Yahoo! Messenger

Yahoo! Messenger
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“Y!M” redirects here. For the movie database, see Yahoo! Movies, for the mail service, see Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Messenger is a popular advertisement-supported instant messaging client and protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo! ID" which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such as Yahoo! Mail, where users can be automatically notified when they receive new email. Yahoo! offers PC to PC telephone, file transfers, webcam hosting, text messaging service, and chat rooms in various categories.

In addition to instant messaging features similar to those offered by ICQ, it also offers (on Microsoft Windows) features such as: IMVironments (customizing the look of Instant Message windows), address-book integration and Custom Status Messages. It was also the first major IM client to feature BUZZing and music-status. Another recently added feature is customized avatars.

Yahoo! Messenger 2.5.3 for Mac, released in 2003, is the current stable version for Mac OS X. It has far fewer features than the current Windows release and has been reported to be quite buggy. In June of 2006 Messenger for Mac 3.0b1 was released as a beta, and remains in beta more than a year later. This beta has a more modern interface than 2.5.3 and includes avatars,display image viewing, BUZZ facility, and some other features comparable to those on the Windows version. However, it is still lacking the more advanced features contained in the Windows version, such as PC-to-PC calling, photo sharing, an address book and chat room access. The latest beta version (rc4 released in May 2007) also contains bugs, including a java bug when Safari 3 is installed that causes new messages to pop to the top of the window causing the user to repeatedly scroll to the bottom of the window as new messages arrive.

Yahoo! has announced a partnership with Microsoft to join their instant messaging networks. This would make Yahoo! Messenger compatible with Microsoft's .NET Messenger Service. It also made Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger compatible with Yahoo!'s Network. This change has taken effect as of July 13, 2006, - Yahoo! Messenger has integrated instant messaging with Windows Live Messenger users, and is fully functional.

British Telecommunications' BT Communicator software is based on Yahoo! Messenger. BT Communicator was withdrawn on 31st December 2006.
Yahoo! Messenger was originally launched under the name Yahoo! Pager on March 9, 1998.


Features

Yahoo! Voice
Yahoo! Voice is a Voice over IP PC-PC, PC-Phone and Phone-to-PC service , provided by Yahoo! via its Yahoo! Messenger instant messaging application.

Voicemail and file sharing
Yahoo! added voicemail and file sending capabilities to their client. File-sharing of sizes up to 1GB was added.

Plug-ins
As of 8.0, Yahoo! Messenger has added the ability for users to create plug-ins (via the use of the freely available Yahoo! Messenger Plug-in SDK), which are then hosted and showcased on the Yahoo! Plug-in gallery

Yahoo! Mail integration
On July 2, 2007, Yahoo! plans to integrate Yahoo! Mail Beta and Yahoo! Messenger. Conversations will eventually be archived and stored in the same manner as emails. This allows users to search within their chat logs easily, and to have them centrally stored no matter what computer is used to have conversations.

URI scheme
Yahoo! Messenger's installation process automatically installs an extra URI scheme ("protocol") handler into some web browsers, so that URIs beginning "ymsgr:" can open a new Yahoo! Messenger window with specified parameters. This is similar in function to the mailto: URI scheme, which creates a new e-mail message using the system's default mail program. For instance, a web page might include a link like the following in its HTML source to open a window for sending a message to the YIM user notarealuser.

Send Message

To specify a message body, the m parameter is used, so that the link location might look like this:

ymsgr:sendim?notarealuser&m=This+is+my+message


Offline Messaging
Offline messaging, a feature long offered by Yahoo!, allows online users to send messages to their contacts, even if said contacts are not signed in at the time. The sender's offline contacts will receive these messages when they next go online.


Interoperability with Windows Live Messenger
On October 13, 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced plans to introduce interoperability between their two messengers, creating the second largest instant messenger userbase worldwide: 40 percent of all users (AIM currently holds 56 percent). The announcement comes after years of 3rd party interoperability success (most notably, Trillian, Pidgin) and criticisms that the major instant messengers were locking their networks. Microsoft has also had talks with AOL in an attempt to introduce further interoperability, but so far, AOL seems unwilling to participate.
Interoperability between Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger was launched July 12, 2006. This allows, for Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger users to chat to each other without the need to create an account on the other service, provided both contacts use the latest versions of the clients. For now, it's impossible to talk using the voice service among both messengers.


Games
There are various games and applications available that can be accessed via the conversation window by clicking the games icon and challenging your current contact


yahoomessenger.exe (previously ypager.exe)
yahoomessenger.exe is the main process belonging to the Yahoo! Instant Messenger application, an Internet messaging program. The name of the Yahoo! instance messaging client changed from ypager.exe to yahoomessenger.exe since version 7.5.0 beta.
Note that this applies to the Windows version of Yahoo! Messenger.


Upcoming releases

Yahoo! will soon unveil a completely rehauled version for Windows Vista to a generally enthusiastic response. It has been designed to exploit the new design elements of Vista's Windows Presentation Foundation.
Macintosh client 3.0 Beta 2 will reportedly have more features, including Voice. However, Yahoo! have yet to announce a release date for this beta.