New Windows Live Messenger V8.5 - its all about the look and quality, oh and the web messengering and the buttons ... - David Overton's Blog

I just saw this (as I have just updated my live suite). Anyway, if you look at the recommended "Nicole’s post" then you quickly discover that for Messenger it is all about the look, experience and quality. However, while this is true, we then have some amazingly cool new features that sit around it, such as Web based IM for people to contact you via a site and adding a "IM me" button to your site. Below are 3 blog entries that tell the whole story.

Announcing Windows Live Messenger 8.5!

After months of work, and two beta releases the Windows Live Messenger team is proud to release Windows Live Messenger 8.5! We’ve listened to the feedback from our beta users and made this one of the best versions of Messenger ever!
If you were a beta user not much has changed for you. We worked hard to improve the overall quality of Messenger though, and we owe a big ‘Thanks!!’ to all of the beta testers that sent us feedback. If you haven’t been a beta tester you can read Nicole’s post about the new features in 8.5.
Windows Live Messenger isn’t the only program getting released today. In fact a lot of Windows Live products are celebrating a new launch today. Be sure and check out the blogs of Mail, Photo Gallery, and Writer for all of the new features, then go Get Windows Live!

Let your friends IM you from anywhere!!

I am very excited! Now you can create your OWN IM button to put on your blog or in your email signature. Just go to www.messengerbuttons.com and create your own button, it has a lot of cool ways to personalize your button. This makes it even easier for your friends to find you on IM.

Once you have created your button, it is also easy to add it to your Windows Live Space, Outlook, Hotmail or Windows Live Mail! Here is a button I created.

Who wants IMs from the web? I do! I do!

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The Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control lets people on the Web reach you in Messenger by showing your Messenger status on your web site, blog, or social networking profile. The Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control runs in the browser and lets site visitors message you without installing Messenger first. The IM Control is supported in IE6, IE7, and Firefox 2.0 on Windows and Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS. The IM Control is supported in 32 languages.
This is a nice addition to the IM button functionality announced in Ali's post. An important difference between the two is that the new Windows Live™ Messenger IM Control allows people to send you IMs without installing Windows Live™ Messenger, and the IM button requires that they have it installed and are logged in.
To use the IM Control:
1. Go to http://settings.messenger.live.com/applications/websettings.aspx. Sign in with your Windows Live ID as needed.
2. Turn on your Web settings to show your presence and receive IM from the Web. Note that if you turn on Web settings, anybody on the Web who has permissions to view your web site can see your presence and send you IM messages. Since we are dedicated to protecting children and Family Safety Settings users from receiving IM messages from users they don't know, children and FSS users aren't eligible to sign up for this feature.

3. Pick a way to show your presence. I decided that I wanted to add an IM Control to my Space, so I chose Messenger.

4. Copy the HTML from the page and post it on your Web site. Since I added the IM Control to my Space, I added a Custom HTML Module, as shown in the screen shot below.

5. When a visitor comes to your page, they can see your presence, and click on “Begin a conversation” to start sending you IM.

<lots snipped>

Back in the IM Control, I receive Casey's response and I can see the timestamp from when the last message was received.

3. The IM Control lets anybody on the Web IM you. If somebody you don’t know sends you a message, you will see a warning like below in Messenger. The IM Control lets people you don’t know reach you. If you don’t want people you don’t know to send you messages, then don’t allow messages such as this one, or restrict the permission setting on your web site to allow fewer or more trusted users. If you want to always enable new users to IM you from the IM Control, then allow messages from unknown senders.

That should be all you need to get started, so go! Generate some HTML, plant an IM Control wherever you please, and start chatting with visitors from the web!