also known as Windows Live Server API. Here’s a glance at what this looks like:

Soon to come: Live Sign-in UX customization

While Relying Partner Suite has always needed a valid Microsoft Contract for running such customized Sign-in pages in Prod environment (the INT internal and PPE pre-production environments offer RPS testing for free), changing the look of the Web and Delegated Authentications’ Sign-ins has not been possible, as mentioned. This will change, when Windows Live Sign-in and Registration UX Customization becomes available soon.

Now have a look at this image:

As you see, the Sign-in page can be spilt into several areas. The sections highlighted in blue, will be themeable, while the yellow areas can be changed completely. Angus Logan, Technical Product Manager for Live Services, announces:

Whilst balancing the need for instant recognition and desire for a consistent experience throughout the entire sign in flow we’ve developed a sign-in and sign-up experience for Windows Live ID which can be co-branded/themed and portions can be customized by web developers.

In the next few weeks a web site owner will be able to self service register their relying party, upload their configuration file and any requests to login.live.com for that Application ID (which redirect to a specific site) will have this co-branding/customization made available.

This is what it might look like in the end:

“In the next few weeks,” we read, we can expect these UX customization settings to become available in the Azure Services Developer Portal. However, I found out that they are partially already available for you – if you want to dig around with XML and don’t fear to mess something, have a try and browse the legacy Windows Live Application ID manager at https://msm.live.com/app/ManageCobranding.aspx. “You can customize the sign-in experience of your site while maintaining consistency among all Windows Live ID-enabled sites. To do this, you configure properties in an XML configuration file and upload it.”

Says Angus Logan:

One of the consistent pieces of feedback we got from web sites which let users sign in using Windows Live ID Web Authentication was end users were being jarred by the user-experience shift once they clicked “sign in” and were taken to the Live ID authentication page.

For a security expert it makes perfect sense, only type in your credentials where you sourced them from (and you need to see the address bar). But for an end user you end up wondering “Where did the pretty site go and what am I doing here, was it a mistake?” and never return to the site.

What’s your opinion on this? Are the offered customizations enough, or too less? Or should the Windows Live Sign-in have the same look everywhere?

Source: Live Services Blog, Making the Internet a Safer Place