Lots of announcements were made at CES today, and I'm still in the process of digesting all that information. I also just moved back to uni today (classes start tomorrow), so I' a bit behind on the news.

Anyway, I just spotted the new version of Yahoo! Messenger that's redesigned from the ground up, just for Windows Vista, using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). And for a moment, my jaw dropped. That user-interface is just gorgeous, all the way from the smooth-scalable buddy icons in the contact list to the beautifully minimalistic chat window. Also, notice that they're using Segoe UI as the default font throughout the application, making everything look perfectly consistent. This app is totally a first-class citizen on the Vista desktop. Heck, I don't even use Yahoo! Messenger, but this is getting installed on my box as soon as it's out, just so that I can play with it in all of its WPF'd glory.

Windows Live Messenger team, take note - this is what WLM should have looked like on Vista; I sure hope you folks will deliver something equally eye-catching in the next release!

Update:Lee Brimelow from Frog Design, who worked on this with Yahoo! and Microsoft, has more information, including screenshots of the new voice call window, a Sidebar gadget (clever!), and an interesting color picker.

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