MSN Toolbar (powered by Silverlight), good UX?
We all (mostly) hate toolbars. They are ugly, they take lot of space and they don’t look compelling and functionality they bringing in are easily described as crapware. When I say they are ugly – I mean that – grayish, with Windows 9x look, they seem to be outdated by years (in IT = centuries).
But new MSN Toolbar looks promising. Powered by Microsoft’s own Silverlight technology it looks slick, sexy and appealing (yeah, I did say it looks sexy). And if you watch Olympics, this shiny stuff will become your good friend.
So, what can you do with new MSN Toolbar?
You can, as always, just install it and use it as a show off to your friends (yeah, you know). You can use Live Search as your search engine without leaving page you are currently browsing, you can also get breaking news (really like this feature), get stock quotes (by the way Apple now has bigger market capitalization than Google), watch your weather and many other things.
My personal favorite – the Olympics tab. Click on it and get yourself related news and medal count without leaving web site you are currently browsing.
Regarding Live Search – it’s nicely integrated, works like charm. I’m not sure about all that Google -Yahoo! – Live.com rivalry, but I’d say that Live.com has finest Picture search. For now, for all other stuff, you know who The Big Boss is.
Regarding overall user experience – all in all, new MSN Toolbar looks good. Of course, there is lot of place for improvements, but comparing it to its rivals – this one looks best. You don’t like glossy black theme? No problem – you change that to color you prefer. You can customize many other settings and that is something I really appreciate…
And something that is really making me happy – MSN Toolbar is not coming bundled with each and every software package on planet Earth, including home appliances (like Google’s toolbar) such as Microwave oven with Google Toolbar.
Even Wikipedia says something about that one:
The toolbar is bundled with some popular freely-downloadable software, most notably Adobe Shockwave, Adobe Flash, WinZip, RealPlayer, SunMicro’s Java, PCTOOLS Spyware Doctor, DivX and CCleaner with the option to install the software selected by default. Some users see this as unethical, as it is similar to the tactics used by some P2P programs to trick users into ‘consenting’ to having spyware on their computers. If the user decides that he/she does not want the toolbar, it can be uninstalled without affecting the software it was bundled with.
What confuses me so much is Windows Live Toolbar. What is going to be with that stuff? Microsoft has been persistent on keeping both – MSN and Live.com brands, but what will happen when they start confusing users (think about Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Hotmail and all that “mail confusion”).
Just to mention that somewhere back in 2006, Microsoft decided to rename the original MSN Search Toolbar to the new Windows Live Toolbar. But on February 29, 2008, Microsoft released a beta version of their newly revamped MSN Toolbar (are they going to do that every four years, I’m not sure).
At the end, just to let you know – this is going to be first toolbar ever I’ve been using for more than 2 days… Let’s just sit and wait for how long I will keep it there.
Want to try it for yourself: http://www.newmsntoolbar.com/