LiveSide - News blog : Toolbar

Quick Update: Favorites syncing on Windows Live Toolbar working once again

damaster — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:45:00 GMT

We reported a few days ago that Favorites sync was temporarily turned off in Windows Live Toolbar for all users due to a technical glitch on the server side. The Windows Live Toolbar team just announced today that this has been fixed and the feature has been re-enabled:

We are happy to report that this issue with the “favorites sync” feature on Windows Live Toolbar has now been fixed and you can now re-enable this feature. As we mentioned in the original post, no data was actually lost and everything will work as expected and you can again get your favorites synced back to your browser on your PC.

You can access your synced Favorites at http://favorites.live.com

Favorites sync temporarily turned off on Windows Live Toolbar

damaster — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:17:53 GMT

Due to some glitches with Windows Live Toolbar’s favorites syncing, several users reported that their browser’s favorites have disappeared as a result. The Toolbar team has responded by posting the following announcement:

We’ve heard from some customers in the last 24 hours that in some cases, favorites have been removed from the Toolbar when they synced from one or more of their PCs. We have investigated, and we want to assure you, that if this is occurring for you, your favorites are still available on SkyDrive. We apologize for this inconvenience and are diligently working on a fix to restore favorites from SkyDrive to your PC.

In order to prevent any further issues with favorites sync from Toolbar, we have temporarily disabled syncing of favorites for ALL Toolbar customers until we have a fix ready.

In the mean time, you can still access all your favorites on Windows Live SkyDrive by accessing http://favorites.live.com. Alternatively, you can also recover your favorites from the Recycle Bin on the PC where they were removed.

We’ll keep you updated when this issue has been fixed!

Home.live.com: Is This The “More”? Web Slice For What’s New With Your Network

Sunshine — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:01:33 GMT

Might this be the “more” spoken about here? Picturepan2, spotted something in Angus Logan’s vids that were posted in Rob Dolin’s post:

A web slice* icon on home.live.com! Now what might that be for? From what we see in a screenshot in Seika’s post, it is for “What’s new with your network.” Very handy indeed, but don’t we already have something like that? Well, yes and no.

If you have the Windows Live Toolbar installed you will see that also has a “What’s New” button:

So no, we don’t have a web slice like that yet, and yes, the ”What’s New” in Windows live Toolbar looks a lot like it. The biggest difference is that by the looks of it the new web slice (might this also be released in the coming week?) will ~~only~~ feature 3 10 updates, whereas the Toolbar one does 5.

*Web slices are a feature of IE8, should you not have IE8 yet please download and install it from the Internet Explorer homepage.

Edit: The web slice just appeared for me on home.live too, and it indeed shows 10 updates. To see all of them, just stretch out the slice as far as you can by holding the bottom right corner with your left mouse button and drag ;)

Don’t Miss Out On Cashback Offers With MSN Toolbar

Sunshine — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:36:15 GMT

Afraid to miss out on a Live Search Cashback offer? You won’t if you use the MSN Toolbar, which now contains a Cashback-offer-detecting mechanism. If there is Cashback available for the item you were searching for the icon on the toolbar will gleam. Clicking the gleam will bring you to the page where the Cashback offer is available. So you will never find yourself in a situation like this one:

“I bought a Wii online; and then found out the next day that I could have saved almost $100 had I used Live Search Cashback!! I was so mad.”

Best thing of it all is that it doesn’t matter where you search, be it on Live Search, Google, Yahoo or Craigslist.

This version of MSN Toolbar was released May last year and is powered by Microsoft Silverlight.

Live Search : Your everyday online cash detector
Previous articles on Live Search Cashback

Edit: Live Search Cashback is still only available for US residents, 18 years of age or older - FAQ

Having problems with Windows Live Sync / Favorites sync? This might help

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:16:50 GMT

An admission right off the bat: I’m not a Toolbar user. I guess I’m partial to as much browser real estate as I can get, but I don’t generally install any toolbars, from Windows Live or anywhere else. That being said, if you have the Windows Live Toolbar installed and are having issues with syncing your Favorites across computers, John Pollard, a Senior dev on the Live Search team, thinks he’s found an answer. From his blog post:

I had no idea what the problem was, and was going to try the trusted uninstall/reinstall route, but when I went to the uninstall control panel I realised I still had the old Favorites toolbar add-in installed:

John uninstalled the old Windows Live Favorites for Windows Live Toolbar, and his sync options re-appeared on his (new) Windows Live Toolbar. In one case he needed to re-install the new Toolbar, but after that everything worked.

So if you’ve had problems, make sure the old Live Favorites is uninstalled.

Also, if you’ve tried to install Windows Live Sync and have been getting a network error, there is a fix for that. From a comment (from Rachel Popkin MSFT) on the Windows Live Sync blog:

The issue you are experiencing should now have been resolved. To install Sync, please try the following steps:
1. Visit https://sync.live.com/clientdownload.aspx and select the Windows client
2. Save the program to your computer (Desktop, etc.)
3. Run the installation
4. Once the installation is done, run Sync from the Windows Live folder in the Start Menu.

Rachel also comments that there is a new Mac client, so if you’re having issues on a Mac, make sure you have the latest version.

Windows Live Toolbar – upcoming new features, Sync, SkyDrive and Favorites integration

damaster — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:06:31 GMT

Credits goes to Jamie Thomson for reviewing the upcoming “release candidate” version of Windows Live Toolbar. From the post we’re able to preview some of the high-resolution screenshots of what’s to come in the new Toolbar. Here’s what Jamie had to say about the new Toolbar:

Do you use toolbars? I generally don’t. Actually no, that’s not true; I didn’t, but I do now.

I’ve been using the new Windows Live Toolbar for about 6 weeks and so far so good, I’m still using it and for me that’s something of a toolbar record. The reason is the brand new toolbar buttons that allow me to see my What’s New feed and (importantly for me) my Calendar straight from within the Toolbar. In other words, without going to a website.

When the last Windows Live Essentials wave 3 suite got released into public beta, Chris reviewed the Toolbar and mentioned the lack of cross-service integration with other Windows Live services (no, “buttons” don’t count). Well, the new release addresses just that – integrating many of the upcoming Windows Live wave 3 services into one “useful” Toolbar. Instead of talking about what we already knew, we’ll focus on what’s new and updated in this upcoming release.

First, as seen across all of the new Windows Live internet services, we have the What’s New feed integration. Clicking on What’s New, Profile and Photos tabs will give you at-a-glance what your friends in your Network have been doing lately, and also instant access to your Windows Live Home, Profile and Photos web pages.

The Mail and Calendar also shows the latest emails from your Hotmail inbox and upcoming appointments in your Windows Live Calendar, with a nice little calendar to help you find out which dates you have events and appointments.

I guess what is most exciting about the new Toolbar is the new Favorites, Sync, and SkyDrive integrations. We mentioned in our last review that while installing Windows Live Toolbar it requires you to close down Windows Live Sync. We also knew that Microsoft is killing off Windows Live Favorites, but this also meant that the original Favorites syncing through the wave 2 version Windows Live Toolbar will no longer work. With the new version, we’ll see Toolbar taking advantage of Windows Live Sync and will be synchronising all your Favorites from Internet Explorer between different computers, provided you have Toolbar installed on both computers and signed in to the same Windows Live ID.

Previously we also noted that you can share favorites with SkyDrive using Windows Live Toolbar, however, exactly how Favorites, SkyDrive, Sync and Toolbar will interact together is ~~still a big question mark~~. Update: Jamie updated his blog today about how “Shared Favorites” works in Toolbar, integrating it with SkyDrive. Apparently there is a “Share” button in Toolbar which, if clicked on, allows you to add the currently viewing page as a link to the “Shared Favorites” folder on SkyDrive. This will also show up as an entry on your Profile’s What’s New feed:

However, Jamie also noted that in his build of Toolbar the “Favorites Sync” button isn’t available, so question still remains on how Windows Live Sync will play its part, and whether the Favourites stored on SkyDrive can be accessed from the Toolbar or not. Stay tuned on LiveSide as we cover the latest Wave 3 news in much more detail.

Sun Microsystems To Distribute MSN Toolbar As Part Of Java Runtime Environment To US Residents

Sunshine — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:10:33 GMT

Starting today every US resident who downloads Sun’s Java Runtime Environment with Internet Explorer will be offered MSN Toolbar. This Microsoft Silverlight powered toolbar delivers one click access to Live Search, news, entertainment, sports and more.

From the PressPass Announcement:

“This agreement with Sun Microsystems is another important milestone in our strategy to secure broad-scale distribution for our search offering, enabling millions more people to experience the benefits of Live Search,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Business at Microsoft. “With the vast array of Java software-based Web applications that are downloaded every month, this deal will expose Live Search to millions more Internet users and drive increased volume for our search advertisers.”

With more than 6.5 million Java software developers around the globe, Java is one of the most widely available and popular software platforms. It is already present on 91 percent of Internet-connected PCs worldwide. The Java Runtime Environment is one of the highest-volume consumer downloads on the Web, with tens of millions of downloads each month from http://java.com.

All this in an attempt to increase the online search share of Live Search. Well I’m sure this will help quite a bit, honestly who doesn’t have Java installed?

“With over 800 million Java desktop users around the world, our goal is to provide Java users with compelling and immersive business and consumer solutions powered by Java technology and value-added solutions from world-class software partners,” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun Microsystems. “Our customers expect top-quality products when they choose to download technology from Sun, and we are confident that they will find great value in both Microsoft’s MSN toolbar and Live Search.”

If you are not in the US, or already installed the Java Runtime Environment, and you’d like to try out the MSN Toolbar: there’s always the possibility to download it directly at http://toolbar.msn.com

PressPass: Sun Microsystems to Distribute Microsoft Live Search-Powered Toolbar as Part of Java Runtime Environment: Search distribution deal expands reach of Microsoft Live Search via custom MSN Toolbar.

MSN Toolbar released – yes another toolbar. Is this one different?

Wave 3: Windows Live Toolbar beta

Chris — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:03:38 GMT

So I drew the short-straw and ended up with the Toolbar beta review. In fact that was a sacrifice I was willing to make, as we’d heard about some cool stuff coming in Wave 3. Alas, none of it made this build, so I was left with a regular browser toolbar.

The WL Toolbar beta is a quick install, weighing in at only 8mb, so it won’t take you too long to try it out. Nor will it take you long to uninstall it either.

If you’re running Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, you cannot miss the duplication of functionality that now exists. Toolbar has Windows Live Translate, Map, Blog and Email integration. So does IE8 in the form of ~~activities~~ accelerators. Toolbar has a search box (that you still can’t hide) – so does IE8. In fact both search boxes now display search suggestions and previous search history.

However credit is due to Toolbar for extending search into other locations, thanks to a new program that is installed called Search Enhancements. This allows you to search your PC from your browser, however you’ll have to accept the various security prompts (both IE and Windows Vista) that try to prevent this from taking place. These can be disabled if you require, but I probably wouldn’t recommend doing that in case malicious apps start seeing this as a way to spam your desktop. So unfortunately, that makes this somewhat of a useless feature.

Other than the above, you can install custom buttons on to Toolbar beta from the Windows Live Gallery – http://gallery.live.com.

One interesting thing we did notice was that the Toolbar beta now asks users if they’d like to opt in to a search data collection program. With web search being such a competitive arena and Microsoft making every possible effort to catch up to Google and Yahoo, its no surprise to see MS do everything it can to improve knowledge around how searches are performed.

We’re hoping there is still more to come from the Toolbar guys in the M3 release, especially with regards to improving cross-service integration (lets face it, buttons are kinda lame). Anybody else notice the Toolbar installer requires you to close down Windows Live Sync? ;) Until then, best to give this application a miss.

Remember, all the Windows Live Wave 3 betas are available from http://download.live.com

Read more on Windows Live Wave 3 betas:

Wave 3: Windows Live Photo Gallery – New Features

Wave 3: Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta – What’s New? A Comparison With 8.5

Wave 3: Windows Live Mail - Calendar, Calendar, Calendar (And More)

Wave 3: Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

Wave 3: Windows Live Writer – A First Look

Valleywag reports on Live Search “pay for toolbar download” scheme

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:11:00 GMT

The Microsoft Affiliate Network is apparently willing to pay up to $2.50 per Windows Live Toolbar download, according to an email acquired by Valleywag. In the scheme, affiliate Marketer Kowabunga would take on publisher affiliates for a fee, who would then offer links to download the toolbar, or something like that. And indeed, in checking out microsoftaffiliates.net, there’s quite a bit more on the program:

How pushing the Windows Live Toolbar is going to have much, if any, effect on Live Search is kind of beyond us, but maybe it’s a twist on our favorite South Park algorithm: Toolbar > ??? > PROFIT!

Windows Live Help confirms Wave 3 features in Mail, Photo Gallery and Toolbar

damaster — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:18:00 GMT

Our friend Picturepan2 at LiveSino has again done some more investigative reporting in Windows Live Help revealing and confirming Wave 3 features in Mail, Photo Gallery and Toolbar. Here's a summary of what's discovered:

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Add people tags (Textual data attached to a photo to refine its definition and meaning by identifying the person or persons in the photo. You can sort your photos according to what people tags they have, making it easier to find photos of your friends and family.) to your photos to make sorting and finding photos of your friends and family easier. You can create people tags and add them to your photos at any time.
Windows Live Mail

Calendars: You can create calendars and events whether you're signed in to Windows Live Mail or not. However, if you do sign in, any calendars that you’ve created in Windows Live Calendar Beta are automatically imported into Windows Live Mail, and changes that you make in either Windows Live Mail or Windows Live Calendar Beta are reflected in the other. Also, your calendars are available from any computer on which you sign in to Windows Live Mail. If you don't sign in, you can access your calendars only from the computer on which you created them. For more information, see About calendars.

You can also update when events occur and schedule events to occur regularly over a period of days, weeks, months, or years. If you sign in to Windows Live Mail with your Windows Live ID, Windows Live Mail can send you reminders (A scheduled message that Windows Live Mail sends to you to remind you that an event in your calendar is about to occur) before each event starts to help ensure that you never miss an event.

It even reveals the little Calendar icon that's going to appear in Windows Live Mail:
Windows Live Toolbar

Windows Live Calendar Beta is a free online calendar program that you can use to keep track of personal appointments, family get-togethers, group schedules, birthdays, holidays, and other events. When you're signed in with your Windows Live ID, you can always see a summary of your calendar on Windows Live Toolbar Beta, and the Calendar Beta website is just a click away.

Looks like Microsoft is revealing more and more about what's coming up in Windows Live Wave 3. Stay tuned as we continue updating you on what's coming.

MSN Toolbar goes global - well, almost

Gregor — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:41:07 GMT

The new MSN Toolbar which uses Silverlight (works with Silverlight 1.0 and Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2) that was released to the US market about a month ago is going global. You can now download localized versions of the toolbar for a few selected markets and we guess more will be added over time. In addition to the US release it is now available in the UK, Germany, France and Italy.

Silverlight 2 Beta 2 released: now MSN Toolbar works

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 14:44:05 GMT

Bill Gates announced the availability of a new build of Silverlight at his TechEd keynote, and now the new version, Silverlight 2 Beta 2 is available for download. I won’t get into all the new features and improvements in the latest version, but if you’re interested in what Silverlight can do, there’s a nice Showcase on the Silverlight website:

One interesting change, noticed by our friend Picturepan2 over at LiveSino.net, is that the Silverlight powered MSN Toolbar, which worked on Silverlight 1.0 but not Silverlight 2 Beta 1, now indeed does work on Silverlight 2 Beta 2. The toolbar will, in addition to running the MSN Toolbar, provide the backbone for the Live Search toolbar that will be pre-installed on all new HP computers starting next year. Presumably that also will include the gadget and API features that are to be included in the MSN Toolbar later this year.

You can download and try out the MSN Toolbar here, in case you didn’t want to go back to Silverlight 1.0 to try it out.

(oh, and we just can’t resist noting that 3 of the products with tabs on the Live Search section of the toolbar have been killed:

…hopefully it is easily updated!)

MSN Toolbar released – yes another toolbar. Is this one different?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:23:00 GMT

After a couple of months of beta testing, the MSN Toolbar is ready for release. We first told you about it in March, and while yes, it’s another toolbar, the new MSN Toolbar is different in a couple of significant ways. First, it’s powered by Silverlight, and as it is written in XAML, there are plans to do some cool stuff with it coming up, according to MSN Director Stefan Weitz, who I had a chance to talk to a bit about the new toolbar.

Later this year an SDK will be released and 3rd party developers will be able to write to the toolbar. Weite said that plans have not been finalized, a check-in process, similar to how apps are checked into the Windows Live Gallery, may be used. Extending the toolbar may give it more of a reason to become a keeper in what is already a crowded browser toolbar market.

The toolbar also includes a “breaking news” feature, which alerts readers to important news stories without having to check MSNBC etc.

One complaint we heard about the MSN Toolbar available in beta was a lack of customization, users were stuck with basic black. That has changed with color customizations:

The new toolbar is not without some not-so-subtle attempts to feature Live Search. Whenever a search page is encountered (either this MSN page, or a search page from a competitor), the Toolbar “flips” to reveal a Live Search bar and all of the “scope” tabs:

All in all, however, it IS just another toolbar, albeit a Silverlight one, in an already crowded market. I wonder if this guy can add it to his collection:

You can download and try the new MSN Toolbar now at http://toolbar.msn.com/ (if it's not available in your area now, it will be soon Update note: the toolbar is rolling out in the US today, and will be available in more markets "this summer")

MSN Toolbar beta commences - Signup now

Chris — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:36:00 GMT

As we posted at the end of last week, there is now a new MSN Toolbar beta in town. If you want to signup to use the beta, you can now do so on Microsoft Connect (places are limited so register asap).

While Silverlight is powering some nice popups to show the MSN content, reactions we've heard so far have been mixed. The biggest question by far is whether this means Windows Live Toolbar is being retired? We've heard that Windows Live Toolbar is still under development for Wave 3, so hopefully no worries there.

The difference between the two toolbars is much the same as the general difference between the two brands; MSN provides pre-selected content access, whereas Windows Live provides access to the information and services you care about. Looking at it this way, having two toolbars make some sense (admittedly I'm not fully convinced).

As for thoughts on the new toolbar itself, I think Omar wins the brutally honest award: "One Word. UGLY". Owch.

You can read more about the new MSN Toolbar beta in our previous post.

Microsoft to launch new MSN Toolbar beta - Powered by Silverlight

Chris — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:04:00 GMT

Later today we should see the reincarnation of MSN Toolbar in beta form (codename Salsa). Like many older MSN products, it migrated over to the new Windows Live brand early 2007, however as part of the gradual drift back, its been revamped with a new look.

So what's new apart from the Vista styled UI? Well perhaps the biggest thing is that the toolbar is powered by Silverlight, which adds an extra dimension to the features on offer. This enables the drop-down MSN chanel previews, showing the latest content from within the MSN portal without requiring the user to move from the internet page they are currently browsing. From the same preview pane users can also chose to search that part of the site, which brings us onto the 2nd main feature - Live Search.

Although web search and toolbars have gone hand in hand for as long as I can remember, the new MSN Toolbar beta adds a few twists. Firstly, and definitely most controversially, when you perform a search query on another search engine, the toolbar search box will auto-populate itself should you wish to view results from Live Search. This seems like a bit of a grey area in terms of user privacy, so I'm sure we'll inevitably hear complaints about it soon enough. As mentioned above, the toolbar also allows users to tailor their search to specific MSN channels using the preview panes.

Finally there's a breaking news feature, bringing the latest news direct to your browser. At the end of the day though, a toolbar is a toolbar, so there's not a huge amount to get excited about - what is exciting is seeing just how much Silverlight could be used for. Of course there is the added bonus for Microsoft in that requiring users to install Silverlight for core products such as this will increase penetration into the mass-market. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Users who want to participate in the managed beta on Connect will be able to sign up soon through the Available Connections page. The toolbar homepage is also up, however there is no download available yet.

Update: The beta is now accepting signups, looks like there won't be a public beta immediately.