They say late is better than never. But is late worth the wait? That"s the question for Yahoo, which late last night released a preview of its instant messenger client for Windows Vista. The wait has been a long one. Yahoo showed off the IM client back in January during the Consumer Electronics Show. Yahoo"s belated IM client taps into Windows Vista technologies, including WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation). Yahoo Messenger for Vista is a real showcase of WPF capabilities. The visuals are stunning, with elements resizing and repositioning smoothly and beautifully. Finally, from seeing Yahoo Messenger for Vista in action, I can see some of the vector-based benefits promised for the operating system.
End users can drag and drop conversations to consolidate them into single views or even place buddy windows onto the Vista Sidebar, to keep watch over conversations. End users also can drag-and-drop files up to 2GB and send them via IM. The IM client is a preview, and it"s not feature complete. I downloaded the software around 11:15 pm EST last night. There are definitely rough edges and not as many features as I had hoped for. But the visuals are slick for sure.