Contact Control

Updated July 17, 2008:

  • There have been issues in login/logoff. The update fixes the problem and users should not experience the problems during login and logoff anymore.
  • This update has greatly improved support for globalization & localization.
  • This update improves user experience by supporting consistent keyboard usage, making UI improvements, fixing encoding/decoding issues and boundary bugs, and rewriting error messages.
  • In this release, we add the option to populate the subject of email sent to contacts.
  • The functionalities have been tested under IE6 and 7, Firefox 2.0 and 3.0.

Updated April 21, 2008: Added onLoad event; minor bug fixes. Safari users see Known Issues. Note: Please update your controls from v0.2 to v0.3, as the v0.2 controls are due to be deprecated by the end of May.

The Windows Live Contacts control is a client-side browser JavaScript object that enables visitors to use their Windows Live Contacts with your Web site. In "List View," a user can choose to share contact information with your Web site. In "Tile View" users see their contacts presence information, and can initiate a Messenger conversation with a contact that has a custom message pre-populated in the conversation.

Updating v0.2 Controls to v0.3

To update your v0.2 contact controls to v0.3, perform the following steps:

  1. Change the references from :

    http://dev.live.com/scripts/base/v0.2/live.js and http://dev.live.com/scripts/base/v0.2/controls.js

    to

    http://controls.services.live.com/scripts/base/v0.3/live.js and http://controls.services.live.com/scripts/base/v0.3/controls.js

  2. Copy the new channel.htm to your server from http://dev.live.com/contactscontrol/getstarted.aspx
  3. Ensure the XML Namespace is declared on your HTML tag as: <html xmlns:devlive="http://dev.live.com">
  4. If there is any problem, please visit the forum at: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=534&SiteID=1

Tile/TileList View

In these views, the user can start an instant message or email with a pre-defined message from the Web site, such as a link to the page and a custom greeting.

Try the Windows Live Contacts Control - Tile/TileList View

List View

In List View, instead of typing a shipping address into a shopping cart form, for example, the user could simply select one of their Windows Live Contacts from the Contact control. The user saves time and effort in completing the order, and you gain the benefits of an address book for your Web site without having to implement, maintain, and provision data storage and management UI on your servers. The user maintains control of their personal contact data, while you focus on providing services with data the user gives you or the contacts you provide the user. (Read the privacy notice for the Windows Live Contacts control.)

See the List View working in our live samples:

A key aspect of this control is maintaining secure data isolation between multiple domains. The control obtains the user's contacts data from Windows Live servers via a secure HTTPS connection and releases to your Web page only the data for the contacts that the user selects and approves for sharing with your Web page. When writing information to a user's contacts, the user is first prompted to approve the information, which is then transmitted to Windows Live servers via a secure HTTPS connection. In this way, users stay in control of their data, which offers them a level of confidence in dealing with third-party Web sites.

Your Web site needs to make a clear statement to the user about how you will be using the data they share with you. The Windows Live Contacts control requires that you supply a URL to a privacy statement and display that URL to the end user when they are prompted to approve transfer of the selected contact data to your site. If you use the shared data only for the current activity and then discard it, you should say so in your privacy statement. If you store the shared data on your servers for any purpose, you should say so in your privacy statement and provide means for the user to review or delete such stored data.

Given the growing governmental regulations worldwide concerning the handling of personal data (and all the disclosures that go with it), it's much simpler for Web sites to use the contact data for the current activity, and then discard it.