14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is gearing up for the evolution of Windows Live with the advent of Wave 4, and in this regard the company announced imminent updates to Live Services. Specifically, the software giant is getting ready to kill off a range of services that it offered developers and which were leveraging Windows Live as a platform. David Treadwell, corporate vice president, Live Platform Services, revealed that starting on September 8th, 2009, Microsoft would no longer offer devs the Live Framework Community Technology Preview (Services, SDK & Tools). The promise from Microsoft is that Live Framework is to become and integrant part of the next release of Windows Live. However, no more details are available at this point in time.
“At the Professional Developer Conference 2008, we gave the developer community access to the technical preview of the Live Framework. The Live Framework is core to our vision of providing you with a consistent programming interface. Now we are working to integrate existing services, controls and the Live Framework into the next release of Windows Live,” Treadwell noted.
But Microsoft is killing not only the Live Framework CTP. The company also indicated that Contacts Control (JavaScript) would also become unavailable starting on September 8th. Treadwell pointed developers to the UI Controls from Messenger Web Toolkit as an alternative. In addition, Microsoft will also discontinue CTP Tools/ASP.NET Controls (Contacts, MessengerChat, IDLoginStatus, IDLoginView, SilverlightStreaming). In this regard, Treadwell indicated the UI Controls from Messenger Web Toolkit as an alternative for Contacts and Messenger Chat, and the Windows Live ID Web Authentication Service as an IDLoginStatus Control replacement.
“There will be some changes to services and controls you may use today, in particular the Live Framework CTP, making them unavailable starting September 8th. These changes may affect you and your development work and we want to ensure that you take appropriate action to secure your work and make adjustments to existing implementations of the affected services,” Treadwell added.
Microsoft promised that Live Mesh would not be affected in any way by the updates to Live Services. The company assured users that Live Mesh would continue to be available in the same manner as before even after September 8. However, developers are urged to prepare for the services becoming unavailable.
“If you are a Live Framework technology preview user, we ask you to please download any data and/or code from the service prior to September 8th as well as remove your devices from the service. If you are using any of the controls, we ask that you please remove them from your site prior to September 8th,” Treadwell said.
After September 8, all Live Framework CTP solutions will also become inaccessible, and Microsoft noted that it would not keep any data and/or other products associated with Live Framework CTP. “The ability to create Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web applications will be removed. It will not be possible to edit the settings of Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web applications and Analytics because these applications won't be available any longer. Live Framework CTP tokens will no longer be valid and can be discarded,” Treadwell explained.