What is Microsoft Silverlight?
Microsoft Silverlight is a web application framework that provides functionalities similar to those in Adobe Flash, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Initially released as a video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and development tools.
How Microsoft 4 Beta Client for Facebook comes in origin?
A few months back in April 2009, Microsoft had demoed a Facebook application called Silverface for Windows 7. The application was quite interesting and utilized new Windows 7 desktop features very well. But the application was only for the Microsoft labs and sadly never released to the public. Then we were lucky in last November 2009, we got our hand on Fishbowl(facebook application), developed by UXLabs at Microsoft. This application was providing a good experience of browsing Facebook with some nice features but was not a big hit due to the slow performance.
Well, out of the blue, Microsoft has released a Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook for Windows and Mac OS X. If we compared this to Fishbowl, it’s really fast with killer looks. The User Interface of this application is really awesome if we compare it to other competing applications. News feeds, status updates, profiles, photos, videos, inbox, events – you name it. This application has it all!
How your new Facebook Home Screen looks like?
This is the first option called full feed and I can bet you instantly fall in love with the Home Screen. The news feeds are shown in the middle of the home screen, filters on the left, while random photos from contacts are shown on the right. If you place your mouse pointer on any of them, they show the contact name who uploaded them.
This is the second option called Grid look which show all feed items in a grid and it really looks nice. You can scroll right and left to see more news feeds from the users.
This is quite an interesting view feature called photo feeds which shows the latest images uploaded by your friends and by hover on the images will show the contact name of the image uploader. What more by clicking on that image will directly take you the photo album and you also see and add your comment on the right side of the image.
How you upload photos?
If you can see photos, you’ll want to upload them as well, right? Well, you can do drag and drop photo uploads thanks to Silverlight 4 and even set the privacy settings right here in the application.
How to update your status?
Here comes the update box, one of my most used feature in Facebook. It is the same as the Facebook website, you can add links to your updates like the Facebook website does and obviously, photo uploading too.
What about photo uploading if you have webcam?
But what when you want to upload the picture through you webcam. Thanks to the another great feature from Silverlight 4 microphone/camera access, you can snap pictures right from within the application and post it directly to Facebook.
Some quick features :
1) You can watch videos uploaded by your friends in the Facebook
2) You can see and reply messages in your Facebook inbox
3) Pop ups notifications are also supported and useful when application is running in the background.
4) View a list of upcoming lists of events in the “events” tab on top of the home screen
5) You can like and comment on status, links etc.
6) You can browse you contacts in alphabetical order in “people” tab
Some features which are lacking :
1) Facebook chat is not there
2) Mouse wheel scroll is not working
3) Sorry, no Mafia war games
4) Borderless application
5) Plug-in the camera and automatically importing the pictures feature is not available.
6) Live feed option is not available
7) You can’t hide the applications or news that you don’t want to see
How you can install this application?
First, you will have to download Silverlight 4 beta version and installed on your machine.
Download Siverlight 4 beta version (Windows)
Download Silverlight 4 beta version (Mac OS X)
Now click on Facebook Client
You’re done now installing Silverlight 4 beta version for Facebook Client
Bottomline
After all this, I think its a solid Facebook client and it makes it more professional. Microsoft Silverlight comes a long way till now, and might be this is the best way to demonstrate its cool features by targeting a social network with millions of users already and lots of coming too.
So if you use Facebook daily and not happy with it looks and how it works on the web, then Silverlight Client is the surely worth checking out.
Great write up! Installing now!
.-= Jal´s last blog ..Get real-time earthquake information =-.
Thanks, do share your views with us after using this cool application
Wow… this is super cool….. bro, don’t they have this new feature for linux?
.-= Pubudu Kodikara´s last blog ..How To Turn Off Windows Indexing Service =-.
Nope dude, but still they are on the early days of developing this application. May be in future it will come for Linux too.
I have used this and it IS pretty sleek. I thought it would be sluggish (by looking at the screenshots) and heavy on the system, but although it is visually appealing, it is surprisingly light weight.
I have used many desktop FB applications, but this one is closer to perfection. Ofcourse some features are missing (like mouse wheel scroll) but overall a very good application!
.-= Jal´s last blog ..Get real-time earthquake information =-.
That’s cool, its always great to listen some good reviews from the users. Thanks for sharing your views and glad you liked it too. I think in the next version, FB chat will also come.
Quite an informative article!
.-= shiningtweety´s last blog ..Clap your hands to illuminate the room! =-.
Welcome to savedelete and thanks for dropping by a comment. Would love to see you in future too
Thanks for your support, it’s all so pretty. I used google translator
Now facebook have become most biggest social networking
@ Logan Ledy : Thanks, its good to know that you liked it.
@ Tyson F.Gautreaux : Yup dude. very true
Thank you for taking time to write such a useful to read article on this subject.
I love examples of articles that have been written, and especially the comments posted! Really cool
@ Chauncey Samantha : I’m glad that you like the post
@ Chauncey Samantha : Comments are glimpse of the whole post. You will know what’s good and bad in the post from commments only.
It’s really a pleasant surprise. I didn’t expect to stumble on such a nice article. I’ve checked out your other posts and must say they are very informative indeed. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Thanks for stumbling the article dude, really appreciate that. I will surely try to come up with more good posts in the furture..Kep visiting our site.
Wow! Thank you! I always wanted to write in my site something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Thanks for dropping a comment, But can you throw some light what you want to explain here, as I am not getting your point clearly
Heyy, Found your blog on Google and I am so glad I did! Keep it up! =)
Welcome to savedelete and thanks for dropping by a comment. Keep coming
Hey, I found this blog article while searching for help with fixing Microsoft Silverlight. I have recently switched browsers from Chrome to Microsoft Internet Explorer 5. Just recently I seem to have a problem with loading sites that use Microsoft Silverlight. Every time I browse website that requires Microsoft Silverlight, my browser doesn’t load and I get a “npctrl.dll” error. I can’t seem to find out how to fix it. Any aid getting Microsoft Silverlight to work is very appreciated! Thanks
Because Microsoft Silverlight doesn’t support IE5. You should use Google Chrome and Firefox. Even IE5 is out dude
I know this isn’t related, but you should really do a post on the HUGE update in Gaming. Valve, the makers of Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead are now releasing all their games on the Mac, and the steam accounts will be intertwined, so if you bought the game for PC, you can still play on ther Mac!
.-= Cartoon Games´s last blog ..Strangers 3 =-.
Thanks for giving me one more idea for the post dude
I admire what we have done on this article. I love the aspect wherever you say you were doing this to give back but I might think by each of the comments that this is working for you too.
You you could make changes to the blog name title All New Facebook User Interface for Windows and Mac to more catching for your webpage you write. I liked the the writing nevertheless.
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This would be incredible great if it didn’t use Silverlight, I just don’t like it very much.