Note: This FAQ will be changed as new information becomes available.

Introduction:

Hail and heighty ho!  Welcome to the unofficial blog for add-in bug reporting, work-arounds, and feature requests for Windows Live Messenger!  With the addition of add-ins to the pantheon of Windows Live Messenger features, I wanted a place where add-in devs and users could share their experiences, both sad and victorious, in debugging these wonderful little apps.  I have provided links (below) to blogs that deal with the actual development of add-ins and other interesting little sites, but this blog should mainly focus on detailing bugs within the add-in framework, work-arounds to known issues, and a list of desired features.

As a tester for WLM add-ins, it is my job to track these things down and also to provide feedback on what our next iteration of open APIs and functionality should be.  With the aid of current add-in developers and users, I hope to make my recommendations something that will optimally enhance the WLM add-in community.  So… develop add-ins!  Add to this blog the issues you see!  Give some detailed idea of what additions you would like to see!  Let me help you create some kick-butt add-ins!

Links:

Developer Information – including the SDK

Katie’s Blog – A blog on developing add-ins

Wendy’s Blog – yeah, that’s this one

Ken’s Blog

WLM Blog – a blog for all of Windows Live Messenger!

Robotinvaders Robot Gallery

Known Issues:

Some of the known issues to be fixed in the next upcoming release:

1. Multiple dialogues occurring when WLM suffers a sudden disconnect and a bot is installed and enabled.

Yeahhhhh…. Well, what can we say?

Workaround: None that I know of, except don’t get accidentally disconnected!  <wink> If you need to close all the dialogues fast, make sure you have Group similar taskbar buttons selected in Taskbar>Properties, Right click on your WLM windows, and hit Close or Exit.  Poof.  Sorry about that.  Our bad.

2. Gimped error handling in event handlers.

Yeahhh…. Currently, if you don’t try-catch, an error that pops up in the bot can cause a crash.  Oops!

Workaround: Try-catch in your event handlers!

3. User = = LocalUser returns false incorrectly

When you run a check on an unknown user to see if it is yourself (i.e. LocalUser), the direct check (above) will return false when it should be true.

Workaround: Compare emails.  Your email should be unique.

Desired Features:

The following are a subset of the add-in capabilities that may or may not be in consideration for some of our upcoming Windows Live Messenger releases.

• Model for elevating privileges, especially WebServices & FileIO (considering signing or prompting and other UI solutions)
• New APIs - Expose Buddy List, Send Voice IMs, other 'PropertyChanged' events, error handling, and more.
• Show add-in PSM as new type (like how ‘what I’m listening to’ works), so you see an special icon next to the buddy if they’re running an add-in.
• Allow Sending of Messages anytime (not just in response to an incoming or outgoing message).
• UI Updates
• Expose installed add-ins as ‘virtual’ buddies for the local user to interact with
• Possibly some work on installation, sharing, and roaming of add-ins.